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

Book One, Part Two, Chapter 86: Hopeline

I awaken each morning, and it’s another day without Ernie. I feel such disappointment in myself. Such hatred of myself. I so failed Ernie. How can I get up?

Bella rings my doorbell as I’m wiping away tears.

“I really think you need therapy,” she says, “just to nudge you in the right direction. To change your thinking. Happiness is a choice, you know. I choose to be happy. Why would you want to be sad? Miserable? Look at you. You eat good food, but you don’t eat enough. It’s record-breaking heat, and you don’t turn on the air conditioner. You didn’t go to the Woody Allen movie with us. Happiness is a choice.”

I can’t shake my negativity, my sense of failure. my self-loathing. Tonight, feeling lonely and desperate, my body sweating, I call a help line.

“You’re experiencing deep-seated grief amid a life crisis,” the responder says to me. She gives me five numbers to call for counseling.

“Which one would you call?” I ask her.

“You don’t want meds, do you?”

“No. I don’t even take aspirin.”

“I’d call the one in Butchertown first. If you don’t like the first counselor you talk to, try another. Counselors are like everyone else — they’re all different. Some will suit you better than others.”

Tomorrow morning, I tell myself, I will make the call.