WHAT ERNEST HEMINGWAY REMINDED ME OF 64 YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH
I recently toured the Hemingway House in Key West. As we approached the front gate, I was taken aback by the magnitude of who had lived there. The thrill of getting to walk where he walked and see where he wrote was nearly too much for me. I’m a fan girl when it comes to historical places and people.
Let me begin with, I love to read. From Charles Dickens to John Steinbeck to Dr Suess to Virginia Woolf to Colleen Hoover, (should I continue?) I love to read. And being from Idaho I feel a slight connection to Ernest Hemingway, albeit not with his cause of death, but his desire and his ability to write timeless works for us to learn from and enjoy today. So, visiting his home was a treat.
As I walked onto the grounds, I thought of one of his famous quotes that he never said, “The hardest lesson I have had to learn as an adult is the relentless need to keep going, no matter how broken I feel inside. …. Even when life is relentless, even when hope feels distant, we keep moving. We stumble, we break, we fall to our knees, but we get up. And in doing so, we uncover a strength we never knew we had.” I like to think that he said this at a time in his life of true reflection. (He’s been quoted as saying this, but there is no real proof that it was him.)
His writing is heavy. It’s egotistical. It’s sometimes difficult to read. But that’s what makes me think about who he was and how he lived and why he “could’ve” said that quote about life. If he “possibly” said that at a time when life was slower and simpler, how much more relevant is it today?
The past 15 years have not been easy for me. I’ve watched my husband, and my kids struggle with health issues. I’ve watched some struggle with addictions. I’ve lived in three homes, not by choice, when I’d rather have lived in just one. I lost my job of 11 years, that I loved, because I chose not to get the Covid-19 vaccine and was denied an exemption. I’m watching my parents age. I’ve personally had a cancer diagnosis. I continue worrying about my children and my grandchildren. What will THEIR American dream look like? What will technology do to our physical and mental health in later years? Our world hasn’t gotten that far yet. Etc. Etc. Etc. Yet I continue to show up. I continue to smile through my pain. I continue to carry the load of many and act as though it’s not heavy.
I walked room to room in his beautiful home on Whitehead St. and I began to imagine myself living during his time. How different would my life have been? Who would I have been? At one point, as I stood in the upstairs room of the carriage house where he wrote, I wondered how he kept going. He was a big person with an even bigger personality. He lived with mental health and addiction issues and could never settle down. He persevered for years, until he didn’t. And again, that quote came to mind.
Life demands that we keep pace. It doesn’t stop. When do we give ourselves time for self-reflection? When do we rest? How do we slow down? We live, as children, with a fairytale in our minds of how our lives should be. As we continue to grow, that fairytale takes different turns and stops, but we can’t seem to let go of that story in the backs of our minds - that we will weather the storm and slay the dragons and, in the end, everything will be perfect and happy ever after.
This past week, two friends had to bury their husbands. As I sat at one of the funerals, my thoughts went back to standing in Ernest Hemingway’s home and the feelings I had as I walked the halls. Part of his “quote” is that no one prepares us for this, that “there is no pause button for grief, no intermission for healing, no moment where the world gently steps aside and allows us to mend”. I looked over at my friend as she sat with her children and wished I had a magic button that I could push for her to pause and be given the precious time to grieve and heal and learn how to navigate her life from this point on. I wish I had that button to push for so many people, as well as for myself.
I, myself, have taken some very brief moments for reflection over the past couple of weeks. And in those brief moments, I simply have had to remind myself that everyone is going through something that is HUGE to them. I’m not special in that aspect. But we, as humans, must slow down and look for those moments to do something to be able “push that pause button” for another person to allow them to heal. We need to be less judgmental when someone closes a door or doesn’t show up. On the other end, we need to laugh with others, and we need to laugh more often. We need to look people in the eye when we’re talking and with that, we need to talk more. We need to listen, not just hear, but really listen when someone is talking to us. We need to run, not just stroll, to help each other in this thing called life. I know this is common knowledge to most, and something so simple, but it’s not practiced as it should be anymore.
We don’t live when Hemingway did, but we can and we should make life simpler for others in this fast-paced world by loving them, caring for them, allowing failures and disappointments, allowing different opinions to be part of a conversation and still leave as friends, and pushing that pause button for others AND for ourselves.