All Comments on 'A Life Gone By'

I loved hating the ending. This guy never caught a break. That kind of love is so strong. At least he got to be with her for a long time.

I thoroughly enjoyed this. It was funny, sad, interesting and towards the end poignant.

Loved the tension and love he found. Couldn't stop reading and now it's well after midnight lol. The only nitpick I have about this story is at a few points the narration goes from past tense to present, and back again. That can be very jarring while reading. There were a few grammatical errors as well, but not enough to take away from the story. An editor could help clean this stuff up if you choose to find one. 5* from me, thanks for sharing it!

Very realistic, in places painfully so. We were warned. Self-reflection is oftentimes a rollercoaster of emotions if we are honest with ourselves. Five stars and a big favorited.

When I read this story yesterday, it left me so emotionally affected that I was not able to comment.

I must admit that I did not like the beginning of the story and that I was about to abandon reading (my own particular demons), but finally I decided to finish reading, and at the end of the story the tears fell from my eyes (I am a Old romantic, that is going to do).

5 * for you.

I hope to find another story of yours with a happier ending, within the Romance section.

I apologize for my English (yet and forever), isn't my native language.

I just don't know where to begin in analyzing this story. I could start with the unlikely creation of the evil trio. I have never heard of anything like that and it is so goofy that two women would share one man peacefully that it is not worth considering. And the wierd interchange of pregnancies is beyond belief. And then the bit with the liver transplant was too much.

The courtship, romance and marriage to Lucy and Danni was welcome relief in this story, but had no drama at all. The sex was stuck in because this was in Literotica and there's supposed to be sex. It's like the old fashioned musicals: people just stop in the street and start singing. It works in the movies because you're expecting it, but the sex in this story seemed to be added in after the fact. In far more detail than anything else in the story.

But the part that really turned me off was the super fast description of Lucy and Jim's life together: 5 children (5, in this day and age???) without any mention of what they did for a living or what interested them in their relatively long lives together. And then she doesn't tell him for 3 months that she has cancer. Unbelieveable! And no treatment. There's so much that can be done for cancer today that the first tries should be made. You can always break it off if nothing is working. I know this for a fact because my partner went through this and we did break it off rather than let her suffer excessively long.

And Jim's life after Lucy's death was the crowning insult to our intelligence. There's so much available for people in grief. They had such a good life together that there was much for a therapist to work with to get him going. This nonsense of him worrying that she was now being loved by Danny in heaven was really stretching it.

I do believe that authors should concern themselves with the romance and the love that brings people together and not spend 5 pages on a year or two and then half a page on the next 40 years. Makes no sense and there's no sense of continuity. The author jumped years in the middle of one paragraph and plugged in a bunch of children and a tragedy.

I was generous and gave it a 2*

Being that these stories are fictional authors do have a wide range of latitude, but even too much latitude can ruin stories. The three falling in love with each other (when did Karen figure out she was bisexual) and deciding the could not continue life without each other was a little unbelievable.

They move away far away within the same city? He learns that he is a father but has no interest in meeting or knowing his kid, but he is the most loving man in her daughters life (warning sign lady, dont piss him off or your kid will pay for it) Tammy feels it is extremely for him to understand why they did what they did, but she expresses deep hurt and sounded like underlying indignation that Karen would cheat on the other 2 because she wss do lonely.(Didnt Karen whore around with her and Bill yet she feels deep hurt when done to her, sounds hypocritical)

Then they coming crying because the kid needs a new liver but he can never know that they went and found a complete stranger to donate. Btw, what was wrong with moms liver)

Again, fiction does have latutude.

Yeah, it's fiction. But a little research would help. Recovery for a liver RECIPIENT is 4-6 months. For the donor, 4-6 weeks. Also why was Tammy never tested as a donor. It was important and you never brought it up. Also why did Jim give up involvement in the life of his FIRST BORN SON so casually? That just made no sense at all, yet we are supposed to accept him as a great guy and father figure. Still 3*, keep writing.

A lot of this story is true. The other three getting together, the kids and the kidney failure. I wanted to move on so I did not ask why, what for or any of the other questions that one would normally ask. I just wanted to move on. Having them come back into my life was not what I wanted. Yes the boy was mine. I did raise Danni as my own child. I was devoted to all my children and Lucy. (Of course names were changed.) I did not want to list all of my emotions in this story because I still become emotional when I think about it. I am now 70 years old. I don't know why I say all this except to help me. If you liked the story, thanks. If you did not like the story but gave me feedback, thanks for that too. Some scars never heal, some scars merely leave marks and some scars are never seen because those scars are emotional scars. YES my wife died. I truly miss her and I cannot wait to finally see her again. Her first husband died in combat, that part is true. What can I say about that? I felt her pain, she felt my pain and we both loved each other without restraint.

They treated him like shit and he just accepted them not allowing him to be James' dad. He owed those assholes nothing. He should have got a lawyer and established paternity. James would have been better off with a real dad and not that wimpy Bill. It was not in his son's best interest at all. James would have seen what a normal family was like and not the weird trinity he had at home. He probably never had a healthy relationship with what he was raised with.

I didn’t really care much for this story, true or not. Sure, the guy had some bad experiences in life but some of them were of his own making. The “wife swapping” ended up costing him his marriage, and his wimpiness kept him from having any kind of substantial relationship with his own son. But I think the thing that irked me the most was the fact that Jim continued to communicate with Bill and his two whores even after the three of them had stabbed him in the back. It’s hard for me to generate any sympathy for a man who would let other people screw up his life so badly without him even attempting to make them pay a little price for it.

I love stories like this.. many readers look for anger, hate, revenge, etc. I enjoy stories in which I can relate to in a happy way. While the hurt had was felt, the saying "alls well that ends well" applies... thanks - this is a fiver

I just didn’t like it. I read the comments OVERCRITICAL made and agree with just about all of them. I would like to add a couple of my own. First, this “The kid needs a liver (or kidney, or whatever) transplant and you’re the only one who can save him” theme has been done to death, and done better than this, in my opinion. Secondly, to respond to the comment that ‘this guy couldn’t catch a break’, the guy couldn’t catch a break because he constantly allowed people to walk all over him, and then he apologized for getting under foot. He was a freakin doormat. A wimpy little man who brought a lot of his misfortune on himself. Not all, certainly, but a good part of it. One star.

Wow! So according to the author's comments, part of this was based on reality and yet people still want to comment on whether the story was believable or not.

The comments I agree with the most is the lack of description between the birth of the children and their marriages and subsequent lives. More details would have improved the story. What did Lucy do? Did the author retire as a policeman and have any other career? Did his son James never want to seek out why Jim Sr was the donor? As far as the main character being a "wimp" or not, this seems like such an overused argument in this forum. I think the author gets to "own" the main character and decide how that character acts. Hey, totally free child raising for life! Good deal! No involvement with a child that he really did not know.

I liked the story just found it lacking in details at the end.