So, many years ago, perhaps 25 years ago, I was visiting my friend Carol Garner and her husband John. Carol wanted my help planting thyme between the flagstones on her front steps. We were out working together for quite a while. We were planting little seedlings in the sandy soil.
Our conversations always first covered our families and friends. That day she had something else on her mind. She said she was going to tell me something that I had to keep under wraps while her sister Sonny was alive and it would probably be best if I waited until she was dead.
She was serious. I told her I wasn't that good at secrets and that I didn't want to know anything too weird. She shrugged off my concerns and went on to say that someone should know.
We had shared many intimate conversations. Carol was my mother's age, but always said she felt like we were sisters. Her revelation was about her brother, Ernest Hemingway. She jumped right into the subject. There was a reason the Ernest had committed suicide and it wasn't just depression and alcoholism. She said he had contracted syphilis in Africa a long time ago and was being treated for it at the Mayo Clinic, but that it had advanced too far before proper treatment was available. He was in the advanced stages and couldn't stand to lose his mind.
"What's the big deal?" I thought. She went on to say that her sister Sonny was embarrassed by this. After all, she came from a generation for whom a sexually transmitted disease was shocking.
I asked Carol "Why? Why was she telling me this?" She said that with all the books written on the subject of her family, someone should stop all the speculation and say the truth. That was characteristic of Carol.
Over the years, I sometimes thought about this, and then forgot. Writing this Blog is bringing up a lots of memories. This is one.
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