ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching

Book Two, Chapter 146: Time with Steve

Steve, my tall blue-eyed freckled brother, is six years younger than I am.

When I was seven years old, I came home from school and sang lullabies to him in his crib. He seemed too big for the crib, which was upstairs, far removed from the rest of us. He seemed so forsaken.

Steve is now fifty-six years old. On this fine May evening, he and I head outside to walk his dog.

“Judy’s the one who persuaded me to come here. She wanted me to see Joe. She likes Joe and wants to show her support in his fight with cancer. She got us up at four-thirty this morning. Put together all the food for the trip. She was excited about coming. She planned to give a party for one hundred guests this weekend but changed her mind a few weeks ago. ‘I don’t know why I can’t go through with the party plans, but I just can’t,’ she told me. As it turns out, this is the reason. We’re here instead. She wanted to hug Joe.”

And she did hug Joe.

“I’m operating at about forty percent,” he told her before heading to his bed.

Joe’s finished Week Two of six weeks of radiation and chemo pills. He looks older, grayer, than he did even a few weeks ago. He’s scared, yet he’s doing all he can to help himself. He and Joshua take walks together, and he forces himself to eat, even if it’s only butter on cracker.

“Judy has good instincts, Steve, but why have you stayed away so long?” I ask him.

“I had to disconnect. The energy here didn’t reflect my energy. I love my brothers and sisters, but they weren’t on the spiritual path I was on. It was not a good place for me to be.”

“Ernie and I were co-dependent.”

He nods. “I know.”

“How did you know?”

“I’m an addict, too.”

He talks about his years — now over twenty — in Recovery. “I didn’t know there was so much more to learn. It wasn’t enough just for me to quit drinking. There were all these feelings underneath the drinking that I had to acknowledge. It was painful.”

“What did you see in Ernie?”

“That he hadn’t found peace or contentment. I picked up on his anger, and I know anger hides fear. He was a person of achievement, but he still wanted more. I guess he was afraid of disappearing without a trace.”

“I didn’t realize he was so angry. I wonder now, if I’d been able to recognize his anger, whether I could have helped dissipate it. He felt cheated, undervalued. If I’d helped him feel valuable, would that have been enough?”

“All we can do is love ourselves, love others, and take our own inventory,” Steve says. “Ernie helped me, and he’s still with us. I believe that.”