This is a story about a man called Jim Brennan. He lived alone and it was his seventy-sixth birthday. He was thinking about his past mistakes which made him filled with remorse. It was his birthday but he realized that there weren’t any cards for him, no cakes, no songs. Nobody cared about him or celebrated his birthday for him.

This story also talks about Jim letting his childhood sweetheart, Ellen down. This was because he followed in his father’s footsteps and married some girl he met in business. Ellen was always rejected by Jim when she asked him to go out to play when they were young. Now, when he wants to ask Ellen out to play, he is unable to, as Ellen is already dead.

A long time ago, they were a loving couple until Jim met another girl and abandoned Ellen. The following year, he brought the girl for a holiday and left the sick Ellen alone and didn’t even say goodbye. When Jim got more mature and came back, Ellen had already died.

Jim was too immature to abandon such a good girl like Ellen for the other girl who was not that good. After Ellen’s death, he was remorseful and knew that he loved her much more than the other girl.

Jim’s death might have been a good thing as he would have been able to see Ellen in the netherworld. And the loving couple would get to be reunited again after such a long, long time.
This tells us that we have to cherish the loved ones around us and not to wait till they leave us that we start to cherish them.