I once wrote a story called “I Killed Hemingway,” told by the nurse who helped administer electro-shock therapy to the famous writer, which then led to Hemingway’s suicide soon thereafter.
This was about 10 years ago now. Not long after I had published it, I received an email from a woman in New York who had read the story, and said it had moved her so much the she wanted to contact me and ask if I would want to hear her story—she had received a series of twenty ECT treatments, with devastating effect.
I said, yes, I’d be happy to hear her story, which she then sent me. It in turn affected me so much that I wrote “A Larry Comes” to illustrate her tragedy.
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The most precious thing a spirit has is his own Universe—that internal space and construct where beauty and dream rule.
That vista you view before falling asleep at night, that strength you draw on in times of hardship. That inner music that nourishes and revives.
What, then, if this Universe could be destroyed and left smoldering? Well, it can. This is the story of one such universe.
Tell me, what good is it to have God visit you if you can’t tell anybody about it? Or, if not God, then somebody looking very much like him, or how I had pictured him. Perhaps, to be safe, I should call him god, you know, lower case “g.”
No, that won’t do. There’s no escaping it: it was the Almighty all right, our capital “G” Father-of-the-Son God. I don’t think there’s any doubt about it. There is no doubt about it.
Yes, yes, I know it sounds crazy, but now and then things happen to you, incredible things, that you cannot deny—not to yourself anyway. For they did happen, and you know they did, whether the whole thing sounds crazy or looks crazy or feels crazy or is crazy or not. Took place. Occurred. Yes sir. So when in truth I did lay eyes on him, did talk to him, did meet him, how can I deny it? I can’t.
My mistake was sharing it, and perhaps that’s the lesson to draw from all of this: Keep your mouth shut. Especially around close relatives and people in white coats.