Flash fiction retrospect - Jessie the traveller

As a review from last week: I entered a flash fiction writing contest, and I didn't win (whoops, I didn't mention that part earlier, did I?). I went through four different attempts. For my edification and yours, I thought I'd go through them one by one saying what I tried to do, what worked, and what didn't work. Here's the first one:

Jessie is a friend. He is one of those do-everything types, the only person I’ve known who took a break from college to work on a cruise ship and see the world. Every day on Facebook, it was something different -- “Just me and Big Ben, no biggie,” “Bike tour in Puerto Rico. My legs are killing me.” “Sometimes I practice my studious look, but only when I am brooding over my kingdom from a castle in Ireland.” “Couscous! In Morocco!”
Back in high school, Jessie and I took driver’s ed together. The teacher was the same guy who had taught my aunt, so that was weird, but whatever. I remember the first time Jessie got behind the wheel, he had to ask the teacher what a green light meant. I’m serious. The teacher just laughed at him, like it was a joke, but when we got to a light and Jessie gunned it on accident the moment yellow turned to red, man, I thought we were all going to die.
When he got back, from the cruise ship, you know, we had one of those late night talks, the kind that start in a restaurant, then continue in the parking lot for an hour before finishing in someone’s basement when one of you falls asleep. Jessie could tell stories like none other. Dramatic pauses, sound effects, hand gestures. You ever known a storyteller like that?
I’d love to hear one of those again.
I just can’t pull myself out of bed today. Even when someone is physically gone, it’s different from when they’re gone gone. And my heart is too still to beat right now.
It’s like with the blankets over my head, I can pretend the world smaller.
Dear God, help me out of bed today. Please. I need your help.

First off, this piece includes several pieces of real people from my life. I have a friend who temporarily dropped out of college to work on a cruise ship, my aunt had the same teacher as me in driver's ed, that teacher had a story about a kid who didn't know what a red light meant, I love long talks and have had some similar to this, and my father-in-law is that sort of storyteller. The last bit is real, too; it's how I felt when a friend of mine died in college, and again when an old roommate of mine died more recently.

I injected this thing with reality in an attempt to make it seem real. As another gambit for realism, I gave it concrete details, namely the Facebook statuses and the driver's ed story. Concrete details are a secret to good fiction. You are much more likely to believe a lie if the details are precise and, well, detailed. Mine could have been better.

I also gave this piece a haiku turn. The reader is reading on and on about Jessie and who Jessie is, then I turn things around and reveal that these reminiscences are being shared because Jessie is dead. It was meant to give a depth of meaning to the whole thing, touching that part of my reader that has experienced a similar loss.

Problems: I did no showing, only telling. I think that is the major flaw here. We don't get to know Jessie except as a memory, which means we aren't sad when we find out he's dead. Nothing happens after that revelation, either, except that the person is sad, no matter how honestly that sadness is reported.

It would have been improved if I had elaborated on a single scene, not thrown out three half-hearted ones, and made Jessie a person. I need to make my reader, not just my narrator, care about the character.

I have a habit of using abrupt haiku turns, and from all reports they throw readers off. I think it may be because my thoughts stop and change direction that fast; do others'? The problem with this piece's haiku turn, though, is that the narrator knew all along it was coming up. It didn't come through true stream of consciousness (Good term to know. It's where the character thinks aloud in place of an organized narrator).

I threw this one out because it did not feel real. A writer friend of mine thought it was the most compelling of my options (for the record, she didn't read the third option, about the pregnant lady), but that the prayer to God at the end was jarring because it was so sudden. She also felt like it was the start to something, not a complete story unto itself, and I ended at the climax without resolving it. I concede all these points (she also said the story was about traveling, but I won't concede that point).

I didn't resolve it because for me, it was about that moment. What happens after didn't matter so much as capturing that feeling a couple mornings after a friend dies. I think I failed at capturing that feeling, since Jessie wasn't a real-feeling person, but that is beside the point. I didn't want to write a complete story, which is an issue. It was supposed to be a complete story, not a captured feeling.