ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: The Writer, His Wife, and their Afterlife

Book One, Part Two, Chapter 157: Another Thanksgiving Lesson

My sister Jude called me Thanksgiving evening, offering to come by for a visit.

She, along with her husband and son, had been at the family gathering all afternoon. They’d prepared side dishes earlier that morning and driven in from their home in Lexington.

Jude has mitral-valve prolapse and has undergone two open-heart surgeries. She takes care of herself, yet she also overextends herself. I know this about her, and I didn’t want her to extend her day even longer by visiting me. There were other reasons I didn’t want the visit but this was the main one, so I didn’t pick up the phone. I just listened to her message, then headed out the door.

Now it’s Sunday evening, three days later, and she calls me. “My heart went into fibrillation at five-thirty Thanksgiving evening. I didn’t know it until the next day, when my doctor’s office called. I’m on a heart monitor, and they read the chart. They told me my heart stayed in fibrillation for five hours.”

Jesus. This is exactly the time she called and left her message. If I’d picked up the phone to tell her I was headed out the door, she wouldn’t have waited around for another hour at John and Rhonda’s house for me to return her call. If I’d picked up the phone, would her heart have begun its mad racing?

I need to change how I am with others.

I feel overwhelmed. Can I even do this? I have to, or else keep myself in isolation, away from everyone, so I don’t hurt anyone ever again.