Original subtitles

Female Narrator: Previously on 'Forgive Me':

You're drunk! You're drunk right now so there's no point

in me trying to have this conversation with you.

I'm not doing this with you again.

I'm not gonna do it, we do this every time!

Did you not get a call?

No?

Your brother's in the ICU, he's in a coma.

Liam?

Christopher.

I just, I just saw him, I saw him two weeks ago!

I thought you knew, that's why I'm here!

They can't do a transplant.

You have to be sober for six months to even get on a list.

Can I give him a kidney?

Don't even think about it!

On the thir--

on the third day he rose again.

He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand--

? 'Ave Maria' by Christopher Frances Mitchell ?

? 'Ave Maria' by Christopher Frances Mitchell ?

Hi!

Hi.

I thought you'd be at the hospital today.

How's your brother?

He died.

I'm sorry.

Thank you-- Can I?

'Course.

In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.

It's been a couple weeks since my last confession.

I'm listening.

I unplugged him.

Yeah?

I didn't want him to suffer anymore.

Of course.

Now I'm thinking I did not do the right thing.

It's a terrible sin, isn't it?

Circumstances.

It is though, isn't it?

We're not, we're not obligated, as Catholics,

to use extraordinary measures to prolong life.

Your brother was gonna die anyway.

I mean, that's why they asked you in to do the last rites.

That was more to calm my mother down about eternal damnation.

Right. How is she?

How do you think?

I'm sure it's hard.

What about feeding him?

Feeding a sick person. That doesn't seem extraordinary.

You feed sick people, you feed people every day.

Yeah. That's right.

To stop feeding is a, a point of controversy, in the church.

You mean a sin?

Yeah. To some people.

To church higher ups, yes.

It's a sin.

But what, you, you don't believe that?

You don't adhere to that?

Well. I do. I just... empathize.

And the cardinals and archbishops don't empathize?

I didn't say that.

Let's just stick to your confession.

I killed him. I decided to kill him.

It's not the same.

I unplugged him.

You regret unplugging your brother.

Today I do. I do... and I don't, and I do.

That's grieving.

It's guilt.

What else are you guilty about?

I mean, what sins are you guilty about?

I didn't... help him.

When he was drunk.

When he would call, I wouldn't pick it up.

And every time I did, he was drunk.

Every time I saw him.

And I rationalized that he wasn't always drunk.

But that somehow it was associated with me.

Like he'd get drunk to work up the nerve to talk to me

or he'd, he'd decide when he was drunk that he wanted to see me

or call me because he thought of some great joke

or whatever but...

I made it up in my head that he was sober sometimes so...

so I could ignore it.

So I could ignore him.

20/20 hindsight.

I was kidding myself.

If I wasn't gonna do something, if I wasn't gonna intervene,

then who would?

You couldn't know what would happen.

That he would drink himself into a coma.

Into death.

Actually...

I mean, I didn't but...

I could have.

Our grandfather and our father--

it wasn't exactly the same thing

but it was drinking that killed them.

I don't know.

So. You ignored your brother in his time of need.

Yeah. Which was always, pretty much.

Were you never close?

No, we were.

I think as kids, we were very close.

I really looked up to him.

He was the good looking one, y'know,

he was the athletic one.

I was a few years younger,

he was better than me, at everything.

[whispered] And he was funny.

He doted on me... his little brother.

He guided me, he protected me, right through our childhood.

He, he was always braver.

He was more passionate, he had more gusto than me.

But he always just slowed his step a bit.

He always let me catch up and he always let me be on his teams

even though I was always the reason that the team would lose.

Every time.

And when I messed up and they sent me to bed without dinner,

he would put food in his pockets

and he'd sneak it up to the bedroom.

That's so sweet.

He taught me everything I know about women.

How much is that?

[laughs] Exactly, but, I mean he tried.

Well, you must have picked something up, father. [snickers]

Christopher was always the one to stay in touch.

He was the one to pick up the phone.

He was the one to drop in on me here.

He attended this church?

No, but he visited me here...

because it was the only way he could see me

because I was an ass.

Well, you didn't want to see him.

He drank too much.

Just like our father and our mother.

It bothered me.

He was a mean drunk?

No.

No, I mean he had a...

he had a tongue on him. Drunk or not.

But you know people can, people can say anything.

So long as it's genuinely funny.

And he was just relentless in trying to make me laugh

and I'd just kick him out.

I'd hang up. I'd make some excuse to leave.

[sighs] Whatever.

Well, he knew that you loved him.

Brothers do. That's why they fight.

I was able to sit with him in the hospital

and tell him that I loved him.

That I admired him.

That he was a good person and that he was loved.

I find myself thinking about what Christopher would have done

if he, if he had more time on this Earth

and I don't, I don't have an answer,

I don't imagine that he would have either.

When I was praying for his recovery in the ICU,

I kept asking God to just please let him get better,

so he could keep fucking up!

Y'know, keep drinking.

Doctors told me that if he recovered,

that if he had anything to drink, at all, he would die.

And I just, I knew, in my heart that if he got better,

that's what would happen, he would recover,

he would start drinking again and he would just die anyway.

And I started to pray that if that was what

was going to happen to just let him die sooner,

rather than later and save him the agony.

Save my grandmother and my mother, the agony.

I prayed for my brother to die.

People do pray for death, to end the suffering.

Your brother is with God.

Not if anything that I was taught about hell

and the Devil is true.

Don't think that way.

You gave him the last rites?

He was in a coma.

He didn't confess, he didn't get any comfort from it.

You don't know.

You should get comfort from it.

When I'm giving other people the last rites,

strangers, even I, I felt a lot of conviction.

It felt useful.

With my brother it was just hollow.

It felt like I was doing it for my grandmother or for myself,

but it wasn't for him.

I should've done it, or one of the other guys.

No, no. I wanted to, it's okay, I wanted to do it

and my family did too. They wanted me to do it.

When somebody's in a coma and they're dying

everybody's so... helpless!

It was something, at least, I could do, for my grandmother

and for my mother, I know that for them it was,

uh, it was like a payoff.

Y'know, for all those years that I spent being a priest.

I wish that I had more time with him,

I just wish that I had done something to figure it out.

Why did you stop being close?

Was it the booze?

No, long before that.

Parents.

Divorce, step-parents.

He went off to live with our father,

and I, I, I just, I just stayed with my grandmother.

Christopher was old enough to take care of himself basically,

at that point so he didn't have to...

rely on my father, he was, he was hard for my gram to handle.

Why?

I dunno, I , I didn't think he was so bad, but I mean,

when he was fourteen, fifteen, she said he had to go.

She didn't want him around.

They protected you from the reasons

because you were littler.

Maybe.

Maybe, I mean it was, it was kid stuff,

It was, it was throwing a party

while my grandparents were out of town

and some neighbour called the cops.

Y'know, sneaking out and drinking, yeah.

But if, if you're concerned about your teenager drinking,

you don't send them to live in some boarding house

surrounded by a dozen alcoholics.

[sighs]

I'm sorry. [chuckles]

I'm, I'm sorry, you don't need to hear all this.

I feel like I'm finally getting to know you a bit.

Not in the good way.

I'm not here to judge you, or your family.

It was always just bad.

I didn't, I didn't see him for a really long time.

You were separated from him when you were young.

What about as adults?

I mean, I'd see him.

Y'know, every year or two he'd drop in or he'd call,

but we'd just, we always ended up talking about the same shit,

the same childhood stuff.

He'd, he'd bring up, every time I saw him,

he'd bring up how he'd forgiven our dad.

Y'know, he could see our father in a different light,

not, not through the hurt eyes of a child,

but from the point of view of a grown man.

[imitating] "We always had food in our stomachs,

we always had a roof over our heads".

Y'know, my memory of these things is that,

they were always way more precarious, but that's it,

that's all he every wanted to talk about!

Why? Why do think he told you that every time?

I think he wanted to convince himself.

Maybe he wanted to convince you.

No, we just, we didn't see each other.

We didn't see each other enough as adults,

we had to go back twenty years

to find anything we shared in common,

every single one of those memories is hard.

Maybe he wanted you to forgive your dad...

or...

[sighs]

because he wanted forgiveness too?

Maybe. Yeah.

[sighs] So you're saying, all those things,

all that conflict and baggage between you,

they coloured your decisions in the hospital?

I just wanted to keep on ignoring him.

But you weren't ignoring it. You were there.

In the hospital, doing difficult things.

He opened his eyes for awhile.

A half-hour.

He heard my voice and he opened his eyes and he listened.

I thought, well that's, that's amazing.

Add ten minutes a day, one to that, and in a month or two

he would be able to stay awake for half a day.

And I just thought maybe, give it time.

He moved his arm, up a bit, like an inch, they told me,

and I figured, there's that too.

We give it a year, or two and maybe he lifts his arm

all the way up over his head, or maybe he walks.

Just little improvements.

But then I started to think.

How?

Where?

My grandfather's been in bed y'know, for years now.

I mean at first I figured we just,

we could throw them in bed together

and what's the difference? Grammy can wipe two butts.

He's on all these machines.

He had a tube down his neck to breath.

He had a tube in his nose to eat.

He had, ten or twelve IV drips.

A shunt in his kidney. A shunt!

A catheter and I dunno, something to draw the shit out.

Colostomy.

My worse fear wasn't that he was going to die

it was that he was just going to go on living.

Just lay there.

Some vegetative state.

He only woke up that once.

He just, he opened his eyes from time to time,

before and after that.

Those breathing machines, they, they,

they were painful for him.

Every breath was a blast of air forced into his lungs,

it was a, it was a spasm.

It was just too long to live like that, so, I unplugged him.

I knew I was going to burn in hell for it, I did it anyway.

You're not going to burn in hell.

Isn't that what I would tell somebody else

who turned off a life-support machine?

No, not necessarily.

Did you turn off the feeding tube?

Did you withhold water?

I mean, how far did you go?

He died, within two minutes of turning that ventilator off,

two, three minutes.

I figured we'd cross the feeding tube business

when we came to it but we didn't have to think about it.

So the breathing machine really was doing everything.

Liver, kidney, lungs.

Dominoes.

Crashed.

Then he really was dead.

You turned off a breathing machine.

You didn't terminate a life.

He was not dead.

He wasn't dead until I turned off those machines!

Listen to me, if this thing,

if this thing in my head comes for me,

if it comes to kill me...

I will not die like that.

I'm not going on a ventilator

and I'm not going on a feeding tube.

So you promise me, that if it gets to that point

where I need a ventilator or a tube, or anything,

any kind of machine that you will just...

you just wheel me out. You wheel me out, take me to the beach.

I'd rather die from too much sun.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. [deep breath] I'm sorry.

Okay.

I absolve you, in the name of the Father,

the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Oh, almighty and most merciful God,

I...

give thanks with all the powers of my soul

for this and all other mercies, graces and blessings

bestowed upon me,

and prostrating myself at your sacred feet,

I offer myself henceforth to be forever yours.

Let nothing in life or death ever separate me from you.

I renounce with my whole soul all of my treasons against you

and all of the abominations and the sins of my past life.

I renew my promises made at Baptism,

and I dedicate myself, from this day forward

to your eternal service.

Grant that moving forward, I may detest sin

more than death itself and avoid all such occasions,

occurrences and companies as have unhappily brought me to it.

This I ask, through the aid of your divine grace,

without which I can do nothing. Amen.

Feel better?

?

Narrator: Next time on 'Forgive Me':

[murmurs]

Don't sit with my family.

I'm a friend.

Not that good a friend.

Look I'm just, I'm asking you, please.

All these people already know, they're already talking,

don't make my brothers funeral about you, okay?

Just, sit back here.

I'm here to comfort your grandma.

That's fine, you can comfort her, in private.

[door creaks]

Figured it was my only chance.

Oh you know, you could always be a lay-reader.

No. Pope or nothing.

I want to be in charge.

Look, I gotta tell you something.

It can wait.

No, it's important.

It's a funeral--

What, you finally fucking proved it to me, did ya?

Shut your mouth.

want me to stay!

No, listen, listen to me!

When your brother was in the hospital

and the doctor went over his options,

I realized things had to change.

I want you to confess something to me.

That's not how this works.

I can see you struggling with whatever it is

you pretend isn't going on in your life, okay?

You want to lie about it, but you can't fight it either.

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