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Hemingway's War Written by Amethyst Mare / Arian Mabe

A diary entry by Mary Welsh Hemingway written after Ernest Hemingway's untimely death.

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July 20th, 1961

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I have neglected my penmanship in the days after my late husband's death and I can only take it up once more now in the hope that this act will bring some peace to my frazzled mind. Until one is the organiser of a funeral, a procession of bereavement, one does not know how truly exhausting and mentally draining it can be. It is not the fact that a beloved blonde canine of a fur has just passed away that has you running from place to place, no. It's all for tradition, as this is how it's meant to be. But why should we follow tradition and, subsequently, walk the path that others would wish us to tread? I am confident that we thwarted the efforts of one outside influence during the course of our plans and procedures: the press. I am pleased to say that we were successful in keeping the journalists away from the proceedings, although they did chance to complain about our refusal to disclose details such as the funeral date to them. They were quite open about it, indeed - it made an article in the paper. I presume it was the only information relating to Hemingway's death, after his death, that we had tossed to the starving dogs. It's a vindictive sort of delight to evade journalists who are only striving to abuse the untimely end of a much loved, albeit known, husband, even coming from a reporter.

Of course, I try not to think about his death, but it's more than a little difficult when I am surrounded with people determined to bring death to the forefront of my mind. Though, strangely enough, a seemingly unrelated event is what reminds me far more than the friends and family gathering around, murmuring their sympathies in hushed tones. Our feline friend, Feather Kitty, was not the most endearing pet that we could have had the fortune to choose: she was ill-tempered, impatient and ultimately demanding. Yet she had this one trait that never ceased to amaze my husband and I. Every day, without fail, she would laze on the dining room floor until the crucial moment when someone pushed through the heavy swinging door, which led into the pantry. And, as if on impulse, Feather Kitty would leap up and streak through the door without a whisker's width to spare. If she had ever been caught in the grasp of that door, she would have undoubtedly had her bones crushed and her life all too swiftly ended, but she never mistimed her headlong dash, leaving spectators to marvel day after day.

Ernest used to say, "If we could only teach her to shoot", and speak of how she must have had a death wish to engage in such repetitive, dangerous action (his own life experiences aside, I would assume) and I wonder, just wonder, if maybe he remembered this incident later. There was a gun in his paws when his life blood ceased to flow, after all, and, although it may be a disgrace to draw note to this, it may become necessary to accept the notion that he may have had a fierce wish for death himself. Though, let me not analyse this beyond recognition, because he could have merely been saying that Feather Kitty would have been a good shot, if she had been an anthro and had the inclination to wield a shotgun, due to her taste for a biting edge to daily routine. On a similar thread of thought, Feather Kitty had a daughter, who we named 'Izzy', who was quite alike her mother in being aggressive and bold. Though her general meanness was her undoing, at the close, as we tossed a steak bone to our four-legged black dog (quite unintelligent and far from our two-legged kind, that is assumed) one day, his favourite treat from the dinner table. The silly thing leapt for it and Blackie snapped her head off in one, clean bite - she never had the ghost of a chance.

The incident reminds me of how rapidly a life may be gained and, undisputedly, lost. We spend our lives searching for life, in the arms of home, in claw biting adventure, in exposure to death, but I do not think anyone is able to understand the complexity of it until they reach the final paragraph of their own masterpiece. Indeed, after the Izzy incident, Feather Kitty and Izzy's brother, Cristobal, hunted for her like they would hunt out mice, just to play with. They did not understand that she was gone and, in a like fashion, my subconscious mind appears to expect Ernest to be sitting in his chair when I pass through the living room or rolling over in bed when in too much pain to rise immediately.

And it makes me ponder... He is dead and through what means that he is head is unnecessary to contemplate, because he is not truly gone. His great works still remain, he is still known, his texts are still read and snippets of his life remain behind, animated like a living museum to his memory. It is very cliché to speak like this, even in such a private location, but the words are very true, in this instance. The world has much good to remember him by, so that he may no longer be encumbered by the limits of a physical body. Because, I think, when a person is gone, their power has no limits and their life is something many can benefit from, forgetting the bad. And that is what I wish to do: forget the bad.

Mary Welsh Hemingway