ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching

Book Two, Chapter 51: Dead Wood

I depended on Ernie for my very identity, my very life. He was the strong wind that picked me up — dead wood — and carried me to places I never would have gone on my own. When his wind died, I fell to the ground, and I’m shattered. Broken. In bits.

Many people have tried to help me piece myself together. Joshua. My brothers and sisters. Al-Anon friends and grief-support friends. People in this building. Two classmates from high school. A chum from college. But I can’t find the strength to pick myself up and build a life of my own. I feel too old and too weak and too cowardly to create one.

Ernie did not want me to let Joshua down, but it fills me with sadness that I’ve lived most of my life in a dead zone. I can’t live knowing I’ve been dead for so long. That I lost so much of Enrie. That I lost so much of me.

I hope everyone forgets me. I wish I hadn’t been given the gift of life because I’ve squandered so much of it. I don’t love myself. How can I, knowing what I did to Ernie?

Joshua and I see each other occasionally and talk on the phone, but it’s about business, mostly. When my life becomes only thinking about IRS returns, something is mighty wrong. I have nothing else going on. I suffer from a mind-and-heart disorder.

I don’t see a way out except by leaving. I don’t know any other way. I have no options. No other way out of this pain. I’m obsolete. There’s nothing I can do or want to do.

This is very strange. A surprise ending to my life. I didn’t expect it, but that’s how little I knew myself.

I remember a character in a Remarque novel who killed himself after he no longer enjoyed even ice cream. That’s where I am. Even ice cream, that frozen confection of milk and sugar — baby food, really — is no longer enough to keep my body here.