Blog Tour: Multi Character Interview (Second Hand Heart)

What would you say is the most important thing in life?

Richard: If you’d asked me before all this, I would have said family. I haven’t exactly changed my answer. But I want to add thawing ones’ self out emotionally, so you can actually feel what you’re feeling. Particularly toward family.

Vida: First, love. Also second and third, love.

Abigail (Vida’s mom): Vida’s health.

Myra (Richard’s mother-in-law): Staying safe. Being okay. And keeping your loved ones under your wing.

How do you feel about love at first sight?

Richard: As I told Vida when I first met her, “I have too much respect for love to believe that.  I don’t even believe in the concept of falling in love.  The falling part, I mean.  We should all be so lucky that love is something you just fall into.  Like, ‘A funny thing happened to me today.  I was walking down the street and I tripped and fell into some love.’  You don’t fall down to love, you climb up to it.  There’s hard work involved.  That’s why I believe you can’t love someone you don’t know.  Loving someone is knowing them.”  Yeah. I know. That’s a lot more than I needed to say. But it was a weird moment.

Vida: I’m all for it.

Abigail: Sounds like something Vida would believe in.

Myra: Sounds risky.

If you could die with the one you love or stay alive, but be alone. Which would you chose?

Richard: I’d like to wait a bit to answer that. Right after Lorrie died, I’d have gone with her. In a heartbeat. But now I still have my life, and it’s hard, but it’s still good. I feel now like I still want it. Besides, how do I know that when two people die together they’re not still essentially alone? I think coming into this world and going out of it, we are pretty much on our own.

Vida: Well, I loved my best friend Esther, and she died. And I’m glad I’m still here. I think I would always choose life.

Abigail: If it was a man, a husband, I’d just keep going. If it was Vida, I’m not so sure. But thank God it didn’t come to that.

Myra: I can manage on my own, thank you.

What are the best times in your life?

Richard: Oddly, those really simple moments when Connie is here. When we’re cooking a meal, or reading the paper. I say oddly, because I really thought it would never be that way again. And I didn’t see the two of us together at all when I first met her. But life is full of surprises.

Vida: When I got to give Buchenwald that message from Esther. That was good. And sometimes just hanging out with Jax and Victor (not in that order—sorry, Victor). We’re going to travel some more. I like seeing new places. I have some catching up to do on that.

Abigail: Every morning I wake up knowing my daughter is okay.

Myra: Seeing Richard almost happy again. It’s not quite the same as being there myself. But he’s the closest thing I get to Lorrie now. And he deserves it.

Are you a bigger reader?

Richard: There will always be a place for reading in my life. But I don’t want to use it as a crutch anymore. I want to be in my own life, and let reading be in its own place. To augment life, not as a substitute for it.

Vida: Not as much as I used to be. I love reading. But I used to read a lot. I mean A LOT. Because it was something I could do without dying. I used to read a lot and live a little. Now I want to turn it around.

Abigail: Now that Vida’s off on her own, I have to do something to fill that giant hole.

Myra: I have more important things to worry about.