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

Book One, Part Two, Chapter 60: Turning Into a Writer

Cindi, Joshua’s real-estate agent, calls. “Your e-mails — I so enjoy reading them. Are you a writer, too?”

I think for a few seconds. I finally say: “I’m turning into one.”

Ernie was always the writer. I was his first reader, his editor. It always amazed me that he stayed so open to my suggestions and comments. In the end, with his last novel, Nine Finches and a Parrot, he needed no help. The story came out in a rush. Ernie knew the nine Finch cousins intimately. He’d known them a long time.

I write now because I have to. I write about what happens each day. Or, what new thought comes to my mind each day. When I’m writing, I’m in my own world. It’s an escape from pain even though I’m writing of pain.

Usually, I don’t feel the pain when I write of it. Only sometimes does the pain leak through the writing process and stop me. Then I hold my head in my hands and absorb the pain. Realize that, yes, this really happened, and yes, it hurts, and yes, I’ll accept it because I can’t change the past or who I was in the past or who Ernie was in the past. All I can change is who I am now.

And that’s work. I need to change the heart of myself. I need to learn and know and practice love.