All About My Mother (and sometimes other people)

Whistling Past the Graveyard

2008-07-08T19:11:00.000-07:00

There is a small rectangular table by Trudy’s front door. On it sit her keys, the outgoing mail, a blouse to be returned to Bloomingdales, and what looks like a large nylon lunch tote. But it’s not food in there. It’s my father.

We plan to spread Dad’s ashes in the San Francisco Bay, in accordance with his wishes, as soon as we can all bear to get together and take the trip up north. But for now, John waits patiently in the foyer, encased in a sporty, forest green snack sac, embroidered on the bottom right hand corner with the watchword of Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary: Dignity®.

I don’t know why Trudy parked her husband in that particular spot, but I’m guessing her motivation was at least partly shock value. A few weeks earlier when Karla stopped by the condo for a visit, Trudy casually gestured toward the bag and announced flatly, “There’s John.” Karla was horrified, and when Leo heard Dad had been offhandedly plopped down by the front door, he was disgusted by our mother’s lack of compassion and decency. I actually thought it was kind of funny. At least John is cooling his heels in a well-trafficked area instead of lying neglected in the trunk of Trudy’s car, the forgotten object of yet another bothersome errand she will never get around to running.

When I arrived to help sort through my father’s things several weeks later, his ashes were still next to the door. I pretended not to notice when I walked in, but as soon as our mom left the room, I gave Karla a meaningful look, patted the sack and cooed softly, “Hi, Daddy.” I did it to make Karla laugh, but the joke was on me because once I’d done that, I found I enjoyed it. I began giving John affectionate taps each time I walked by, even when Karla wasn’t around. It was comforting. And, it’s something that would have made John smile knowingly, raise one eyebrow and crack, “You’re a little spooky, kid.” Which is true, I suppose, if you are one of those people who thinks having inside jokes with your father’s charred remains is spooky.

After lunch and a lot of stalling, Trudy, Karla and I filed upstairs to sort through John’s belongings, take whatever keepsakes we wanted, and box up the rest for charity. There is nothing unique about the grief one experiences wading through the petty objects a loved one leaves behind. In fact, I’m embarrassed by how unoriginal my feelings were. Of course I sucked in my breath when I walked into his closet and was blindsided by the smell of him. And I wasn’t the first daughter to bury her nose in her father’s coat or plunge her hands into the pockets of his sweater, hoping to find something he had touched, if only a book of matches, or a cigar band.

Obviously, I cried standing there, with the stuff of his daily routine all around me. His clothes, his shoes, his robe, his slippers. The dresser on top of which sat his comb, his handkerchief, a gifted box of Cubans, and the jar, once full of Trudy’s bath salts, where he emptied his pockets of loose change each night. His wire rimmed reading glasses. His wallet. His watch with the frayed brown leather band that I wore whenever he was in surgery, the only times he was ever without it. The shoebox full of old walkmans and portable cd players, some broken, some in working order, but dropped on the cement in the backyard so often he had taped the sides together or the battery compartment shut. The pile of mixed tapes and cd’s I made for his birthdays and father’s days. The valet box where he kept his cufflinks, his money clips, a lock of hair from my first haircut, and a clump of Army Air Corps pilot’s wings, which had melted together during a plane crash during the war. (John always carried extra set of wings with him to hand out to “the girls” wherever they landed.)

I emerged from the walk-in closet holding up John’s watch and asked Trudy if I could keep it. She looked at me doubtfully, frowned and said, “Well, that watch was very expensive…I thought I’d give it to Leo.” After our mother left the room Karla advised me to pocket the watch, and anything else I wanted. “She doesn’t really care, anyway.” Of course, I already knew that. Trudy can be extremely generous, but rarely will she give you what you want. In fact, the more directly you ask for something, the less likely you are to get it.

Here is what Trudy allowed me to take: Four cashmere sweaters, a bunch of old family photographs, the lock of my hair, and a paper cocktail menu from the King’s X restaurant with my crayon scribbles all over it and a note in John’s barely legible cursive reading, “Daddy and Mary Patricia’s first dinner date, 1967.”

Here is what I stole: The watch, a money clip that reads, “Easy Come, Easy Go,” a key chain bearing the likeness of the Pope on one side and JFK on the other, and the melted wings.

Oh, and also, I took John’s dentures. I found them while I was cleaning out his side of the bathroom he shared with Trudy. I started with the drawers, which were full of Depends. I was going to trash them, but Karla told me Trudy wants to save them for long car rides. Mom watches more than her share of Court TV, so I’m guessing she picked up this trick from lovelorn astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak, who wore a diaper as she sped from Houston to Orlando to kill her lover’s girlfriend, so she wouldn’t have to stop along the way.

Next, I cleared out John’s medicine cabinet. After making certain there were no medications prescribed that might go well with a cocktail, I tore the pharmacy labels off of the brown plastic bottles and poured the pills into the toilet. With a flush, hundreds of dollars of Aricept for Alzheimer’s and Altace for high blood pressure were whisked away to eventually dissolve in the L.A. River.

In the cabinet under the sink, I found a plastic hospital container that had John’s name written on top in black Sharpie. I opened the lid and there they were, all yellow and brown, just like the actual teeth of a man who had smoked cigars for nearly 50 years. I held the open container out to Karla and mimed sneaking the dentures into my purse. Karla shrieked, “Oh, gross!” I laughed and told her I was only kidding. She shook her head and commanded me to throw them in the trashcan. So, I did.

But then I did a weird thing. After making sure Karla and Trudy weren’t looking, I dug the container out of the garbage, wrapped it in paper towels, stealthily carried it downstairs, and buried it in the bottom of my purse. The dentures are truly gross. I don’t even want to look at them again. But I couldn’t throw them away. Until a year ago I didn’t even know John’s teeth weren’t real. As far as I was concerned, they were a part of him. I couldn’t throw a part of him in the garbage. Instead, I brought them home and put them in my closet.

This, my father would have objected to. In fact, he’d be mortified and revolted and insist that I throw them away. And then wash my hands. Well, too bad. He’s dead. I can keep his dentures if I feel like it.

Wish You Were Here

2008-01-05T12:15:00.000-08:00

Funerals on my father’s side of the family were usually long, formal and Catholic, inevitably culminating in a pathos-milking rendition of, “Danny Boy.” The ceremonies were always followed by a rowdy evening of drinking, story telling, laughing, crying, and singing. I’d say they were about as cathartic and life affirming as funerals get.

Funerals in Trudy’s family had a different feel. For instance, my Aunt June’s took place in a modest protestant church which she had never set foot in, and was conducted by a bland minister who had never met her and knew very little about her. After the brief, generic service, the mourners solemnly gathered in the rec room of June’s trailer park for punch and cold cuts. My cousin Joel, who was bailed out of jail for the occasion, sat in silence throughout the whole ordeal. (Joel is currently a homeless crackhead living on the streets of Sacramento.) His sister Sheri, on the other hand, became more boisterous as the reception went on. After a while, she brought me to June’s trailer, where we took turns sipping from the bottle of vodka she had stashed there earlier in the day. Once she was good and plastered, Sheri insisted I feel the soft spot on her head, which was left by the brain surgery performed to remove a tumor that was alleged to have caused her to run away to an Indian reservation and get a tattoo. I’m sure Joel’s and Shari’s behavioral problems had nothing whatever to do with their abusive abalone fisherman father, Al, who beat them and their mother senseless on a regular basis until the day he left them high and dry.

June’s was not the kind of memorial I had in mind for John. My idea was to mark John’s passing with the warmth and comfort of his family’s gatherings, minus the formalities and the God.

Trudy was wary about throwing a party at first because she was afraid people would be expecting a service. Also, she worried she’d start balling and never be able to stop, which is permissible at a funeral but not at a party. Once people started to arrive, though, she was in her element. If there is one thing Trudy enjoys, and is damn good at, it’s socializing. And the number one unspoken hostessing rule is: No crying once company has arrived. Dressed regally in a brand new black St. John Knit, Trudy greeted guests like a star meets adoring fans, her hairdresser Stephen and her colorist Marie among them.

The place was packed. There was such a big turn out that Karla worried we’d run out of food. People who we thought would only want to stop by briefly to pay their respects stayed for hours. Friends and relatives we hadn’t seen in years turned up. Even old neighbors from Ladera Heights were there, including Leo’s buddies who used to hang out in the driveway in front of his black van, getting loaded while listening to hard rock on The Might Met and waxing their surfboards, and Karla’s high school boyfriend who knew that if he couldn’t smell cigar smoke when he brought Karla home from a date, John had gone to bed and he’d probably, “get some.”

Kimmie, my best childhood friend, cried throughout the entire party. She adored my dad, who was endlessly good natured and patient with us. He chauffeured us to the movies and to Baskin Robbins for ice cream, kept an eye on us while we played freeze tag in the street, and dutifully served as the sole audience member for our frequent talent shows in the backyard. And, he didn’t seem to mind too much when we insisted on changing the channel to UHF to watch, “The Adams Family,” or, “The Little Rascals,” while he was trying to catch up on highlights from the Watergate hearings on the nightly news. (John loathed Richard Nixon, admired FDR, and always complained bitterly that Adlai Stevenson was cheated out of a bid for the presidency.)

But as much as Kimmie loved John, she worshipped my mother. To the extent that she nearly named her only daughter Trudy. That’s because Kimmie only knew Fun Trudy. When Fun Trudy was around, it was like hanging out with the most popular girl in school who associated with you, even though she didn’t have to, because she was just that nice! She’d lead us on spontaneous bike rides to the beach! She’d take us to the Japanese Village and Deer Park, on a whim! She taught us how to win at blackjack!

Kim’s mother Tanya, on the other hand, was rail thin, beautiful, and as icy and aloof as the three Siamese cats who prowled around their dimly lit house. We weren’t allowed to speak above a whisper early in the day at Kim’s because Tanya was always nursing a hangover after a late night out at chic Beverly Hills nightclubs such as Daisy’s, or Pip’s, the backgammon themed disco. Once she emerged from the master bedroom, Tanya could usually be found lying in one of the His and Her Barcaloungers positioned in front of the television set in the den, manicure kit at her side, remote control in hand, cucumber slices over her eyelids.

When she wasn’t recovering from the night before, Tanya was sitting at her vanity, preparing for the evening to come. Kim and I would stand behind her and stare while she carefully applied layers of make-up. It was Tanya who taught us how to blend several shades of eye shadow to create the perfect, “three dimensional eye” effect.

Kim’s stepfather, also named John, passed away a few years ago. John was a big, fat intimidating man with a deep, booming voice who owned a card club in Gardena and always carried a giant roll of cash in his front pocket. In the summertime, John would float on a raft in their pool, watching Kim and I shoot hoops a few feet away. Every time we made a basket, he’d give us a dollar bill. The story my father liked to tell about John took place one evening during the holidays. Kimmie was playing at our house and John had come to collect her for dinner. When my father answered the door, John wished him a Merry Christmas and handed him a flat containing 100 of those miniature vodka bottles they serve on airplanes.

An old friend of my parents named Little Red arrived at the party on the arm of a nurse, who sat her at a table and then went straight to the bar to get her a cocktail. Little Red’s hair was unkempt and no longer red, but grey. She wore wide sunglasses with yellow lens. I didn’t recognize her until after I had walked by and heard her complain, “Isn’t it bright in here? Can’t someone turn those goddamn lights down?”

I don’t know that much about Little Red except that she had been Ruth Roman’s stand-in, and was with her aboard the Andrea Doria when it sank. My parents knew Red because she was the long time girlfriend of their good friend Mimi, a very butch lesbian who swore like a sailor, wore men’s suits and had a vague career in entertainment. I think she produced movies, and I know she owned a restaurant/club in the 1970’s that went under after about a year. My mother met Mimi in Sacramento during the early 1960’s when she worked as a secretary for Governor Pat Brown, and Mimi had only recently transformed herself from mild-mannered Jewish housewife to mannish lesbian lobbyist. John and Trudy loved Mimi and Little Red because they were such “characters,” and “a lot of fun.” Also, Mimi could usually be counted on to buy a few shares in Trudy’s latest money-making venture.

Something my parents turned a blind eye to was Mimi’s love of illegal substances. I believe that’s what led her to become friends with fellow cocaine aficionado Billy Idol in the early 1980’s. (Mimi once gave me an autographed picture of Billy that he had signed, “To Marry, Rock On!” Who misspells “Mary?”) During that same period, Mimi and Little Red appeared in a Twisted Sister video, wearing black leather bondage gear and holding riding crops. They were probably in their mid-60’s then.

One night, when I was about 16 or 17, I was out with my parents, Mimi, and Little Red at a supper club featuring a then-popular drag act. Half way through dinner I felt something on my leg. Mimi was trying to pass me a vial of coke under the table. I shook my head no in disbelief. Mimi laughed drunkenly, and loudly shouted so that the entire table could hear, “When your mother was young, she was a real cherry. Just like you.” Mortified, I tilted my head forward, in an attempt to disappear behind the dyed black bangs of my asymmetrical haircut, but Trudy just blushed and giggled, “Oh, Mimi!…What’s a cherry?”

As the years went on, Mimi and Little Red’s partying escalated. Eventually, John discovered that Mimi had been dealing coke out of his office, so they had a falling out. The women kept up their dangerous habits and lost everything, finally ending up in a tiny apartment in West Hollywood, living on public assistance. Every once in a while Mimi would come to John for a loan. Always a soft touch, John would take her to lunch and pay off her household bills.

Several of John’s nieces and nephews came to the party, including Steve, my uncle Fran’s son. Fran died before I was born, but I was told he had been an intellectual, a bohemian, an alcoholic and a Lamplighter. Karla says he was weird. Steve lives in San Pedro and had visited John often throughout his illness. John always got a kick out of Stephen’s radical politics and pugnacious demeanor, and Steve has never forgotten the time his uncle drove all the way to Santa Cruz to bail him out of jail after he was arrested for throwing rocks during a demonstration against the war in Vietnam.

In lieu of planning any formal service or eulogies, Karla had the club set up a small podium at the back of the room with a microphone, in case anyone had remembrances of John to share. My cousins were the first to get up.

Lisa spoke of her Uncle Johnny’s death as the end of an era. My father was the second born of his five siblings and the last one to die. Lisa’s mother, Mary, passed away only two years ago. She was my father’s favorite, and I am her namesake. Mary danced on a table at her 70th birthday party and played tennis nearly until the day she died at 80 years old. When we flew up north for her funeral, John was already pretty feeble. It was difficult for him to walk the long distances through the airport terminals, but he stubbornly refused to ride in a wheelchair. As he stood by Mary’s open casket at the viewing, I heard him whisper, “You left me all alone, Sis.”

Lisa and her sister Karen both nostalgically recounted our parents’ get-togethers that always went on late into the night. Those days were all about highballs, cigarettes, loud arguments and laughter. Kathleen, my Uncle Bobby’s daughter, described John as a bon vivant and, “the whole Rat Pack rolled into one.” She thought he looked like a movie star. “And then he brought home a movie star wife! And she showed up with a movie star daughter and a movie star son!”

My cousin Christine, Uncle Fran’s daughter, told a story that well illustrates my relationship with my father. Christine was probably a teenager and I was about six at the time. John was sitting in the living room of our grandmother’s house in San Francisco, when Christine ran in to report that I had been cheating at cards, expecting her uncle to discipline his bratty child. Instead, he looked up, laughed and said, “Good for her! How’s she ever gonna get ahead in this world if she doesn’t learn to cheat!” John’s biggest concern while I was growing up was that I wouldn’t cheat, because I didn’t understand what a cold and dangerous place the world could be. He wanted me to realize that you had to take care of your own, however you could. He was afraid I was too much like him.

I didn’t think I’d have the composure to speak, but I knew if I didn’t say something I’d regret it. Instead of trying to come up with something profound, which would have ended up sounding mawkish and inadequate, and surely would have made me cry, I decided to tell a brief story that took place at the first nursing home we put John in.

Dad usually refused to take his meals in the lunchroom with the other patients, and would instead eat from a tray in his room. He was never much of a joiner when he was well, so he certainly wasn’t going to start attending the depressing luaus and sing-a-longs the nursing home was always throwing at this stage of the game.

One day Karla and Susan were visiting and they noticed the home was screening Elvis movies in the lunchroom in honor of “Death Week.” “Death Week,” is the seven day celebration of Elvis’ life that takes place in Memphis every year on the anniversary of his alleged demise. The taste in celebrating, “Death Week,” at a nursing facility is questionable to my mind, but none of the patients seemed to notice.

Now, John didn’t care about Elvis, but Karla and Susan managed to convince him to get into his wheelchair and let them roll him down the hall to watch, “Love Me Tender,” for a change of scenery. In this picture, set during the Civil War, Elvis plays a character named Clint Reno whose brother Vance is a confederate soldier. While Vance is off fighting the north, Clint falls in love with his brother’s girlfriend, Cathy. When Vance returns from battle, he discovers that, thinking Vance had been killed in combat, Clint and Cathy have married.

At this point in the action, John pointed at Vance on the screen and said, “We used to date the same girl.” In the car on the way home, Karla and Susan called to tell me that John was becoming so confused he now thought he was Elvis Presley, or at the very least, Clint Reno.

They also told me about an old lady at the screening, whose companion had asked her if she wanted to be moved closer so she could get a better view of Elvis. She nodded, so her friend wheeled her to the front. When she got there, the woman looked up, squinted and complained, “Oh hell. I thought I was gonna meet him.” It made me sad to think that John’s dementia had led him so far afield that these people were now his peer group. That he had become just another sad, decaying lunatic. But then again, at least he thought he was Elvis and not Pol Pot, or Ted Bundy.

Out of curiosity, when I got off the phone I looked up, “Love Me Tender,” on the Internet Movie Database. Richard Egan is listed as the actor who played Elvis’ older brother, Vance. I went to Richard Egan’s page and was surprised to read that he was born in San Francisco, in 1921. John was also born in San Francisco, but a year earlier. When I opened Mr. Egan’s biography, I learned that he had attended at St. Ignatius High School, the same school John attended. So, my father wasn’t one of them yet. He was telling the truth. John and Vance Reno had dated the same girl.

I didn’t cry once at the party. I convinced myself that day marked the end of my crying over John. I was wrong, of course, but at least for that one afternoon, I was finished. The next morning, I woke up relieved that it was all behind me. But after a year of worrying what the next phone call might bring, and six months of spending nearly every day at a hospital, I was at a loss as to what to do with myself. I needed to get out of the apartment, so I decided to pick up some flowers that were waiting for me at a florist in Glendale.

On the way, I called for directions. A cheerful woman named Ivy told me how to get to the shop, which turned out to be farther away than I expected, at the foothills on the far edge of town. I parked on the street and walked toward two aging hippies who were chatting out front of an old gas station that had been converted into a quaint neighborhood florist. One wore what looked like an African print pajama set and sported dreadlocks which hung down to her butt. The other one was heavyset and had two grey braids coiled into buns on either side of her head. She wore a layered, loose fitting, cotton dress, had fair, freckled skin, and bore the permanent, glazed grin of a Manson girl. This, I realized, must be Ivy.

Blocking the sun with her hand, Ivy looked in my direction and called me over by name. She led me inside the garage, where I waited while she retrieved my elaborate arrangement from a back room. She brought out a tall glass vase half-filled with water, which held fragrant white and pink flowers accompanied by tall blades of grass and twigs. We made small talk about my sister’s stepson, who had ordered the arrangement for me, while she secured the flowers in a cardboard box stuffed with newspapers for traveling. Picking up the box, she smiled at me, and in the exaggeratedly empathetic whine usually reserved for small children and the mentally retarded, she asked, “So, your Dad died, huh?” I nodded and told her he had. With that, she tilted her head, pursed her lips into a clownish frown and cried, “Bummer!”

With one hand on the steering wheel, the other alternately shifting gears and propping up the precariously positioned vase, I laughed all the way home.

At a Loss

2007-12-28T19:30:00.000-08:00

Karla and I flew home from West Virginia two days before the party, which was to be held on Saturday afternoon. I’ve read that some people call this sort of event a, “Life Celebration,” but to me that sounds more like some precious New Age gathering where vegan finger foods are washed down with eco-friendly fruit juices after a ceremonial release of 87 white doves. Taking to heart our father’s aversion to the maudlin and his caution to, “never trust a teetotaler,” we were throwing John a cocktail party.

The menu was set, the obituary had been published, friends and family had been invited. The only thing I had left to do was prepare something to handout to the guests. I had all of Thursday and Friday to create a simple booklet. On the front was to be a picture of a young, smiling John in uniform, with the dates of his birth and death beneath it. Inside I’d include a brief yet poignant anecdote, which I had yet to write, and an insightful poem by some wise and well-respected literary figure, summing up what John meant to us and how much we’d miss him, which I had yet to choose.

By six o’clock Friday night, I hadn’t started working on it. Restless, I went out for an early dinner. When I got home I still couldn’t face it, so I laid down on the couch to do some thinking and rest my eyes for just a minute. At midnight, I woke up in a panic. I had no idea what to write. It was too soon. It seemed an impossible task to express in only a few paragraphs what an extraordinary person and a caring father John had been. I realized that composing the obituary had taken all I had in me at that point, so I decided to include a modified version of that in the booklet, and move on to choosing a poem.

A few days prior, Karla had forwarded some memorial poems she grabbed randomly from various websites dedicated to grief. I hadn’t bothered to read them until that night. They were all painfully sentimental and cheesy, but I tried to keep in mind that I wasn’t making the pamphlet to impress my jaded, over-educated friends (as one of my jaded, over-educated friends pointed out). Why I was making the pamphlet, I couldn't really say. In any event, I had to select a poem from the bunch Karla sent because I didn’t have time to come up with anything else.

The first one was called, “Weep Not For Me.”

Weep not for me though I am gone
Into the gentle night
Grieve if you will, but not for long
Upon my soul’s sweet flight.

There is no need for tears.
I am at peace, my soul is at rest
There is no pain, I suffer not,
For with your love I was so blessed.

I am in a place of comfort
The fear now is gone.
Put those things out of your thoughts,
In your memory I live on.

Remember not my fight for breath
Remember not the strife
Please do not dwell upon my death
But celebrate my life.

Apart from the faulty rhymes, precarious meter and gruesome final stanza, what most disturbed me about this poem was that it was written in the voice of the deceased. I imagined John reciting it to me from beyond the grave in a ham stage actor's cadence. I was intrigued. Karla hadn’t included any of the authors' names, so I googled, “weep not for me though i am gone.” Oddly, several sites about pet loss popped up. Come to find out, a woman named Constance Jenkins composed this verse about fifteen years ago, “to comfort her sister, whose beloved cat had died.”

Karla also included a traditional Irish blessing, an old Irish toast, and an inscription supposedly etched on an Irish tombstone. All too corny and too religious. Another poem claimed the dead walk beside us every day, “Unseen, unheard, but always near.” I thought that was creepy.

The one I finally settled on was entitled, “He is Gone.” It’s not a very good or a very graceful poem, but it does the job. The poet suggests that rather than dwelling in the miserable knowledge that your loved one has died and will never return, one should feel glad to have known him, cherish his memory, and carry on with life. In other words, as John would say, “Cheer up, kid. Life is short.”

A google search revealed that this poem, originally entitled, “She is Gone,” first gained popularity after it was read at the Queen Mother of England’s funeral. It was written by David Harkins, a former factory worker and gas station attendant who now earns his living as an artist, primarily by selling nude paintings of his wife over the internet. I wanted to include this biographical information in the pamphlet, but no one in the family except John would have seen the humor in it.

It was 3am when I finally pulled up to the 24 hour Kinko’s in Glendale. It was pretty bleak in there. The only customers were a couple of drunk guys making yard sale signs up front, a chubby actress in frayed jazz shoes duplicating her composite headshots at the color copier, a depressed ne’er-do-well slumped before a pay-by-the-minute computer at the back of the store, and a sullen, disheveled woman with puffy eyes standing by the door, shuffling papers and muttering to herself. (That would be me.)

I had noticed a spelling error in the booklet, so I sat down to correct it on one of the only working computers, which was right next to the ne’er-do-well, who kept glancing at me nervously as he surfed the internet. In all fairness, he may have been anxious because of my faux casual attempts to sneak peeks at his screen. I only wanted to know what was so interesting that he drove to Kinko’s in the middle of the night to research it, but every time I looked he blocked my view with his shoulder or switched back to the Yahoo home page.

After fixing the typo, I stepped up to the counter to order my copies. There, I discovered that the late shift clerk at the Kinko’s in Glendale is no Gutenberg. First he couldn’t open the file I sent him, so I had to rename it and send it again. Three times. Next, it took him a while to figure out how to copy a two-sided document. And then, after we had spent at least 10 minutes discussing what shade and thickness of stock to use, he ran 200 copies on the wrong paper. I didn’t get home until almost 4:30 in the morning.

My alarm rang at 6:00. Suddenly, my only concern was what I would wear. I knew John would want me to look nice, smile, and be a charming hostess. And, after all, despite our many differences, I am my mother’s daughter. Somewhere in my psyche lurks the hope that no matter what tragedy befalls me, if I just brush my teeth and throw on a little blusher, I will feel better.

I pulled several dresses out of the closet, but nixed them all on the basis that each one was either too casual, too dressy, too little-girlish, or too cleavage-y/clingy to wear to my father’s memorial soirée. I finally settled on a 70’s inspired, navy and white geometric print shirtdress that reminded me of something Mary Richards might have worn to an important lunch date.

At my 8:00am therapy appointment, we started to discuss how I could best get through the day and how I should respond if Trudy went nuts, but I kept coming back to the fact that I didn’t have any navy shoes to wear with my dress. “This is how navy dresses screw you. You can’t wear black or brown shoes with them. You can only wear navy shoes, and there are no cute navy shoes. Who owns navy shoes?” In the end, my therapist gave in and indulged me by offering suggestions as to where I might find a decent pair of dark blue heels.

Totally unhinged at this point, I was prepared to spend any amount of money if I could get my hands on the right shoes. Against all odds, I found them. There, in the second shoe store I visited, sat a pair of navy blue Joan & David pumps with a delicately squared toe, low heel and simple rectangular silver buckles that echoed the pattern on the dress. And modestly priced. They were perfect. I paid for them, got in my car, and cried all the way home.

In John's Honor

2007-12-20T21:00:00.000-08:00

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t use the word “cunt” to describe my mother, but she had just been particularly vicious, and my father had died only an hour before, so I considered it a special occasion. I believe my exact words were, “I don’t care what that cunt thinks of me.” Karla’s heartbroken expression said that she didn’t want to either.

I refused to return to Los Angeles right away. Trudy wasn’t answering her phone, and if she did I’d probably say something I’d eventually regret (see above), so I resorted to email, once again. I wrote that although I wasn’t there at the end, “Dad knew how much I loved him and that I did my best to spend time with him and care for him while he was ill.” I went on to say that I was distraught and wasn’t ready to come home yet. Instead, Karla and I would organize John’s memorial from West Virginia and fly home together at the end of the week. I continued, “I know we all want to figure out the best way to memorialize Dad, so I'm sure we can come to some decision that will satisfy everyone. I would love to hear your thoughts.” I also informed her that, while I respected her desire to have an open casket viewing before the cremation, I did not want to remember John that way so I would not attend.

Trudy answered, “I'm sorry you are having a really hard time. I am having a terrible time dealing with this also, plus being sick with a bad sore throat and an earache. I'm glad you have each other there to lean on. I had to face this all alone. I was going to the mortuary tomorrow to take your Dad's clothes, but there is no need to do that now. Just go ahead and plan what you want. I will make arrangements for the insurance company to pay them directly. Love, Mom.” Realizing she had lost control and exhausted all other avenues of manipulation, Trudy was taking her threat level to red. I left it to Karla to appease her.

For a couple of months I had been telling Trudy I didn’t want a formal service for John when he died. He hated all things, “depressing,” and I am convinced that his own funeral would have been near the top of that list, right under spending a year lying incapacitated and incontinent in various hospital beds. Karla and Leo agreed with me that what Dad would have wanted is a party. At first, our mother balked at the thought of bucking tradition. But once my sister offered to hold the event at her very fancy country club, Trudy came around pretty quickly.

While Karla paced the kitchen floor, debating the merits of various hot and cold hors d'oeuvres with the caterer over the phone, I sat at the breakfast table writing John’s obituary. As is customary, I first listed his name, age, the date he died, and the cause of his death. Then, I laid out what I considered to be the major events and accomplishments of his life, and some personal details: “John will be remembered and missed by all who knew him for his great intellect, warmth and laughter, not to mention his boundless enthusiasm for San Francisco, The Great Depression, World War II, the Democratic Party, and a good cigar.” When I got to the part where surviving family members are named, Karla and I struggled a bit over how to describe Trudy. In the end, we settled on, “beloved wife,” over, “loving wife.” (I preferred, “one helluva wife,” but Karla didn’t think it would fly.)

After my sister and I were satisfied with it, I emailed the draft to Leo, my eldest nephew Brian, and Trudy for approval. My sister-in-law responded, “Mary, this is excellent! John would be so proud. Love you!” Brian wrote, “Great job.” My mother wrote, “I would omit ‘age 87,’ and ‘after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.’”

I told Trudy that all the other obituaries in the paper listed the deceased’s age at the time of death. I then explained that I had written, “Along with his two brothers, John enlisted for service after the bombing of Pearl Harbor,” because I thought it efficiently gave a feel for the era as well as John’s, and his brothers’, patriotism and sense of responsibility. Trudy replied, “Okay, leave in the part about Pearl Harbor, but I really don't like the, ‘at the age of 87.’ Your father was very sensitive about his age. You've put in his date of birth. Let them do the math.” Aghast, I read the email to Karla, who snickered and commented, “Huh. I never knew John was sensitive about that.” Neither did I.

In Trudy’s honor, I omitted John’s age from his obituary.

All the King's Horses

2007-12-15T23:45:00.000-08:00

While John lingered, Trudy and I sent each other instant messages about what to do once he died. My father was always very vocal about his wish to be cremated and to have his ashes scattered. Because of this, my mother had purchased only one burial crypt at an exclusive – and pricey - local cemetery that houses many celebrities, including Trudy’s hero, Marilyn Monroe. Trudy also insisted upon interring my grandmother there, and later, her frumpy eldest sister June. (I once asked my dad if Aunt June was a lesbian, but John laughed and said no, she was just sensible.) Aunt Ruth bought a crypt there too. Before she did, Karla suggesting swapping June out to a cheaper cemetery and letting Ruth have her spot because, “June wouldn’t have appreciated that place anyway.”

Although Trudy agreed to have John cremated, she still wished to have a viewing. I was against it. Not because I was afraid; I am used to open casket funerals. That’s how my family, on both sides, has always done it. But John had been so sick for so long, he no longer looked the way most people remembered him. He looked skinny and frail and…dead. Trudy tried to sell me on the idea. “He looks terrific. Really. Everyone is amazed at how good he looks. The last time you saw him he probably didn't have his teeth in and needed a shave. That bloat will go away when he passes. All of the fluid leaves your body. And don't forget, that machine is forcing air into his body. I really need to see him at peace and in a suit. And looking handsome.”

Before signing off, Trudy brought up placing an obituary in the L.A. and San Francisco newspapers. I told her I would write one. “You’d better start writing, so we can confirm all the facts. I really have to run. I'm going to See's to get the nurses some candy, so goodbye!”

John remained in the same stable, unconscious state until five days after his birthday, when Trudy called to tell me that he was bleeding internally. She said she had discontinued his life support, and that the doctors expected him to die within hours. Trudy waited at the hospital with her friend Sunny, who had driven into town from Malibu to escape a wildfire threatening to engulf her home.

Sunny and Trudy first met at the beauty shop they have both patronized weekly for decades. During the past couple of years, they have become very close. Sunny’s husband is a stroke victim, and Mom thought he would make a good pal for John as his Alzheimer’s began to progress. What else the two men have in common remains a mystery, since Sunny’s husband can’t really speak, and John has trouble remembering New People. I had never met Sunny, but I’d heard what a loyal friend she is, and that, by-the-way-and-not-that-it-matters, she is very wealthy.

Last Christmas Season, Trudy and Sunny went into business together as personal shoppers. Their advertisement in Beverly Hills 213 Magazine promised, “Whether it is a corporate gift basket, a jewel from Tiffany’s, or a shopping list from Costco, we are available to assist you from start to finish. We will do the shopping and wrap and deliver as specified!!” They got very few bites. The customers they did attract were too much of a bother for Trudy to accommodate, so she would IM me, asking if any of my, “out of work actor friends,” wanted to make a quick buck driving around town picking up some orders. I don’t know where Trudy got the idea I have any, “out of work actor friends.”

After a sleepless night clutching the phone, I learned that by morning John was stable, due to the dialysis Trudy had ordered, once again. Karla consulted her family doctor. He explained that dialysis was a life support measure preventing John’s organs from shutting down. He predicted that with dialysis, a feeding tube, the biPAP machine, and the medication he was receiving for his blood pressure, John could hang on for weeks. He continued that renal failure was not a painful way to die, and was certainly preferable to the unknown host of infections that would eventually befall him. Karla called Mom to relate what her doctor had said, but Trudy was aloof and quickly ended the conversation.

The following day, Karla called Kindred again to check on John’s condition. I was regretting my decision not to go back to see him, and needed constant reassurance that he was still unconscious, not lying there in a fever, calling my name. Dad’s nurse, Jennifer, told Karla that John was stable, but unresponsive. Karla asked if he was puffy. Jennifer answered that he was, but the dialysis scheduled for later that day would help. Karla expressed her confusion and learned that contrary to what Trudy had told us, there was never an order to take our father off of life support. In fact, according to his chart, John was to have dialysis three times a week. Against all our wishes, Trudy was keeping him barely alive.

Having refused to return to the hospital, I chose instead simply to lie curled in the fetal position on my living room floor in a sea of balled up tissues, clutching a pillow and a bottle of whatever, waiting for the ax to fall. Karla may have sensed that I was at the end of my rope when she insisted we get out of town for a while.

Two days later, I was on a plane bound for Karla's house in West Virginia with her and my concerned brother-in-law, Jeff, who offered me Xanax at regular intervals throughout the flight. As soon as we landed, we all had emails from Trudy telling us John was off of life support and on a morphine drip. He would be dead in somewhere between two hours and two days.

The next morning, one of John’s doctors called me because Trudy wasn’t answering her phone. He said that John was bleeding from his mouth, which was making it difficult for him to breathe. The order not to resuscitate was vague, so he needed permission to clear his airway with a tube. I asked him if this tube would delay the end. The doctor refused to predict how long John would survive and told me it could be days, or even weeks. I couldn’t stand the thought of my father choking to death, but I couldn’t bear the thought of him lying there half alive for much longer either. I hung up and called for Karla in hysterics. She got the doctor back on the phone. He explained that the tube would not breathe for John, it would only make his breathing more comfortable. Karla OK’d the procedure and asked the doctor to kick up John’s morphine dose.

After that, we got dressed and drove to a drugstore where we bought Jeff cough drops from a woman with no front teeth, and then I went for a run. I have no recollection of how I spent the rest of the day. At about 10pm, the phone rang. My sister answered, looked up at me and said, “He’s gone.”

A few minutes later Karla called Leo to give him the news. He and Susan were in San Francisco for a convention. They were both smashed, having just returned from the Buena Vista, where they toasted John with Irish Coffees. The first thing out of Leo's mouth was, "How is Mary?" Next, Karla called her son back in L.A. to tell him his grandfather had died. Right away he asked, "How is Mary?"

And then, Karla called Trudy. It was a brief conversation. After she hung up, with some prodding, Karla reluctantly revealed that Trudy’s only comment to her had been, “How could Mary leave town when her father was so sick.”

On a Happier Note

2007-12-13T22:00:00.000-08:00

Eerily enough, Jan is not the only person in Trudy's life to have been murdered while under medical care. My Great Aunt Edna, 88 years young, entered the hospital with only a touch of leukemia, and mysteriously, she passed away there only a short time later. Trudy is certain that Edna died at the hands of her greedy step daughter Fay, who, Trudy determined, smothered Edna with a pillow one night while her uncaring nurses slacked off in the snack room. Evidently, only Edna stood in the way of Fay inheriting some very valuable land, located on the outskirts of Youngstown, Ohio, which had belonged to Fay’s father, Clyde.

I hated Uncle Clyde. Everyone did. Clyde was from Georgia and looked like one of those mean old men in the documentaries they show you in elementary school on MLK day, who stand by nodding proudly while local police hose down civil rights activists. I don’t know what Edna saw in him. She was so gentle and sweet. Perhaps she was limited by her deformity. It must have been difficult for hunchbacked girls to catch a decent man back in the day.

When I was in junior high school, Edna and Clyde drove out to visit us in Clyde's giant, finned Cadillac, which bore vanity plates reading, "BIRD DOG." On the evening of their arrival, Clyde started a little fireside chat in the living room with the query, "Why d’ya think those niggers keep killin' eachutha ova in Atlanta?” We sat in stunned silence until he answered the question himself. “Cuz they're animals, that’s why." John white-knuckled his glass of bourbon, having been admonished by Trudy not to, "get into it," with Clyde. He was company. I, on the other hand, saw this as an excellent opportunity to both behave self-righteously and embarrass Trudy at the same time. I stood up haughtily and announced, "We don't use words like that in this house, Clyde.” Then, I raised my eyebrows and turned up my nose at him, which implied an additional, "You ignorant, fucking cracker." Clyde smiled sweetly at me and asked, "What word, honey, nigger?" John then stood, winked at me, and warned Clyde to, "settle down."

A few years later, Karla called me with good news. “Guess what? Clyde is dead!” The best part is, he could have been saved, if only he had allowed Edna to learn to drive. He was such a controlling bastard that, not only did he regularly open and peruse Edna’s mail before permitting her to read it, he had deemed it unbefitting of a lady to operate an automobile.

The story goes that one night Clyde didn’t feel so hot. Eventually, he realized he was having a heart attack. Alas, instead of calling an ambulance (What if a nigger was driving it and he needed CPR!), he gave frail little Edna the keys to his Caddy. Sitting on phonebooks, she did her best to navigate the darkened streets of Atlanta, but sadly, Edna got lost on the way to the emergency room, and the world lost Clyde.

Purgatory

2007-12-12T20:07:00.000-08:00

When I visited John a few days later, he wasn’t on a ventilator, but he was receiving oxygen. His feeding tube was still in place. He was so bloated that the skin on his face was unnaturally taught and shiny. He wasn’t wearing his teeth. His nephew Steve called, so I roused John and held the phone to his ear. He was mostly inaudible and incoherent, but at one point I did hear him mumble weakly into the receiver, “Well, I’m alive.” I decided then that I would not return to the hospital. I couldn’t bear to watch him suspended between life and death with that feeding tube. He didn’t need me. He wasn’t even there anymore.

The next night, Trudy left me a voicemail message that John wasn’t doing well and the doctors felt he probably wouldn’t make it through the night. Karla, Leo, Susan and I had a conference call about what to do. Trudy had not bothered to call them herself. Leo said he would go along with whatever we decided. Susan thought we should all go to the hospital. I decided that if John was unconscious, I wasn’t going to spend the last moments of my father’s life consoling Trudy. I couldn’t do it. As it turns out, none of us could.

Leo called the nurse’s station. John was unconscious. His condition was not good. And, he was breathing with the aid of a biPAP machine, a non-invasive ventilator. In other words, life support. Adding insult to injury, John had been instructed years ago to use a biPAP machine at night to control his sleep apnea. He had refused, because wearing the mask over his nose and mouth made him feel claustrophobic.

I worked up the courage to return Trudy’s call. She coldly informed me that she told the doctors not to intubate, but didn’t mention the biPAP. She told me the nurses were all rallying around her. She didn’t ask me to come to the hospital, and I didn’t offer.

In the morning, John was still breathing with the biPAP and he had been given medication to lower his blood pressure. He was unaware and not in pain. Later, Trudy called to tell me that John had pneumonia in both lungs and, without intubation, he was not expected to survive. The next day was John’s 87th birthday. I hoped he wouldn’t make it.

But he did. The nurse reported that John was still breathing with a machine, he hadn’t peed for days, his blood pressure was low and his potassium level was high. Trudy called to say Dad was going to have dialysis because his kidneys had shut down. If she didn’t allow it, he’d die. I told her to call the doctor and cancel the procedure. She promised she’d OK it, “just this once,” to ease John’s breathing. Afterward, they would take him off of all life support.

Late that night I saw Trudy online, so I asked her when they would stop the biPAP and feeding tube. She said the order would go down the next day, after the dialysis. Then she casually announced she had requested last rites be performed for John, “because he was such a strong Catholic all his young life and just in case.” Trudy says, “just in case,” like she’s making horn bets at a craps table. She really knows how to taunt me. I explained that there is no, “just in case,” in Catholicism. I went on to remind her that John had been a strident atheist for the last 50 years or so, and what she was planning to do was disrespectful of him. Her interpretation: “Mary, your father tried to make people believe he was anti-religion. He liked to have something to argue about.” I surmised that if he feared God he probably would have baptized his daughter and saved me from floating in Limbo for eternity. (For the record, the Pope “revised” the whole Limbo thing in April 2007.) Trudy signed off. I was glad to learn that she placed such faith in medieval Catholic rituals, and planned to hold an exorcism at her condo as soon as possible.

The next day, John was placed on dialysis, yet he remained on life support. The day after that, I called Trudy to get an update on when they were taking him off. She replied, “Oh, Golly. I’m on the other line. I’ll have to call you back.” She didn’t.

But she did send us all an enthusiastic email later: “I have good news! John is alert, the swelling has gone down and they are removing the biPAP (breathing) machine. He is talking and he told the nurse his birthday was the 16th! Mary, I know you are upset with me about this, but yesterday I called in a priest to do the last rites. He anointed John with oil, laid hands on him, prayed and sprinkled holy water on him. Believe what you may, but I know it had a lot to do with John doing better today.”

I told her I didn’t want him more alert, I wanted him to die. I asked Trudy what kind of God would want him to linger? Leo ordered me not to indulge her. Karla weighed in three hours later, just after visiting John. “When I walked into the room John was moaning and continued to moan for the 45 minutes that I was there. I walked up to the bed and called his name. He looked my way with eyes rolling in the back of his head and said, what I gathered to be, “Who is that?” I said, "Karla," and he continued to moan. I asked if he was hurting and he said yes. I asked where and he could not get words out but it sounded like mouth. I asked if his mouth hurt and he said “No, my (garble garble).” I asked several times and nothing he said was intelligible. I went to the nurses’ station and told Jennifer that something was hurting John but that I couldn’t understand what it was. She said that she would get his nurse. I went back to the room and said that it was Karla again and he said “Hi, darlin’.” He was trying to pull up the covers and I asked if he was cold; he said yes so I covered him completely. His face is covered with abrasions, most likely from the biPAP, but did appear less swollen.”

The next day, Trudy called me to find out when I was coming to the hospital. She professed that John had improved since Karla was there. I told her I didn’t want to see him that way and if he didn’t need me, I didn’t think I’d be back. She screamed, “He needs you! He was asking for you!” I asked her when, and after hesitating she answered sheepishly, “…Last night.” I asked her why she was so evasive with us all about the life support issue, so she stepped up her game. Pausing dramatically, she inquired, “So, you’re never going to see your father again?” I told her I didn’t know, and hung up the phone.

Divide and Conquer

2007-12-12T12:22:00.000-08:00

Trudy refused to be pinned down about the ventilator. In an effort to rein her in, my siblings and I resorted to communicating with her via group email. This system would make it harder for Trudy to lie, since she has to report to all of us simultaneously. Plus, even though Trudy resents direct questions, she can’t burst into tears and hang up on an email.

I wrote a message insisting that Trudy put in a standing order not to ventilate Dad in an emergency, in case no family members are present. I reminded her that we don’t want to prolong John’s suffering, and offered to instruct the doctors for her. Trudy expressed the fear that if she agreed to do that, the hospital would then stop all forms of treatment, because that is what happened to her “darling friend Jan.”

Jan was a petite, 95 year old woman who wore her gray hair in the same chin length bob she was probably given by her mother in 1923. She was an outspoken atheist, a staunch leftie, and a pragmatic intellectual. Until the day she went into the hospital for the last time, Jan continued to clip socially significant articles from the newspaper and mail them to her many friends, my father among them. She was as tough and sharp as nails throughout her entire life, but after nearly a century of service, her body finally wore out. Jan’s Advance Directive instructed the hospital not to sustain her by medical means. As was her wish, Jan spent the last few days of her life drifting toward death on a morphine drip.

Trudy’s recollection is a bit more Gothic. In her eyes, the sinister hospital staff managed to dig up an ancient, ill-conceived directive, which permitted them to leave poor, feeble Jan languishing, unattended, on the “dark and gloomy” 5th floor. One day, just after Trudy had gone home, Jan died. Trudy often wonders whether one of the hospital staff had, “slipped Jan something,” while no one was looking. She concluded by writing, “It still haunts me and I don't want to think of that happening to your Dad.”

To Trudy’s mind, Jan could not have chosen to die. Events and thoughts that don’t correspond with my mother’s wishes are inconceivable to her. Dying, i.e. leaving Trudy, is disloyal. Therefore, Jan must have been killed. Trudy will not allow John to leave her. Trudy will not let John be killed. Besides, as it stands now, John is the perfect husband. He lives at the hospital, he can make no demands, he is totally at her mercy, she gets attention from doctors, and his illness puts her at the center of attention.

Now furious, I asked Trudy to take a good look at John’s roommate and decide if that’s what she wants for Dad. I told her that John was not going to get better, ever, and begged her to take him off the feeding tube as well, so he could die in peace. I informed her that if she decided to keep John alive with a ventilator or any other life support apparatus, I wouldn’t be back to witness it.

Contrasting my hot-headed missive, my warm-hearted sister-in-law, Susan, jumped in with a long, thoughtful email, designed to assuage Trudy’s fears. She had spoken to her friend, an oncology nurse, who assured Susan that a hospital will not discontinue any treatment without specific consent from the family. She reiterated that putting John on a ventilator may prolong his current state, but without any quality of life. She added that any intubation can expose patients to additional infections and complications, and worried that a ventilator may cause John more suffering.

After visiting John, and reading the flurry of emails, Karla calmly put in her two cents as well. “Now is not the time to argue, to put things off, or to be controlling. This was the worst visit I have had with John and my feeling is that he is very close to death; his body is swollen which must mean that his organs are shutting down. He can barely open his eyes to acknowledge that he is aware of anyone’s presence. I am sure that he does not want to spend another second in this condition. He has lost any ounce of dignity that he might have had. He will never, ever improve. I am sure that if he had the ability, he would close his eyes and will himself to death. I don’t know about the rest of you but I get no pleasure from watching John in discomfort. I think he should be given the okay from all of us to let go, and be put on the morphine drip. Mom, I know that this is burdensome to you. You should relieve that burden and put John’s care in Mary’s hands. Her love for him will guide her to do what’s best for John.”

Trudy was pissed. Not because of my irate email, but because of Susan’s and Karla’s more reasonable appeals. Trudy loathes being placated. This wasn’t about John's well-being; it was about power and control. Her lengthy reply began, “How dare you…” and it only got worse. The bottom line was that she is running the show. “Never have I stated that I would use a ventilator to try and keep him alive, and it is still not my intention to use one; however, I said I don’t want to think about it right now!!!” She summed it up by telling us all she wished we understood, but if we don’t, “so be it.”

The following day, Susan and Karla both sent out emails reiterating their concern for John, and apologizing to Trudy for interfering.

Kindred Spirits

2007-12-06T18:35:00.000-08:00

Kindred Long Term Acute Care Hospital is located only a few blocks from where I grew up, in Ladera Heights. It sits on a busy street at the edge of the neighborhood, next to St. Mary's Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.

Trudy was right. The lobby is nice. It is sunny, clean and when I arrived there was snack cart offering flavored coffee and pastries. There was also a welcoming and well-coiffed receptionist who handed me a name tag and directed me toward John’s room. It was downhill from there on out.

I walked around the corner and into a hallway where I found a nurse standing in front of her station. I asked for my father’s room and she pointed directly in front of her. John’s cramped, dingy, double-occupancy room was about 10 x 10 feet. There were tiles missing from the floor and the particleboard closet was crumbling in places. A privacy curtain was pulled back to reveal his roommate and the one television set they would share, which hung in the far corner of the room. The beds were fewer than two feet apart.

John’s roommate was unconscious and breathing with the aid of a ventilator. Various tubes and IV's invaded his body. He was lying on his side, kind of bunched up, and he looked like he’d been left that way for decades. He was basically a pile of mashed potatoes hooked up to machines that occasionally made scary alarm noises, which everyone pretty much ignored.

The first thing I did after greeting John was to close the curtain far enough to block our view of Potatoes, while leaving it open enough so John could see the television set. Right away, John asked me for something to drink. When I buzzed the nurse for a pitcher of water, she informed me that the doctor had ordered no liquids until the occupational therapist determined whether or not John could swallow properly. This order was put in place upon my father’s arrival the day before, but no therapist had been in to see him yet. In other words, John had been denied liquids for over 24 hours. The nurse assured me that the feeding tube was providing him with adequate hydration. I complained that he was thirsty and explained he had been allowed liquids and food at USC. She carried on about procedure, and, “the way we do it here,” but I got irritated and stopped listening. Unaware of our argument, Dad turned to me and said, “How about a cup of coffee?” I remembered the beverage cart in the Nice Lobby so I grabbed a cup of hazelnut blend and brought it back to him. The nurse gave me a dirty look but, having been trained by the best in dirty looks, I was not dissuaded. I fed John sips of coffee while glaring at her until she left the room.

The nurse returned with an elderly, bearded doctor. Smiling cordially, Dr. Axelrod extended his hand and welcomed me to Kindred. He told me he had already had the pleasure of meeting my charming mother and explained that he was an associate of her physician, Dr. Mulvy. I shook his hand, told him that his hospital was filthy and asked why no one had been in to examine John in a day and a half while he lay there begging for water. Taken aback, he assured me John was getting enough fluid through his feeding tube. He boasted that the care at Kindred was among the finest in the city, assured me the hospital was clean, and blamed the appearance of the room on Federal Medicare cutbacks. Handing me his card, he withdrew.

Soon after, a jovial occupational therapist appeared. He made John repeat the phrase, “Captain Crunch!” several times and chew on ice, then he felt John’s throat when he swallowed. The therapist’s determination was that he would allow John liquids as well as food, if it were puréed.

The next day when I returned to Kindred, I saw that John had been given a haircut, a shave, and his eyebrows had been trimmed. Throughout his stay, I realized that although the place is a dump, the staff is very dedicated and mostly friendly. It became clear pretty quickly that the nurses were unaccustomed to family members hanging around, getting in their way. This is where people leave their aged and decaying relatives to die. Like poor ol’ Potatoes in the corner, for instance. They kept him in existence with machines, but no one ever visited him that I saw.

I sent out an email to Trudy, Karla and Leo, again telling them that we should make up a schedule for visiting John so that no one feels overburdened, and so that John has some contact with at least one of us every day. I wrote that he no longer wants much company, he just needs to know we are around and he is safe. I asked Trudy to please update everyone with news from the doctors, so that I would no longer be her only confidante. Karla responded immediately, offering three days that week she would come by the hospital. Leo didn’t respond to the email but he did visit.

One morning I arrived at Kindred and found my aunt Ruth sitting in the lobby, looking quite elegant in a black turtleneck and slacks, her silver hair swept into a barrette at the back of her head. She couldn’t see me waving from across the room, so I approached her and said hello. “Mary, is that you?” I came closer and told her it was. She craned her neck forward and peered at me. “I like that dress. It’s cute on you. You look good in that color. Did you dye your hair? It’s too dark. I like it lighter.” As I sat beside her, she reached into her cluttered purse, pulled out a mini dark chocolate Hershey’s bar and pressed it into my palm. I thanked her, but said I didn’t want it. “Why? Are you on a diet?? Dark chocolate is good for you.” I told her I wasn’t on a diet, but I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet. She rifled through her bag. “You want another kind? Here’s one with nuts.”

My Mormon aunt Shirley and her daughter Jenny (who had been parking the car), arrived, and we all filed into John’s room. I tried to wake him by telling him he had company. He struggled to open his eyes but they rolled back in his head. Jenny stuck some freshly cut flowers under his nose, but he just frowned and squeezed his eyes shut tightly, like a stubborn kid.

We reconvened in the lobby and all agreed that Dad was worse than ever. I told them that Trudy had allowed insertion of a feeding tube against my, Karla’s and Leo’s wishes and that I was afraid she would continue with further life support as he got closer to death. Shirley knew first hand how awful ventilators are because her 85 year-old husband Bruce had been placed on one after he drunkenly drove his car into a tree on the way to meet his young Asian mistress a couple of years ago.

(Bruce was an alcoholic, chain smoking, philandering Mormon. He was also a, “career soldier,” flying planes for the U.S. Air Force until retirement. My Dad thought he was hilarious and called him, “The General.” Throughout my childhood, Bruce arrived at our house every Christmas Eve in his mobile home, carrying 6 packs of malt liquor in a brown paper bag. Aunt Shirley followed timidly behind carrying the gifts. One year, having whipped through his supply, he hopped into the mobile home and headed to the market to buy more refreshments before dinner. (For some reason, we didn’t usually serve malt liquor at our house.) Nothing out of the ordinary there, except Bruce never returned. Eventually, John was sent to look for him. He noticed the mobile home was parked up the street and realized Bruce must have knocked on a neighbor’s door by accident. As luck would have it, Mrs. Shogrin, a fellow alcoholic, answered the bell and invited him in for cocktails. The two of them were sitting in her living room, boozing it up, when my Dad arrived to bring Bruce home. John loved that story. He would shake his head, laugh and say to himself, “Ah, The General.”)

The following morning I woke up to an email from Trudy saying that John's breathing had been labored the evening before. She said that he was given oxygen and by the time she left he was breathing easier, but she was worried. I wrote back asking her to please make sure Kindred was aware of our wish that John not be placed on a ventilator.

Within the hour, Trudy replied, "I don't want to think about that right now."

Unsettled

2007-12-05T19:50:00.000-08:00

The day my father was transferred to his new nursing home I was almost killed.

That morning I had gone to USC University Hospital to see that John made it safely into the ambulance that would whisk him across town to where my mother was waiting at Kindred Long Term Acute Care. Later, I met my friend Jeff for lunch at a tedious hipster-themed diner in my neighborhood called Fred’s 62. (They do make a pretty decent tuna melt, I have to admit.)

I ordered a sandwich and my phone rang. It was Trudy and she sounded apprehensive. “Your father wants to know where you are.” I told her I thought we’d agreed I would see him off at USC in the morning and then go visit him at the nursing home the next day. “Oh…. OK... Well, he wants to talk to you.” She held the phone to his ear and he asked me when I was coming. I reminded him that I’d be there tomorrow and asked him how the place was. “Raunchy.” If John noticed his surroundings, they had to be bad. “Put Mom on.” Trudy admitted the place was, “a little dirty.” I reminded her that she had visited Kindred and deemed it, “very nice.” She replied, “Well… the lobby is nice.” “Didn’t you look at the rooms when you checked the place out?” “I can't talk now. I’ll have to call you later.”

I choked down my meal and absentmindedly carried on a conversation while I stewed over this one. After lunch, Jeff and I decided to walk to the bookstore a few doors down. As we were crossing the street to put money in his meter, an SUV stopped to let us pass. We continued walking when suddenly there was a loud squealing of tires. Jeff and I grabbed each other and did that geeky move where you lift one knee up to your chest, hunch up your shoulders and squint. Inches away from where we cowered mid-crosswalk was a teenage boy in a sports car, talking animatedly on his cell phone. He didn’t stop conversing, nor did he look over at us, as he lifted the one hand he had on the steering wheel to give an unconcerned wave, like, “It’s cool. I see you.”

That was all I needed. “You fucking piece of shit!! Get off your mother fucking cell phone, you fucking asshole!!! Fuck you!!!!” I was becoming redundant, so Jeff pulled me onto the opposite curb. He hugged me, asked me if I was OK, and said something about how scary that was. I answered with, “I could have killed that asshole!” (I also may have, regrettably, made a disparaging remark about young Armenian hoodlums and their reckless driving. Mea Culpa.) Jeff reminded me that I could not have killed him; he could have killed us, by hurtling a ton of metal in our direction at 60 miles an hour. Just then two lanky, effete looking men outfitted in black denim, accented with heavy chains, walked by us. I couldn’t tell whether his voice was sympathetic or mocking when one of them slowly shook his scraggly raven locks and cooed softly, “He was on his cell phone.”

In retrospect, my guess is mocking.

If It's Not One Tube, It's Another

2007-12-04T20:08:00.000-08:00

The morning after the feeding tube was placed in his abdomen, John seemed even more listless and disoriented. The doctors attributed his weakness to the lingering effects of anesthesia and assured me he would gain strength once his intake of calories increased.

Since nutrition couldn’t be delivered through the tube for 24 hours after surgery, I tried to con John into eating some lunch. Feeding him had become especially difficult because he had lost so much weight that his gums were receding and his false teeth were constantly sliding out of place. The upper denture would hang half way out of his mouth, but he wouldn’t let me remove it, so I had to keep pushing it back in. I finally got him to open up long enough for me to quickly slip in some rice, but he refused to chew it. He just left the food sitting on his tongue and stored in his cheeks. I managed to sneak in some chocolate pudding to moisten it, and then he sneezed out the whole mouthful all over himself. And me.

When I arrived at the hospital the following day, John’s breathing was uneven. He started coughing and I thought I saw an obstruction in his throat, so I pulled on a blue latex glove, stuck my fingers in his mouth, and pulled out something dark grey and squishy, but kind of dense. I thought maybe in his demented state he’d started chewing on the L.A. Times. (I still brought him one most days, even after he couldn’t read it anymore. He liked to hold it and pretend.) I dangled the dark wad way out in front of me, between my thumb and forefinger, squinting and grimacing at it, but also trying to figure out what it was. The nurse changing John’s IV bag stared at me, unconcerned. “It’s just phlegm, baby.”

Trudy called on my cell phone to see how John was doing. (Trudy usually visited John at night so she could be there for dinnertime. She’d stay and watch television with him, usually until the 11:00 news started. I stopped working a few months ago, so I normally arrived around 11:00am. I’d try to feed him lunch, then I’d put on a movie, or read while he slept. I’d leave around 3:00 or 4:00.) I told Trudy that John was ok, but that he had some congestion and wasn’t eating. She gave a relieved sigh and followed it up with, “Oh, good. When I left the hospital last night he was having a really hard time breathing. I thought he was a goner.”

One of John’s doctors, a young intern named Dr. Lopez, came in to examine him. After filling me in on the terrific Muse concert he and his wife had attended the night before, he informed me that John was running a fever, most likely because of the feeding tube placement. After listening to John’s lungs, the doctor asked me whether I would give permission to ventilate if it became necessary. I refused to discuss it standing right beside my father, so we moved to an unoccupied room.

I had heard being on a ventilator felt like trying to breathe through a straw. Dr. Lopez didn’t refute the claim. In fact, he said that a patient on a ventilator is usually sedated to prevent discomfort, and so that he or she won’t yank out the tube in frustration. He then explained that if John’s difficulty breathing worsened, and we chose not to intervene with a ventilator, we would enter, “a hospice situation.” The doctors would simply put him on a morphine drip to alleviate any pain, and let nature take its course.

My father had not drawn up an Advance Directive. I don’t know why. But I do know that if he could have imagined himself in this predicament, he never would have submitted to lingering in a hospital bed, immobile, barely conscious, false-toothless, shitting himself, with a tube in his stomach delivering protein shakes and a tube down his throat forcing air in and out of his lungs. Never.

I called Karla. She and my brother-in-law agreed: No ventilator. I called Leo: No ventilator. I called Trudy. She, of course, had the final say. I would try to persuade her, and even beg her if we disagreed, but I would not fight her on this. John is her husband and he dedicated his entire life to appeasing her. He wouldn’t want to live like this, but he would suffer it, if that’s what Trudy wanted.

Trudy sounded like a terrified child on the phone. I gave her my opinion and feared her response. For the first time throughout John’s decline, she asked what Karla and Leo thought. And then, she tearfully agreed. No ventilator.

The next morning, John’s temperature was down and he was breathing easier. The folks at USC University Hospital were eager to get him moved back into a nursing home, I assume before he caught something else and died there. He wasn’t going back to the place in Santa Monica, where he may or may not have contracted scabies. Besides, his condition now called for a higher level of care than they offer. The social worker on staff at USC suggested a critical care nursing facility called Kindred, which is very close to my parents’ old house and not far from their condo. Trudy checked it out and was pleased. “It’s very nice. And the administrator's name is Trudy. Can you believe it? There are a lot of black people there, but I don’t care about that.”

Like Mother, Like Daughter

2007-11-27T19:06:00.000-08:00

A psychic approached Trudy at Dupar’s coffee shop the night before John’s feeding tube surgery and informed her that she had a Bad Aura. It was sometime after midnight. Trudy and Ruth had stopped in for eggs on the way home from visiting John at the hospital because Trudy had a craving.

Ruth is legally blind and, whether she admits it or not, Trudy is very hard of hearing. I imagine that when the psychic approached the table, Ruth was shouting inquiries while Trudy read the menu aloud. The psychic, who Trudy described as, “very well dressed,” introduced herself and told Trudy that she could sense she was burdened by health problems. She then asked if Trudy’s health was bad. Trudy was astonished by her insight. “How could she know that?” I shared her excitement. “I know! How on earth could this woman divine that two older-” Trudy interrupted, “OLDER?” “Yes, Mom. Older. Elderly.” “ELDERLY? Well!” “Yes, how could she walk over to two ELDERLY women sitting in a diner late at night, no doubt conversing loudly about hospitals and doctors, and ascertain that at least one of them has medical issues?” Trudy pronounced her amazing and planned to visit the psychic at her home in Diamond Bar for a reading.

That reminded me of the time JB insisted I drive all the way out to Orange County for a consultation with his psychic when I was about 21 or 22. Her name was Dolly and she was a middle-aged woman living in the middle of the suburbs in a small house cluttered with stuffed unicorns, rainbow prism stickers and religious knickknacks. She had a really high-pitched voice like that spooky little woman in “Poltergeist.” Reluctantly, she allowed me to make an audiocassette of our session, which I later chopped up for interstices in a mixed tape.

First, Dolly read my aura, which she saw was mostly white. This told her I would soon have dental work on two teeth, take a trip to the snow, and participate in a wedding. The fact that there were no blacks, greys, browns or maroons in my aura told her that I wasn’t going to die in the near future, or go to jail, and that I wasn’t hooked on drugs.

Next, she asked for a piece of my jewelry and dealt out some Tarot cards, while calling forth her spirit guides, “Timothy, Stan, and Dr. Frank Vigiano.” They apparently relayed some urgent information to her so she looked up from her cards and asked whether I knew anyone who raised goats. I told her, “No, I live in New York. There are no goat herders in Manhattan.” Unfazed, she flipped more cards, tapped an acrylic fingernail on one, and assured me that I wouldn’t be killed in a car accident. Then, she stared at me long and hard before finally asking, “Mary, do you know a man whose name starts with a D? Doug?… David?... Donald?... No…wait… Oh! Mary!... I see a Dick in your future!” After that, she wrapped it up by warning me to be careful in the sun because I burn easily. I’ll bet Dr. Vigiano told her to say that.

And he was right. I do. Amazing.

The Most Important Meal of the Day

2007-11-26T22:16:00.000-08:00

I was about to leave for the hospital when Trudy called to tell me the doctor was postponing John’s final arm surgery. “Your dad has pneumonia. And, his nurse - I really like her; she looks just like Geena Davis, but not as attractive, and shorter – she told me that they will probably have to put in a feeding tube.”

Later that day, John’s internist, Dr. Pacino, informed me that my father was no longer taking in enough calories to survive. He had lost about 60 pounds over the course of the year, and as he became weaker and more delirious, he ate less and less. The doctor explained that the only course of action, if we chose to act, would be to insert a feeding tube through John’s abdomen, which would deliver protein drink directly into his stomach. I asked Dr. Pacino if the feeding tube would help my father become healthier or improve his quality of life. He said that a tube would prevent John from dying of starvation, but that sooner than later he would be back in the hospital, probably with another infection, and then another, until one of them finally overtook him. Also, he informed me that even with nutrition from a feeding tube, John’s life would not be extended for very long, and he would only feel as well as he did on his best day within the last three months. I told the doctor that ultimately the decision was Trudy’s, but I was against prolonging my father’s life with a feeding tube, or any other life support measures.

By the time I arrived at his room, John’s lunch had been served and laid untouched at his bedside. I was trying to persuade him to take a few bites of pasta when he looked up at no one in particular and asked, “So, this guy who broke his bones. Is he gonna be OK?” Until then, I had been able to maintain a pretty upbeat, “Isn’t this hospital bit a kick?” attitude in front of John. But when he threw that out, I burst into tears. At the sound of my sobbing, he suddenly focused on me, widened his eyes and smiled. “What? What’s the matter? I’m all right. Everything’s all right. It’s ok.” Waving a spoonful of Penne Bolognese in the air, I started bawling, “Dadd-hy, you have to eat someth-hing or the doctor will shove a fee-heeding t-hube in you. And, and, and …that won’t be very comfortable.” Laughing weakly, he answered, “Alright. You don’t have to be so tragic about it.” And then he let me feed him the entire plateful of food.

A few days later, John was cleared for his last surgery, which was a moderate success. Immediately following the procedure, Dr. Stanovich proudly shuffled through the vivid digital photographs he had taken, which illustrated that although it was impossible to use John’s frail skin to graft, he was able to sew most of the wound closed. The small section that remained exposed was expected to heal on it’s own.

After wolfing down that one bowl of pasta, John went back to refusing food and continued to lose weight. He was scheduled for release to a critical care nursing home soon, so the internist pressed me for an answer about whether or not we wanted John to have a feeding tube inserted. I explained that my siblings and I were against life support, but our mother was undecided.

After a few tortured phone conversations and IM’s on the subject, Trudy seemed to begrudgingly agree that a feeding tube would do little but prolong John’s suffering. Or so I thought, until one morning when I walked into my father’s room to find him crying out in pain while an impatient intern clumsily jammed a tube up his nose. I grabbed John’s hand and politely asked her what in the fuck she was doing. Sighing loudly she complained, “Well, I’m TRYING to get this tube down his throat so we can get him to surgery. PLEASE RELAX, SIR.” A nurse nearby volunteered that the night before Trudy had given her consent. The purpose of the tube presently being driven up John’s nose and down his throat, she explained, was to expand his stomach in order to ease placement of the permanent tube that would be implanted directly into his abdomen.

Once she forced the tube in place, the effervescent intern left the room. John then turned to me and pleaded, “What are they doing to me?” Averting my eyes, I mumbled a vague explanation that they were giving him something to help him with his appetite. And then my cell phone rang. It was Trudy.

She spoke in the frightened little girl voice she puts on when she knows that I know she’s done something wicked. She admitted that even after we, as a family, had agreed not to do it, she ordered the feeding tube. “But,” she assured me, “they can always remove it. It’s easy.” When I said I thought it wouldn’t be easy for us emotionally to take away John’s life support, she replied, “Emotionally? I don’t get it.” When I asked her why she hadn’t told any of us that she had ordered a feeding tube, and why she hadn’t shown up for the operation herself, we got disconnected.

In a few minutes an orderly arrived with a gurney. Staring down at his clipboard he asked, “Is this John B?” My father frowned and answered, “I used to be.”

October 16, 1920 - October 26, 2007

2007-10-27T12:34:00.000-07:00

In the movie It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, Tyler Fitzgerald (Jim Backus) downs three cocktails while piloting his airplane. Leaving his seat to mix a fourth, he puts Benjy (Buddy Hackett) in charge of flying the plane. Panicked, Benjy asks "What if something happens?" to which Mr. Fitzgerald replies, "What could happen to an Old Fashioned?"

Old Fashioned:
Muddle a teaspoon of sugar in a splash of water and 2 dashes of bitters.
Add ice and 2 fingers of Bourbon.
Top with a maraschino cherry.

Cheers, Daddy
xoxoxoxo

Pushing Boulders

2007-10-21T19:50:00.000-07:00

Dr. Stanovich called me at home the night after the surgery to tell me that John’s infection was an antibiotic resistant “Super Bug” called MRSA, which is most often acquire in a hospital setting. He sounded very doubtful that the infection could be overcome with drugs. As a bonus, it turns out that John contracted scabies at the nursing home, which, I was disgusted to learn, is not uncommon. Dr. Stanovich made it clear that the MRSA, the scabies and John’s escalating blood pressure all put him at very high risk of dying “on the table” during his future surgeries, which were necessary to close up the gaping hole in his arm.

I visited John the following day. There was a sign posted on his door warning of contagion and I was required to don a yellow paper gown and blue latex gloves before entering his room. When I walked in, John was muttering to himself. As was my usual routine, I pulled a chair near the bed, wheeled over his table, lowered it to desk level, and set up my laptop. I looked like a secretary at a hazmat site, but when John finally noticed me he just smiled and asked how much I thought the Yankees were paying Babe Ruth. I reminded him that I don’t know much about sports, so he furrowed his brow, turned his head, and drifted back to the 1930’s.

Throughout the week John’s health improved enough to schedule the next arm surgery. Killing two birds with one stone, they called in a vascular surgeon to place a catheter in John’s chest because the veins in his arms were collapsing from IV medications. I asked if that might create another pathway for infection. The answer was yes.

The night before the surgery, Trudy called me. Answering the phone when Trudy calls is new for me. Under normal circumstances, I would let her go to voicemail and only return the call if, and/or when, I am prepared for the onslaught of crazy. But now that Trudy isn’t speaking to either of her other children and my father is seriously ill, she’s got me where she wants me. On this occasion, Trudy called up crying because she felt so sorry for John. Fed up, I warned her that it was pretty creepy for her to keep telling everyone she feels “sorry for” her dying husband, and that she might do better to consider, “Oh my God, I love my husband, I’m so afraid he’ll die, I’m lost without him, whatever will I do…,” that sort of thing. I was also going to request that she stop saying John’s dementia is, “kinda cute,” but I didn’t feel like getting into it. I asked her if she would be at the hospital in the morning and that’s when she hung up.

Miraculously, Trudy did appear the next day. John slept while we stood by his bed waiting for the orderlies to arrive and cart him off to the OR. All of a sudden, a very small, elderly, Filipino nun wearing thick glasses shuffled into the room. Trudy was so pleased. This wouldn’t have been any fun for her at all had I not been there to watch.

To get the ball rolling, Trudy bestowed upon her the condescending smile she reserves for those who hold the false notion that they are deserving of her respect. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d leaned over and tickled that little nun under the chin. Next, Trudy sweetly asked her name. She replied softly, “I’m Sister Teresa.” Trudy then wanted to know if she was named after Mother Teresa. “I just love her.”

Trudy went on to describe John’s horrifying medical disintegration in detail, modestly tossing in her own Sisyphean efforts to save his life. She then paused dramatically, as if waiting for the nun’s words of wisdom. Sister Teresa spoke in very broken English. But that didn’t impede the speed or accuracy of her guilt delivery in the least. Shaking her tiny head she told us, “Many, many time I come. Here. To this room. He alone. All alone. No one here. The husband all alone. Nobody wife, no one here.” Trudy’s brave smile faded as she turned to ice. Sister Teresa went on. “The Alzheimer make the pain for everyone.” Trudy was getting bored. She replied vaguely, “Oh, uh huh, I’ll bet.”

Then, the nun made a move toward John’s bed and motioned for us to join her. I wasn’t going to budge and Trudy was done, so she just dismissed her firmly with, “Well, it was very nice meeting you, Sister.”

After John was wheeled away to surgery, Trudy and I sat in the waiting area together. Alone. I read a book and she worked a crossword puzzle, until about an hour later, when we were paged to the 4th floor. During the entire, painfully slow ride up, Trudy kept clutching my arm and whining that she was scared and asking me what was going to happen. (This is the same woman who used to scold a certain perpetually anxious five year old for being such a, “worry wort.”) I wished I’d taken the stairs. Trudy has a bad knee. She would never have been able to keep up with me.

The surgery revealed that the infection in John’s arm was clearing up. The doctors concluded he needed just one more operation, to graft skin over the wound. Trudy was uplifted by the news. “I feel so much better now. Everything is going to be alright.”

And then Dad contracted pneumonia.

At Arm's Length

2007-09-17T20:10:00.000-07:00

“I don’t know how we are going to save the arm,” Dr. Stanovich muttered to his resident in a thick eastern European accent. It was midnight in John’s hospital room. Dr. Stanovich is the specialist who was brought in to graft skin over John’s open wound, which never healed after an orthopedist put a plate and two metal pins in his elbow in May.

Dr. Stanovich has deep bags under his eyes and constantly wears a worried expression. He moves as if he were carrying stones in his lab coat pockets and speaks as though each day were the most difficult of his life. He tisks and shakes his head when he is deep in thought. I’ll bet when he wishes someone a happy birthday it sounds more like he is offering condolences.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed my mother tensing in her seat. I avoided her gaze because I was upset myself. (As a rule, I try not to reveal emotion in front of Trudy.) Instead, I imagined what it would be like if they severed my demented father’s arm. His rediscovering in horror that his limb is missing every few hours, or minutes, for the rest of his life. Having to explain it to him, to calm him, over and over and over again. It’s unthinkable. Intolerable. If they take John’s arm, I will have to sneak into his room and smother him with a pillow.

That night I called Karla at her vacation home in West Virginia. I told her she needed to come home, that they might amputate John’s arm. But once I said it out loud, I realized the truth. Dr. Stanovich wasn’t considering amputation. If John couldn’t heal after a simple incision, how could he recover from the removal of a limb? He is 86, has high blood pressure, sleep apnea, Alzheimer’s, a fractured collarbone, a fractured pelvis and pins in his neck, not to mention a host of ailments that they aren’t even bothering to treat including prostate cancer, skin cancer, and mild emphysema. Also, he refuses to eat and has lost about 60 pounds while lying in bed for the last year. What the doctor was saying is that this injury could kill him. In essence, John could die of a broken arm.

And that’s when my anxiety accelerated to hysteria. I was well aware of the fact that my father wouldn’t be around much longer, no matter what the outcome of this particular surgery. He can’t walk, he can’t feed himself, he can’t even use a bedpan. He is so weak, so disoriented, so humiliated. And so far away already. As devastating as it would be, I was prepared for the possibility of John dying in surgery. But if he did, what would I do with Trudy? I’d be all alone in the waiting room with her. Would I be required to comfort The Queen of the Air Kiss? Drive her home from the hospital? Sleep at her condo? How did I get this job? Where did everybody go??

As it turns out, funnily enough, I got all worked up for nothing because Trudy didn’t show up for the surgery. She phoned that morning to let me know she wasn’t going to make it to the hospital until, “later.” Meanwhile, I had asked my friend Arthur to come along, and Karla dispatched my sister-in-law to keep me company in the waiting room. Leo didn’t accompany her, presumably for fear of running into our mother.

When I walked in to John’s room, the nurses were prepping him. He was aware of what was about to happen and was anxious to get the operation over with. I did my best to distract him with small talk so he wouldn’t ask about Trudy. Then, the anesthesiologist bounded in. He was tall and skinny and had shaggy grey hair. The enamel frames of his eyeglasses were painted in a myriad of bright colors, as though inspired by a Peter Maxx nightmare. He spoke to John with the irritating exuberance of a drunken cruise director. “Hey, Mr. B.! Hey, big guy! Give me five! Alright!” John raised an eyebrow and stared at him, nonplussed.

Oblivious to John's scorn, the doctor explained that he was going to give Dad a shot that would put him into a light slumber, which would feel just like a relaxing nap. He claimed that after surgery, John would awaken refreshed and rested. I plastered on a phony smile and in a frantically cheerful voice said to John, “That sounds great! I’m jealous! I’d like one of those!” The anesthesiologist flashed me a cocky grin and in a sultry lothario’s tone replied, “OK, bend over.” What a charmer. He had really put me at ease.

At this point the orderlies were getting ready to wheel John out the door. One of the nurses instructed me to check in at the waiting area downstairs and Dr. Stanovich would have me paged when the surgery was finished. Casually, Dr. Dope interjected, “Oh, uh, unless you aren’t going to hang out at the hospital. I mean, if you want, you could just give me your cell phone number, and I can give you a ring when it’s over.” I glanced over at the nurses, who were rolling their eyes, declined, and turned to John. “OK, Dad, so you’ll have a nice nap, the thing is only gonna last like less than an hour, and you’re done. No big deal!” John smiled at me and protested softly, “No big deal to you.”

I walked along side the gurney to the elevator bank, assured John I’d see him in a few, and waived goodbye. As the doors slid closed I heard him mumble, “Adios.”

About an hour later, Dr. Stanovich had me paged. I rode up to the fourth floor and met him outside of the OR. He sighed, shook his head and told me he was very sorry, but John’s wound was infected, the surrounding skin had deteriorated, and he was unable to perform the procedure. Instead, he took out the plate & pins, flushed the area, inserted antibiotic beads, and bandaged it up. He predicted performing three more surgeries in the following weeks to thoroughly clean out the wound before he could graft. That is, if John can beat the infection. He reached out and patted me awkwardly on the shoulder, apologized again, and walked away. I rejoined Arthur and my sister-in-law to wait for John to come out of recovery, and called Trudy with the news that he he was ok, the surgery was over, but it was not entirely successful.

When Trudy waltzed into the waiting area an hour or so later, she was startled to see I had company. Still sporting her giant Jackie O sunglasses, she approached us, exclaiming, “Oh, Arthur! So nice of you to be here for Mary. You boys were so good to her when Gracie died.” (Gracie was my dog, who I put to sleep three years ago.) With that, she plopped her big Fendi handbag down on the seat next to mine, announced she had to find the Little Girls Room, and sashayed away, admonishing us with a wink, “Don’t steal my millions!”

Medicine, Medicare and Miracles

2007-09-12T23:35:00.000-07:00

Three weeks ago, a caretaker at the nursing home discovered that the metal pins which had been implanted in John's elbow were protruding from his skin. The doctor there advised us to make an appointment with his orthopedic surgeon immediately.

That night, over Instant Messenger, Trudy and I discussed our plan for the next morning. She was going to ride in the ambulance with John, and I would meet them at the doctor’s office. Trudy wondered whether she should get the nurse to dress John in, “the cute sweats you got him,” for his journey. Then, she mentioned that John had asked her to shave him when she was visiting that night. She told him she couldn’t, but she’d tell the nurse to do it.

ME: Why didn't you just do it with the electric?
TRUDY: It was too late. I was getting tired and I didn't want to drag it out of the box. Besides, I've never used an electric razor before.
ME: It's not difficult.
TRUDY: Did you shave him before?
ME: Yes.
TRUDY: Did you clean the razor afterwards?

Trudy went on to tell me that my Mormon cousin Jenny (daughter of Trudy’s self-effacing Mormon sister Shirley) said she thought this turn of events was actually a blessing. Just as John’s Medicare benefits were running out, a new medical disaster cropped up, so Medicare will kick in again. I told Trudy I thought that was a pretty far reach for a blessing, but she thought the coincidence was, “Unbelievable!” I went on to argue that if John’s further suffering were to be attributed to Divine Intervention, God would have to be a big asshole. To which Trudy replied, “God works in strange ways! Shame on you, Mary! Keep the faith. Your father is at risk. We have to keep all doors open.” I told her that science might be a better door. Always hedging her bets, she wrote, “I said all doors! We are looking for a miracle here!” I reminded her that I was probably the wrong person to discuss this with, and she concluded our online conversation by typing, “You are absolutely right. I don’t know how you became so cynical. Goodbye, Mary!” (TRUDY has gone offline.)

The next day, the orthopedic surgeon determined John would need a skin graft to cover his wound, which had failed to heal properly after the surgery in May. He found another surgeon, who specializes in grafts, to perform the procedure, and John was admitted to the hospital.

This time, John is a patient of USC University Hospital, which is a cut above White Memorial, in my opinion. I would rate it somewhere between Good Samaritan and Cedar Sinai. It’s a teaching hospital, so there are tons of specialists around, they offer valet parking, and there are latte carts out front. They also have satellite television, but unfortunately John can no longer follow, “Jeopardy,” or even, “Everybody Loves Raymond” re-runs, let alone a feature length film.

Once John was tucked into bed, Velvet, the charge nurse, came in to take down some basic information. She asked what medication John has been prescribed, what allergies he has, which insurance will cover his stay, and finally, what religion he practices. Knowing what was coming, I jumped in and firmly stated, “He’s an atheist.” Trudy aimed her special neck twitch in my direction, smiled sweetly at Velvet, and overrode me with, “He’s Catholic.” “Atheist.” “Catholic.” Poor Velvet just stared at the both of us blankly, her pen poised above the form.

I explained that at the last hospital, John got a little testy with the Seventh Day Adventists and I was only trying to spare everyone some embarrassment. This is a lie. John didn’t get testy with them, I did. I got sick of finding their creepy little pamphlets of doom on his bed table. I would hold them up for John and demand, “What’s this? Were the Christians in here praying?” Of course he had no idea. He’d just shrug and mumble, “Jesus, I hope not.” One time I was waiting in the hall while a nurse bathed him, when a couple of old ladies carrying bibles started to walk into his room. I cut them off at the pass with, “Hi! Can I help you?” They didn’t speak English, but one of them smiled placidly, tapped her bible, and pointed to her badge, which read, “Assistant Pastor.” I tried to gently explain that John is an atheist, but I was getting nowhere, so I just waived my arms and over-enunciated, “No! No, thank you! No God in there!” They backed away, but I still found their literature strewn about his room on Saturdays.

Disregarding my explanation, Trudy insisted John be listed as a Catholic. “You never know, Mary.” And then she smirked to herself, adding, “Besides, your father likes nuns.”

Witness

2007-08-31T16:45:00.000-07:00

Faith is Trudy’s forte.

Not the religious kind, where you hold a deep-seated belief that guides you through misery and hardship with the promise that God has a plan, and if you are patient and well behaved, He will reward you in the next life. That takes too long, and it doesn’t sound like a lot of laughs either. (Trudy does, however, keep a stack of Norman Vincent Peale’s, “Power of Positive Thinking” literature by her bed. In this regard she has a vague belief in God, but in no other. She claims to be a Christian, but readily admits she’s just, “hedging her bets,” in case there actually is a judgment day.)

Where Trudy places her unwavering faith is in long shots that promise a big pay off. In this life. Right now. “Double your investment overnight!” “Lose 20 pounds in only 10 days!” “Look 10 years younger – instantly!” Trudy worships get-rich-quick schemes, fad diets, and miracle cures. So, when someone told her there was an experimental, controversial, holistic cure for AIDS available at a clinic in Tijuana, Trudy packed up the Mercedes, and off they went.

For several weeks, Trudy and JB called the Days Inn in Chula Vista, California, home. Recently, Trudy described that period in an instant message: “I have so many fond memories of JB in those weeks we spent in Mexico. Especially, when we walked the streets and shopped. He was a riot. He would not eat a thing in Mexico and of course I love Mexican food. We had so many laughs. Everything I said made him laugh. I think the doctor thought we were on something.”

Yes, JB laughed at Trudy, but he also adored her. Her parodied her infinite vanity, her petty perfectionism, and her duplicitous charm. But he admired them too. He needed her fantasy, so he climbed inside. Trudy called him, “My JB.” And Trudy wasn’t going to let anything happen to Her JB. He wasn’t dying anymore. Trudy had found The Cure.

The other guests staying at the Chula Vista Days Inn were making a last ditch effort to survive their terminal illnesses too. Cancer, mostly. But there was something different about the other guests. They were quiet, polite, but not overtly friendly. They had all traveled by train, from Ohio and from Pennsylvania. And none of them wore zippers. All of the other guests were Amish.

Amused, JB made friends with the women in their bonnets and aprons, and the men sporting long beards and suspenders. He’d wave and make small talk as they passed by the pool, where he floated in the late afternoons after treatments. ("Good day, Sarah, Jebodiah! Lovely evening, is it not?") They would smile and return his greetings despite his worldly shock of bleached blond hair, bare chest and board shorts. Trudy told me they had a funny smell. ("Like a chemical. I never could put my finger on it.")

In the mornings, a van would arrive to ferry the sick across the border into Tijuana. The driver, Willi Yu Cong, acted as an agent for the medical clinics there. He also owned a clothing store in town.

Banned in the United States by the FDA, the cure Trudy found is known as Ozone Therapy. The idea is that by introducing ozone into the bloodstream, unhealthy blood is oxygenated, and the AIDS virus is eliminated. On JB’s first visit to Dr. Angel Hara Zavala’s clinic, a catheter was inserted in his chest, which was to remain there throughout his treatments. Each day, his blood was drawn, mixed with ozone, and then returned to his blood stream. Every day, all day, five days a week.

Trudy remembers the treatments fondly: “It sounds weird, but we had such a good time. We had to get to the clinic early every morning so he could get all the IV in him before the day ended. He had to sit all day getting the Ozone, which took about 6 hours to do. After OJ was arrested, we watched the coverage from the clinic. JB was writing a musical about the murder.”

The treatments were given Monday through Friday. Trudy and JB drove back to LA on Friday nights and returned to Chula Vista every Sunday. In the evenings, and on their long drives up and down the coast of California, Trudy and JB made plans for the future. As soon as he was well, the conversations would begin, JB would get cheek implants and a new chin, while Trudy wanted a facelift and a tummy tuck. Or, JB would produce his musical comedies about OJ and the LA riots, while Trudy would invest in Ozone Therapy and make millions.

Trudy and JB spent several weeks in Chula Vista, but I only visited once. Mostly because I worked during the week, but also because I worried my fear and skepticism would show. I might have asked the doctor too many questions. I might have pointed out that the only other people gullible enough to take this cure were inbred and couldn’t use light bulbs. And that would not have helped. What did help was that Trudy believed. Not because the treatment made sense. But because she wanted JB to live and there was no other solution. Trudy believed wholeheartedly in Ozone Therapy simply because it had to work. And JB believed in Trudy.

During one of JB’s final weeks of treatment, our family went on vacation to West Virginia. JB’s cousin promised Trudy she would stay with him the week Trudy was away. She never showed. So great was Trudy’s faith in The Cure, that when JB died later that week of pneumonia, she insisted it was because he lost hope. “I think he just gave up. He was really scared. He needed someone to be with him. There was no reason for JB to die.”

Will & Grace: The Lost Episode

2007-08-19T15:48:00.000-07:00

JB had suspected something was wrong for a long while. More and more of the time, he was tired, achy and weak. Always wafer thin, he began losing weight. When he could no longer ignore his symptoms, he gathered up the courage to visit his family’s physician in the wealthy, conservative suburb of Brentwood. A phone call from the doctor a week later confirmed the worst. He said, "I think you know what the test results are. You'd better go see someone about it." And that was all.

For two years JB sat on that advice. By the time he burst into my apartment, whipped off his Wayfarers, threw himself on my couch, and announced that he was dying, he had only 2 T-cells left.

After breaking the news to me, and to a few of his other close friends, JB drove to Portland, where his parents had moved to avoid (some might say, evade), "a tax problem." Upon arriving, JB discovered his mother Livia had recently begun displaying signs of dementia, by regularly calling the police to report a burglar whenever she spotted her husband Jim gardening in the backyard.

As soon as he got there, JB sat both his parents down and delivered the stunning revelation that he was a homosexual. During this same chat, he also told them that he had full blown AIDS. Livia didn't really get the gist of what he was saying. Jim, on the other hand, responded pro-actively by providing JB with his very own personal sets of linens and dishes to use throughout his stay. Claiming bankruptcy, he offered JB no further financial assistance.

Back in Los Angeles, JB’s doctors were at a loss. They supplied him with a prescription for AZT, but didn’t spare him the news that it wouldn’t help much, and he probably didn’t have long to live. All his friends had to offer was some money, and emotional support. And JB fought us every step of the way. Remember the brave and stoic attorney Tom Hanks played in that movie, “Philadelphia?” Yeah, JB wasn’t like that. He was terrified. And very, very, very, very angry. At everyone. He was mad at healthy gay men. He was mad at sick gay men. (He was mad at lesbians too, but to be honest, he never cared much for them. “So dowdy.”) He was mad at all of West Hollywood, and in particular a bar he had spent a lot of time in called, appropriately enough, "Rage." He was mad at his doctors for offering no solutions. He was mad at his friends and had a recurring dream in which we would all be seated at a long table, and he’d pull out a gun and kill himself, splattering his infected blood all over us.

He was angry with me and eyed me suspiciously if I was too gentle with him. We made morbid jokes to hide our fear, and to make other people uncomfortable. And, he liked to push me to see how far I’d go. For instance, we’d be at a party and he’d turn to me stone-faced and make some unreasonable demand, like, “I’m going to have my sperm washed and then I want you to carry my baby because I want something to live on after me and I think it would be a very good looking child… if it inherited my patrician nose.” Or, “I want you to buy me front row tickets to see the Barbara Streisand concert. They are only $1,000 a piece.” If I replied in the negative to his demands, he’d continue, whining in a baby voice, “But I’m sick. I have AIDS and I want to see Barbara Streisand!” Then I’d answer, “Well, maybe you should call the Make-a-Wish Foundation.” Thus, horrifying everyone in earshot, except a very pleased JB, who would pee himself with laughter.

But, of course, what JB was really angry about was that there was nothing any of us could do to make him healthy again. Only Trudy offered the one thing of any real use to JB: Hope.

Eating Disorders and the Other Shoe Dropping

2007-08-12T13:40:00.000-07:00

When I got to the convalescent home, John was asleep. It was 85 degrees outside but he's always cold, so a nurse had tucked a blanket tightly around his body. He was listing to one side and breathing quietly through his mouth, which was hanging open. I noticed he doesn't snore anymore. Once in a while his feet jerked, but he didn't wake up.

"Dad? ... Dad? I'm here." He opened one eye and raised a bushy eyebrow. "What time is it?" "About one." I filled him in on what day of the week it was, the month and date, and how long he’d been in the hospital. "Jesus Christ. Gimme some juice, will ya?" He meant Ensure, the vitamin-laced meal replacement, which is just about all he’ll eat these days. I stopped bringing him food from the outside world a couple of weeks ago. He used to love beef tamales, (which is what he was about to order at La Hacienda when he fell down in their parking lot) so one day I brought him one. I was feeding it to him absentmindedly while watching a soap opera, when I looked down and saw a big, gooey, beige wad in the middle of the plate. "Dad, did you just spit that out?" "Yeah." "Why?" "I dunno." "Doesn't it taste good?" "I dunno."......"What is this you're eating?" "I dunno."

An untouched tray of food sat next to the bed, drying out. "Do you want some lunch?" "No. Just gimme a juice." "Come on. It's...I think it's...chicken. It looks good." "No." "One bite." "No, no, no, no, no, no, no." "Just have some mashed potatoes. I'm having some. Mmmm, they're good." For this transgression I am delivered a deservedly icy and incredulous stare. "Dad. You have to eat a few bites of real food if you are going to get stronger and walk." “How do you know?” "How about some fruit cup?" "Leave me alone, will ya? How many times do I have to say no?" "Once more." "Just give me the goddamn juice." "Chocolate or Strawberry?" "Whatever." I grabbed a strawberry Ensure out of stockpile Karla left in the closet, shook it, opened it, and inserted a bendy straw someone left in an empty bottle on his bedside table. I wasn’t moving fast enough, so he started waving me in. I put the Ensure in his good hand. He took the straw into his mouth and started sipping, tilted the bottle too far, and spilled the majority of the pink drink down the front his hospital gown.

I cleaned him up and observed that while he won’t eat, Trudy won’t stop eating, and it’s not good for her because she has diabetes now. Confused, John stopped sucking on his straw and asked what happens when you have diabetes. I told him if that if Mom doesn’t start taking better care of herself, soon she will go blind and they will have to cut her feet off. John rolled his eyes and warned me not to tell my mother that. Then, he chuckled to himself and in a high-pitched girly voice he whined, “My doctor says they’re gonna have to cut off my feeeeet.”

I set up my computer and put in yet another tedious western. John seemed to be enjoying it, recalling scenes and some of the dialogue. I thought he was following along until the dramatic conclusion of the film when the hero rides into town, shoots up the bad guys and rescues the golden-hearted prostitutes. At that point he got a puzzled look on his face and turned to me. "Who the hell is that guy?" That guy was Clint Eastwood.

After the movie ended, I packed up my computer, cut his fingernails, cracked open a chocolate Ensure, made sure his remote control and telephone were within reach, and announced I had to go.

"Oh, you're leaving? "

"Yes, but I'll be back later in the week."

"OK. Keep in touch. When's Mary getting here?"

My Retirement Oasis

2007-08-09T00:20:00.000-07:00

We moved John into a nursing home in Santa Monica last week. Getting him there wasn't easy, since Trudy won't speak to Karla, and when I tried to talk to her about choosing a place she claimed she was having, "a spell," and had to lie down. Also, on the day of John's transfer, Trudy kept hanging up on the hospital's social worker who was trying to organize the move.

We had all been afraid to broach the topic with John. He is already depressed and confused, and Trudy is afraid he is going to think we are abandoning him. ("I just feel so sorry for him.") I was anxious about it too until a couple of weeks ago. One day after we finished watching, "A Fist Full of Dollars," on DVD, I casually mentioned to John that since he may be in the hospital, "for a while longer," we were thinking of moving him some place with better cable. That sat pretty well with him. I told him that it's just temporary, until he can walk again, but that isn't true. He will probably never come home.

The nursing facility is fairly nice. The rooms are cheerful and bright, the staff is friendly, and the food is homemade. All in all, it's not too depressing, discounting the decrepit octogenarians wandering the halls like zombies with walkers. It's kind of, "Sunny Afternoon of the Living Dead."

In any event, it's a far cry better than the, "Retirement Oasis," I visited a few weeks ago near the hospital in Boyle Heights. That place had been recommended by John's internist at the hospital, so I made an appointment to check it out one day before work. I had been warned by a friend who put her dad in a convalescent hospital that some of them can be pretty grim. "It's the smell," she said. "If the place stinks like piss and sour milk, move on." Trudy couldn't make the appointment, but she wanted me to make sure the home wasn't, "just full of old people." I told her that without setting foot inside I would bet good money the place is riddled with the elderly. What else did she expect? Evidently, she was hoping there would be some, "crippled children," there to make it less dreary.

The night before my visit I logged on to their website, which brags that the home was established over 100 years ago and was the first licensed retirement home in California. There are three stages of care there: Independent Living, Assisted Living, and, "Nestled among lush foliage and blooming flowers," is the Skilled Nursing Care wing, where John would reside. More importantly, the online map says there is a "cat sanctuary." And more intriguing still, their most famous resident is Frances Kuyper, better known as The Cake Lady. In fact, the retirement home also houses Mrs. Kuyper's Mini Cake Museum. Tours are conducted by appointment. Admission is free.

After passing through a security gate, I parked in a circular driveway next to a small fountain and walked into the main building. The interior is homey, but kind of claustrophobic and dark. It didn't smell badly, but I felt like I had stepped into 1945, which is probably the last time the place was updated. The Director of Admissions and the Director of Nursing Services, both women in their 60's, gave me a tour. They told me that several former employees have chosen to retire there, and I believe them. They showed me the empty physical therapy room and then the dining hall, where a group of elderly people sat in their wheelchairs, silently waiting for breakfast. Except for one woman in a yellow nightie who sang a song I didn't recognize to her captive audience while an attendant stroked her hair.

I asked to see the residential area so they showed me a couple of rooms that were unoccupied. They were tiny and barely managed to fit a single bed, a dresser and a television. As we were walking down the hall I noticed a woman lying in bed in an elaborately decorated room. She smiled at me and waved, so I veered from my tour and walked up to her door. As I approached, the woman extended her hand to me. "Well, don't just stand out there in the hallway. Please! Come in!" Her name was Elaine and she looked tiny in her frilly bed jacket, propped up with pillows beneath a thick floral bedspread. Her children had covered the walls of her room with family portraits and framed bible verses. There were doilies on the dresser and the nightstand. Across from the bed were two television sets, both on. I then noticed she had a set of ear buds hanging around her neck. I asked her what she was watching and she told me that she likes Christian programming. She watches and records two ministers at a time, so she can enjoy them later with her husband, who lives nearby in Independent Living. This way, she doesn't miss anything. Beaming, she exclaimed, "I am blessed with Direct TV."

The Director of Admissions started to get restless, and maybe a little nervous, so she concluded the tour and escorted me out of the building. I didn't get to visit the cat sanctuary or meet Frances Kuyper, but I did see an old man playing shuffleboard next to a cement koi pond, while construction of a new wing went on noisily behind him. I drove away thinking that while I could spend hours visiting with Elaine and baking with The Cake Lady, John could not. Not even with an advancing case of Alzheimer's to dull the experience. Not even with better cable.

A Well-Known Secret

2007-07-31T00:15:00.000-07:00

JB died alone in a public hospital on the border of Tijuana in August of 1994. The only identification he had on him was a birthday check from his sister, which was found in the pocket of his Levis. He had just turned 31 years old.

In the fall of 1984, JB moved to Italy, where he planned to spend a year studying art history. His stay was cut short, however, when he caught hepatitis that winter, was briefly quarantined, and then deported. It didn't sound like a big deal at the time. I didn't know much about hepatitis (something about used tattoo needles and dirty toilet seats, maybe?), but what I did know was, being hurriedly whisked out of Florence under such dramatic conditions is something JB probably enjoyed just a little bit. He loved attention, he loved drama, and he loved the idea of falling ill.

Returning to California, JB recovered quickly. He finished his undergraduate degree at UCLA, and the following fall he began working on his masters. Since he had blown through his trust fund, he took a job decorating the Christmas trees of celebrities and other wealthy people who can’t be bothered, but are nonetheless filled with holiday spirit. (Apparently, Richard Simmons insisted on a pink and lavender themed tree, Nancy Sinatra just adored him, and Victoria Principal made him use the back door. "Like a servant.")

During that same time, I started my senior year of college in New York, broke up with my boyfriend of four years, and suddenly realized I was about to graduate with a useless degree in drama that I didn't even want. I flew home for winter break a confused, pathetic, weepy mess.

One night just before Christmas, JB and I were sitting around his apartment. I lay on the couch crying and bemoaning my aimless future, while JB sat at his dining room table, carefully wrapping the presents he had artfully chosen for me to give, topping them with elaborate bows, and tagging them in graceful cursive. Suddenly, he threw down the scissors and burst into tears himself. I was shocked and a little irritated. "What are you crying about?" He then lit a cigarette, took a deep, spasmodic drag off of it, tossed his head in my direction and wailed: "I'm.......... gay!"

JB

2007-07-09T00:37:00.000-07:00

I met JB in high school when we were both cast in the fall play. I was a freshman and he was a sophomore.

JB was tall and very thin. He smoked Marlborough Lights. He was a fastidious dresser and hung all of his clothes on wooden hangers, organized by color. He always got all "A's". He took 4 years of Latin and two years of Greek. He hated any art created after the 18th century. When all the other boys were drawing rock stars and making bongs in art class, JB was sculpting delicate figurines of Louis XVI's court out of clay. He was a student prefect. He played classical piano and claimed he would have concertized if he weren't so, "high strung." He loved The Ramones. He enjoyed playing tennis on his court at home, but got out of attending P.E. class permanently with a doctor's note that said he was allergic to grass. He liked gin and cocaine. He was temperamental, spoiled, stuck-up, a pain in the ass, every teacher's pet, and one of the most popular kids in school.

After a few too many G&T's, JB's devoted mother, Livia, would recount the time she brought JB to a child psychologist to test his academic aptitude. They assured her that not only was he very intelligent, "they told me he just LOVED little girls." JB's reticent father, Jim, was a Deacon of the Bel Air Episcopal church, also attended by Ronald Reagan. Because of an undiagnosed stomach disorder, Jim ate only plain, boiled vegetables. JB was certain he had been adopted.

JB was deadly serious and at the same time everything he ever said was a put-on. He grew up in an especially exclusive section of Brentwood, across the street from OJ Simpson's house. After Nicole Brown was stabbed to death, JB liked to tell people she deserved it because she once yelled at him for riding his bike recklessly in the street. He was joking, but not entirely. JB was The Bad Seed with a heart.

I once found JB lounging in bed with my boyfriend's mother, an aging soap opera actress. They were drinking sherry and weeping as they watched re-runs of Brideshead Revisited in the middle of the afternoon. Mothers loved JB. Especially my mother. And JB loved Trudy.

The Communication Age

2007-06-24T00:51:00.000-07:00

Trudy called me crying again the other night because no one visits John. By "no one," she means Karla and Leo. She didn't mention either of them by name because she is angry with Karla, and Leo no longer speaks to her.

I am exhausted. Not so much from spending most of my free time at the hospital entertaining my dad for the last two months, but from spending most of my free time at the hospital with Trudy for the last two months. Not to mention her frequent phone calls, instant messages and emails. I haven't had this much contact with my mother ever before in my entire life. That was always my sister's area.

So, I sent an email to Karla. It read:

"I was at the hospital this morning before work. I just missed the doctor, but the nurse told me that on top of everything else, Dad now has a urinary tract infection. He is very weak and listless. The nurse said the infection can do that and can add to his confusion. I also think he is lonely and could use more visitors. He likes it when I bring my computer and play a movie for him. Should we make up a schedule and each try to visit for a couple of hours 2 or 3 times a week?"

No response.

The next evening Trudy called me at about 10pm. I was on a deadline, so I was still at work. Within less than a minute she was ranting hysterically. There were tons of people around, but all I had to do was listen. "Why doesn't Karla visit? Ever since I needed money, I've been in trouble with those people. But why are they taking it out on John." (By, "those people," she meant her first born child and her husband, who have supported John and Trudy financially for years.) She continued, "This has been a very difficult time for me. I don't know how much more I can take!" You may think she was referring to her husband's slow decent into madness, coupled with his broken bones and various cancers. No. She was talking about losing money on an investment in Liberian goldmines that she went into with a well-known psychopathic Televangelist a few years ago.

(My parents always had some desperate, half-baked, shady get-rich-quick scheme going. And Trudy would always charm any of their friends and family members who had a few dollars into investing in it. They once had a petroleum company in Texas called, "Trude Oil." I remember sitting on the floor in the living room watching "Starsky and Hutch," when John ran in, picked me up and spun me in circles yelling, "We're rich! We're rich!" They had hit a geyser, just like in the movies. Unlike in the movies, the geyser only lasted for a few seconds and we were broke again by the 11 o'clock news.)

Next, Trudy moved on to complaining about a letter Karla wrote her years ago, which listed her grievances against our mother including, but not limited to, the fact that Leo, "always got the short end of the stick." This was Karla's delicate way of reminding Trudy that Leo had been molested in foster care. Trudy sobbed, "That is not true. I didn't even respond to that letter it was so ridiculous. I never put them in foster care! It was a babysitter! I was very busy at the Governor's office working on the Caryl Chessman case. The babysitter said, 'Why don't you just leave him here and pick him up on weekends?' So I did! I have to go. Traffic is getting heavy." Click.

I wrote a second email to Karla, entitled, "Did you get my email?" It read:

"John is very sick. Right now, the only person visiting him during the week is Mom, at night. I am coming on weekends, and when I can before work, but evenings I am at work until 10 or 11 every night. Dad is lying in a hospital bed all day by himself. He doesn't read, he can't really follow books, so he either watches tv or sleeps all day. He mostly refuses food, but he eats better when someone encourages him. He can't get out of bed or even sit up on his own. His arm, back and pelvis are healing very slowly. Mom is starting to snap. It would be great if you could spend some time with him. Read him the paper, watch a movie with him, or maybe get him into a wheelchair and bring him outside for a few minutes."

When I woke up the next morning there was an email from Karla. It was addressed to all of her close friends and family, excluding Trudy. The email announced the arrival of her 28 year old son's new puppy, "Princess Leia, who arrived last night via American Airlines!"

Late that afternoon, another email from Karla arrived:

"I will make every effort to visit when I can. I am also busy with getting moved in and workers needing my guidance during the day. Today is the first day since I’ve been back that I don’t have anyone working on something in the house. It’s difficult for me to even get to my email during the day when the house is filled with workers. So even though I may seem to have tons of free time, getting to the hospital during the weekdays is not always as easy as it may appear.

Would John listen to books on tape? Maybe that would be a source of entertainment for him."

Matinee

2007-06-19T00:50:00.000-07:00

John has been in the hospital for over a month now. He wants to go home. He wants a cigar. He wants privacy. And he wants decent cable. But John won't be leaving the hospital anytime soon. His arm and pelvis are not healing well, and he still can't sit up in bed or stand without assistance. His dementia is getting worse. He is weak and has lost a lot of weight because he refuses most of his meals.

I visit on the weekends, and after work when I can make it before the end of visiting hours. When I'm not there he constantly asks for me, and when I get there he orders me to leave. Then wants to know where the hell I'm going, and when I'm coming back. He won't play cards, and he won't let me take him for a spin around the halls in his wheelchair. To cut the nerve wracking worry and boredom, I started bringing my computer so we can play dvd's. To date we have screened, "Annie Hall," "Broadway Danny Rose," "The Thin Man, ""My Man Godfrey," part of "The Palm Beach Story," ("Turn this crap off!) "The Wild Bunch," "McCabe and Mrs. Miller," and "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly."

Ruth and her boyfriend Neil were visiting Saturday afternoon when I put on the spaghetti western. Ruth loves movies. Because she is nearly blind, she sat right in front of the screen, occasionally standing and leaning in for an even closer look and asking, "Is that Lee Van Cleef?" Or, "Have you seen, 'Play Misty for Me?' That's a great picture." At one point she mentioned, "Somewhere at home I've got a beautiful driftwood frame, painted black with Clint Eastwood's photograph in it." I asked her where she got it. She snuck a sideways glance at Neil across the room, grinned and told me a "friend," gave it to her. "In fact, I've got two." Why two? "One broke but I kept it because I was going to fix it." How long ago? "Oh I don't know. When did this movie come out?" About 40 years ago. "Oh...I've wasted my whole life waiting to get things done. Now I can't die because I have too much to do."

Trudy drives an hour every night to visit John. She tries to coerce him into eating dinner, then they watch the news, and, "Jeopardy." ("We don't care for 'The Wheel.'") Tonight when I called they were watching, "Two and a Half Men." Trudy loves Charlie Sheen because he is so darling. She usually leaves at about 11pm, when the news comes on again. Sometimes on her way home, she calls me from the car, crying. She worries that John has given up. She is upset that the doctors don't return her calls right away. She is angry because the nurses don't make John eat and she complains about, "that one Hispanic girl who has a bad attitude and should really be required to pull her hair back. It isn't sanitary."

The last time Karla saw John was before his fall. She moved back to Los Angeles from Memphis three weeks ago and since her return she has visited the hospital one time, after catching a matinee of, "Jersey Boys," at the nearby Ahmanson Theater. When she walked in the room and saw him, her eyes widened and she quickly explained that she had a friend waiting in the car. After ten minutes, she announced to John that she was leaving. Then she turned her head and mouthed to me, "We're going to dinner. Wanna come?"

Leo lives across town and doesn't visit or call at all. He did, however, send flowers just after John's surgery. The last time I saw Leo was at a restaurant in Playa del Rey. When he reached across the table for a roll, he dropped the napkin covering the bread basket onto a candle nearby, setting it on fire. My nephew and I put it out. Meanwhile, Leo nodded off, waking up just in time to pay the bill.

The Brightside of Dementia or John Makes Lemonade

2007-06-11T23:18:00.000-07:00

White Memorial Medical Center provides a very limited number of tv stations. It carries the broadcast channels from 2 through 13, as well as KCET, some Spanish language channels, and, being a Seventh Day Adventist hospital, The Trinity Broadcasting Network. No History Channel and no Turner Classic Movie channel.

The day after John's surgery, he and I flipped through the paltry selection of Sunday programming offered as he drifted in and out of a morphine stupor. Mostly golf and ministers. We finally settled on a fairly entertaining documentary about sardines. Apparently all kinds of sharks, whales and birds gather to feed on gigantic schools of these tiny fish and although most of the predators are natural enemies, they do not attack each other during the frenzy.

After the nature show ended, an instructional program entitled, "Play Piano in a Flash!" hosted by Scott "The Piano Guy" Houston came on. The show was part of a PBS pledge drive and seemed to run for about six hours. Every ten minutes or so, John would point to the screen, turn to me and ask, "Who is that guy?" I would tell him, "That's Scott, The Piano Guy." And then John would ask, "What else does he play in?" And then I'd explain that Scott isn't an actor playing a piano teacher, he is a piano teacher. John couldn't get his head around the idea of a piano instructor having his own television series, and I can't say I blame him. He'd continue, "But what else has he been in?" And again I'd say that Scott doesn't play in anything else, he just has a show on public television, teaching piano fundamentals. Then, frustrated, he'd shake his head and turn back to the tv set. A minute or so later, "Who is that guy?" And so on.

At one point, I got up to close the door because there was loud music coming from the hallway. It turned out to be a group of Filipino Seventh Day Adventists dressed in coordinating outfits singing hymns about coming home to meet Him. Nothing like songs hopeful of a quick and merciful death to cheer up the infirmed. I grabbed my camera and popped out into the hallway to quickly snap some photos.

When I returned, the pledge drive was back on. The hosts were tallying the tote board and pleading for more contributions. I reached for the remote, hoping to find a Seinfeld rerun, but John held out his arm in protest. "Wait a minute. I think I just won something." "You did? What'd you win, Dad?" A peaceful smile grew slowly on John's face. "I just won seven million dollars."

Safety in Numbers

2007-05-30T22:24:00.000-07:00

The morning John was to have surgery on his broken arm was the first time I'd ever seen him without his teeth. I didn't even know my father wore dentures until the moment I walked into his room. It's not the kind of thing he'd want me to know.

Another thing John wouldn't want me to know is that he has been wearing Depends for at least a year or so. But last week at the other hospital, a harried nurse without the time or tact for modesty charged into his room while I was visiting, shouting, "MR. JOHN! MR. JOHN! YOU HAVE BOW MOVE MEN?? YOU NEED YOUR DIAPER CHANGE???"

Anyway, I pulled up a chair next to my dad's bed and we watched the early edition of the local news. A story about Phil Spector's trial came on. John pointed to the screen. "They oughta lock that guy up." Then, there was a piece about a triple amputee who managed to evade Florida police during a high speed car chase. The man, who has no arms and only one leg, had been arrested several times before on drug and illegal driving charges, for kicking a state trooper twice, and for head-butting his wife. A friend said the amputee was, "The best driver and the worst person," he had ever met. I explained the story to John and he nodded his approval. "Good for him."

Surgery was scheduled for 6 AM. The night before, John encouraged me and Trudy to go home early. "I don't need you here. Go home. It's late. Where are you parked? Where's the lot? Is it in front of the hospital? Is it well lit? Are you parked near each other?" Up until he broke his neck last September, John had insisted on walking me to my car, slipping me a $20, and watching me drive away every time I visited. Despite that ritual, John was never an overly protective father. Growing up, I could go where ever I wanted, whenever I wanted, as long as I heeded his sagely nuggets of caution: "There's safety in numbers." "Always carry mad money." "Don't be cheap; park in a lot." "When you're walking alone at night, always carry your keys in your fist, so they stick out from between your fingers. If someone comes at you, go for his eyes."

At 6:30, the nurse came to wheel my father into the operating room. She insisted that he remove his watch. John has worn the same Baume & Mercier tank watch that my mom gave him for I don't know how long. It drives her crazy that he refuses to replace its beat up brown leather band. I slipped it on my wrist for safekeeping just as Trudy turned up, late, and looking startled that she'd arrived in time to see John off.

Together, we followed John's gurney down the hall toward surgery, while Trudy complained about the traffic going east on the 10 freeway.

On the Move

2007-05-29T22:35:00.000-07:00

On John's third day in the hospital, his doctor determined that although his neck was not re-injured and his back and pelvic injuries would heal on their own in time, his broken arm would require plates and a pin to support it. The orthopedic surgeon who was to perform the operation is a resident at a hospital across town, so an ambulance was summoned to transport my broken father to White Memorial Medical Center in East LA.

Shortly thereafter, two very hot - and sensitive - EMS guys showed up with a gurney. I cowered behind the privacy curtain whimpering, while they carefully lifted John from his bed and he yelled out in pain. Trudy, meanwhile, busily prepared for the move by stuffing her purse with any and all hospital supplies she could get her hands on.

“Do you want any gauze?”

“No. Why would I want gauze?”

“In case. Are you sure? I'll take extra. You might change your mind later....How about latex gloves?”

Bedside Manners

2007-05-28T14:50:00.000-07:00

At the beginning, John spent most of his time at the hospital sleeping. He was on pretty heavy pain medication, plus, he's 86 years old. That's what he does.

On the afternoon of day two, my dad was fast asleep and I was reading a book, when I looked up to find my mother anxiously polishing off the remains of John's mostly untouched lunch. After watching her knock back a cup of room temperature vanilla ice cream like it was a shot of tequila, I asked Trudy whether diabetics are supposed to have ice cream. Ashamed, shook her head no. "So, why are you eating it then?" "I'm nervous... I have a problem."

Just then, a perky blond nurse bounced in to collect John's lunch tray. She called his name, but he didn't respond. She freaked. "John! John!" She put her mouth right next to his ear. "JOHN!" John's eyes popped open. "What?? What??" Perky Nurse sighed. "Geez, John, I thought you were dead!" John sneered and closed his eyes. "Not yet."

The Buggy Whip

2007-05-27T21:23:00.000-07:00

I spent the first day after John's fall at the hospital. That evening, I met friends for an early dinner at a steak house called, "The Buggy Whip," in nearby Westchester. Even though the restaurant is blocks from the house where I grew up, my family rarely ate there. Trudy thought the restaurant was for, "people who don't know enough to go into town to eat." I love it for exactly the same reason. It's dark and unfashionable, there is a piano in the middle of the main dining room, and the portions are swinishly huge in that God-Bless-Fucking-America way. A Tom Collins with a maraschino cherry, followed by a salad drowning in green goddess dressing (tossed table side by our sassy waitress, Karen) and an order of incredibly bland sand dabs were exactly what I needed.

After dinner, I gave one of my friends a tour of my old neighborhood, while we listened to R&B oldies on V100, "Where you have a chance to win His and Her Escalades 5 times a day!" I stopped in front of our house on Springpark Avenue and expected to feel upset, or wistful, or something, but I only felt slightly irritated that the new owners had put big ornate brass handles on the garage doors of our modest California Ranch style house.

The next day at the hospital, I told Trudy where I had been. With a look of bored disdain she said, “The Buggy Whip? Does it still smell of mold? That place gives me the willies.”

Struggling With the Truth

2007-05-15T12:07:00.000-07:00

The other night at the hospital, Trudy told me she had received an email from her friend's 10 year old daughter, Lilly, wishing John well. Lilly had attached a photograph of herself and had written, "Here is a picture of me. I think it's cute! Do you?"

No, Trudy did not. I asked my mother if she was going to let the little girl know that her picture was unflattering. Eyes glued to the television hanging from the ceiling at the foot of John's bed, Trudy responded, "I haven't had a chance to write her back yet. I dunno. (thoughtful pause) She's so sensitive."

Trudy Makes Lemonade

2007-05-13T19:39:00.000-07:00

John fell down again.

The first time he fell was last September, when he walked out of a gas station mini-mart, tripped on a short step, and broke his neck. A specialist in Utah repaired it with a metal pin, and he has been wearing a hard plastic neck brace ever since. Recovery is slow because of his age (86), and because 45 years of smoking have left his bones in not-so-good condition. Even though he was supposed to be up and walking around by now, he mostly lies in bed watching westerns and war movies on Turner Movie Classics, chewing on an unlit cigar.

Last Saturday night he fell down again. Trudy found him flat on his back after he tripped over a decorative log in the nautically themed parking lot of a Mexican restaurant in the Marina del Rey. A security guard helped her to lift him into the car and she took him to a nearby emergency room.

I had been at a comedy show and accidentally left my phone turned off, so Trudy sat for hours alone in the waiting room while doctors took x-rays and evaluated John's injuries. At about 4:00 AM, Trudy noticed a man with a British accent talking to the nurse at the front desk about getting a taxi. He had a bandage around his head and blood all over his shirt. The nurse explained to the man that since it was Cinco de Mayo he would have a long wait for a cab. Instead of making his way back across the room to where he had been sitting before, he walked the shorter distance to where my mother was, and sat beside her. "But he wasn't hitting on me," Trudy felt the need to assure me.

The man asked Trudy why she was there and they struck up a conversation. It turns out that Derrick is from Manchester, and like John, he had fallen down that night. Coincidentally, he was also a bomber pilot in World War II, but for the Royal Air Force. Derrick is only 83, which made him just 18 years old when he started flying planes. This impressed Trudy. She offered that John flew missions over the oil fields in Ploesti, "and wouldn't you know it, so did Derrick!" Derrick described his adventures during WWII, his emigration from England to America, and the passing of his late wife, all quite dramatically and with tears in his eyes. ("I was having such a good time I forgot all about John!")

Once Trudy did remember John, she decided it would be a great idea to bring Derrick back to where he was sprawled out on a gurney to introduce the two. "Your father needs friends." After a brief introduction, that I'm sure went over very well with John, Trudy said goodnight to him and announced that she was leaving to give Derrick a ride back to his place in Venice. ("He was so charming I would have driven him to Azusa!")

Trudy regaled me with this story the following day as we sat at John's bedside in the orthopedic wing of the hospital. It turns out that during this fall, John suffered a broken arm, two compressed fractures in his lumbar spine, and a fractured pelvis. His clothes from the night before were covered in dirt and grease, an indication that he must have rolled around on the ground, struggling to get to his feet before help arrived.

I asked Trudy if she knew why Derrick had fallen. She didn't. I proposed that, given his chattiness, his sentimentality, and his inclination to weep openly in front of a stranger, perhaps he had fallen down drunk. She thought about it and said, "Well, he did smell a little like alcohol, but not like, alcoholic-alcohol-smell, just like alcohol." Did she get Derrick's number when she dropped him off at home? She didn't, which she regrets. "But," Trudy added, "I didn't want to give him the wrong impression."

Trudy Has the Sweet Blood

2007-04-26T22:50:00.000-07:00

The other day Trudy left voicemail messages on both my home and cell phones. Her voice sounded all sing-songy and Up-with-People-perky ("Hi, Mar! It's your mother! Give me a ca-all! I need to talk to you-oo! Bye-by-ee!"), so I decided to give her a ring. That way, I feel less guilty about the many maudlin-toned messages I ignore. ("Mary. Call your mother. Goodbye." Sometimes she'll even sigh heavily into the receiver, for good measure.) If I fail to reply to too many tragi-calls in a row, when I finally do speak to her I get, "Oh. Mary Patricia. I forgot about you." I am returning this call because it sounds like she is in a good mood. It will probably be fairly painless. Also, I won't be the daughter who never calls. I will have stored credit.

So, I phone her up. Even though Trudy has caller ID, she always acts like she's surprised it's me on the line. I don't know why it annoys me, but it does. I guess I consider it to be the first lie of the conversation. I ask her what's going on, and in her bravest Douglas-Sirk-heroine intonation she reveals, "Well,... I have... Diabetes."

Me: (Suspiciously) "Wow, Mom, I'm sorry."

Trudy: "The doctor said I don't have to tell anyone if i don't want to. He says when you are... A Diabetic... people will treat you differently."

Oh boy, is Trudy thrilled with the idea of having diabetes. It may just trump Alzheimer's.

Me: "Really? Differently how?"

Trudy: "He's the top, top diabetes doctor. He's very famous. Luckily, he caught The Diabetes early because I have my blood tested every 16 weeks."

Here it becomes important to know that for the past few years, Trudy has had some difficulty maintaining her girlish figure. I'm guessing it's her age (74), the estrogen she is still prescribed, her sedentary lifestyle, and the massive amount of candy she consumes. However, I'm not a medical professional.

Somehow, Trudy sees her weight gain as outside of her control. And it makes her pretty grumpy. A few weeks ago, my sister was in town and so she stopped in to visit my parents, who hadn't seen her in months. She greeted John and he said, "You look like you've lost weight. You're too skinny, kid." My sister, who is thin, protested. "No, John, I've gained weight. I'm fat." John, argued, "No, you're skinny." But Trudy defended Karla, insisting, "No, John. She's right. She's fat."

Knowing that for her 5'2 frame Trudy is a little to the right of rubenesque, and knowing a little something about diabetes, I ask her what kind she has.

Trudy: "Type 2."

Me: "So, you don't have to take insulin, right?"

Trudy: "No, that's Type 1. But he is prescribing some pills (!!!). I'll have to make my way to the pharmacy to pick them up."

Me: "Is he putting you on a diet?"

Trudy: "Yes, the doctor says the South Beach diet is very good for...Diabetics. I told him that for the past few years I have had the hardest time dieting. I just can't stop craving chocolate, and he tells me that's part of it."

Me; "Part of..."

Trudy: "He also said I should inform the children because you should all be tested. He said diabetes is very hereditary."

Me: "Really? I thought Type 2 diabetes was caused by poor diet and lack of exercise."

Trudy: "And, apple-shaped women are more prone to diabetes. You know, women who carry their weight around their middle."

Me: (From between gritted teeth) "But I'm not apple-shaped, Mom."

Trudy: "I know. You're lucky... Pear-shaped women don't get it as often."

While Trudy was Away

2007-04-18T22:12:00.000-07:00

While Trudy was living in Sacramento, another kind of chaos took hold at home. This was mostly due to the fact that although John was a reliable and kind father, and even enjoyed our company, he was also an absent-minded intellectual, often lost in his own world. He had no idea how to raise children, and certainly never expected to do it mostly by himself. He laid down no rules that I can recall; he just treated us like other adults he happened to share a house with. Because of my father, I could read before I started preschool, but I could also mix an Old Fashioned.

During the day, while John was at work, there was usually a housekeeper around to keep an eye on us. First, there was Charity, who treated us like her grandchildren. She made us meatloaf and let me sit with her after school to watch her favorite stories: "General Hospital," "Marcus Welby, MD," and "Medical Center." After Charity retired, my parents hired Willie Mae, who had white hair and ignored us entirely while she listened to Dodgers games on her transistor radio and vacuumed. Lucille came next. She was tall and skinny, smoked cigarettes, taught me how to tell time and, according to Trudy, had a "bad attitude." One time when Lucille was kneeling on the floor in front of the tub, giving me a bath, I referred to her as, "the maid." She sat up, yanked the Salem out of her mouth, narrowed her eyes at me and said, "I am not your maid. I am your House. Keeper." I felt ashamed and terrified and I was in absolute awe of her.

But none of those women, or any who followed, could manage my brother’s temper. Leo was, understandably, a very pissed off kid. I get the impression foster care didn't turn out to be the summer camp experience Trudy probably sold it as. Leo was loud, obnoxious and violent (but also funny in a Three Stooges, pull-my-finger sort of way). Occasionally, he would pretend to be interested in playing together, but that typically meant a rousing game of 52 pick-up, sitting on top of me and tickling me until I couldn't breathe, or locking me in the pantry with the lights off until I begged him to let me out. (Fun!)

Everything in Leo’s wake was usually left broken, injured or on fire. Once during a disagreement, my sister swatted him on the butt with a hairbrush, so in retaliation he broke her arm with a golf club. He was aiming at her head. Encountering Leo in the hallway always meant trouble. Our two Yorkshire Terriers had learned to scoot along the wall whenever they came upon him because he liked to snatch one up, swing her between his legs and send her sliding down the terrazzo floor until she crashed into the refrigerator at the opposite end of the hall. Whenever I ran into my brother, I would face the wall and try to slide past before he could grab hold of my yet-to-exist boobs, twist them and yell, "ska-weeez !!" He found this hilarious. I wanted him dead.

Finally, at six o'clock, John would arrive home, usually carrying take-out from McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken or Campari's, the Italian restaurant down the street. But by this time the drama would be over. Leo would have retreated to his room to blast Black Sabbath and smoke the dope he kept stashed in the ceramic skull on his bookshelf.

Normally, if Karla or I told on Leo, nothing much would happen. As far as I can remember, he was never officially punished for anything he did. Not after he beat us up, not after he set his room on fire, and not after the cops brought him home for throwing hangers over the electrical wires and blacking out the neighborhood. John didn't believe in punishment, and Trudy wouldn't want to get that involved. John might yell at Leo if he caught him red handed, but Trudy would turn it on us, advising, "If you don't want Leo to bother you, stop provoking him!"

Love and Marriage

2007-04-01T13:00:00.000-07:00

Recently, I asked my father why Trudy put Leo in foster care and sent Karla to live with our grandmother. His reply was, "You know your mother as well as I do." When I asked him what he meant by that he continued, "I guess she didn't want too many people around."

Despite her yen for solitude, Trudy married John at the courthouse in Carson City, Nevada, on November 5, 1961. (There are no photographs of this event and neither of them has ever told me a single detail of that day. They never celebrate their anniversary, and last time I asked they weren't sure what day or even what year they were married. When I needed a copy of their marriage certificate, I had to send a request to Nevada twice because Trudy thought they were married on November 22, 1960, until she remembered November 22 was the day Kennedy was assassinated, three years later. "That's why that date sticks in my head." Of course, she has no idea where they put their original certificate.)

After retrieving Karla and Leo, the newlyweds moved down to Los Angeles, where John was hoping to find work as a mortgage broker. They rented an apartment in Inglewood and three years later, I showed up. Every year on my birthday Trudy repeats the same story: "The day you were born, I went to the nursery, looked in the window, and as soon as I laid eyes on you I knew you were mine. Because you were the only white baby there." I have given up asking Trudy for more details about my early childhood because she can never come up with much. When I ask her what I was like as a baby she shrugs and says, "You were so quiet. You never cried or anything. You never really bothered me." The only other memory Trudy has shared, she and John recounted together, chuckling. Apparently, one night when I was still an infant, my parents were standing in front of my crib having a big fight. I guess at one point the argument got really heated, and Trudy decided John was going to throw a punch, so she picked me up out of my crib and held me out in front of her, like a diapered riot shield. Since he chose not to hit her, I think they are under the impression that this is a charming story illustrating my father's love for me. (Just for the record, as far as I know, John has never hit Trudy, or anyone else for that matter. He won't even kill bugs. Instead, he scoops them onto a piece of paper and frees them in the backyard.)

When I was a year old, we moved into a house in a more upscale suburban neighborhood next to Inglewood. By the time I was two or three, Trudy had taken a job up in Sacramento, working for a lobbyist. That meant she only came home to LA on weekends. John was left to take care of the kids on his own most of the time, with the help of a string of housekeepers and eventually, my grandmother, Madge. Or as my father refers to her, "The Man Hater."

Although my mother wasn't home that much, she and John continued to fight. They were constantly at each other's throats, but I can't remember what one single disagreement was about. I think the bottom line was, if Trudy is unhappy, everyone else is going to be unhappy too. And when Trudy was unhappy she would either rage at you, or freeze you out. John's standard reaction to one of her moods was to lean toward his listener, shove his thumb in Trudy's direction and stage whisper, "It's the Kraut in her."

Trudy is small, but when she's pissed, she is a maniac. She has broken dishes and windows, and every bottle of booze in the bar. She somehow managed to knock a hole in the dry wall in the kitchen, and once she even pushed over the Christmas tree - bulbs, lights and all. I remember one Easter hiding behind my sister while we watched Trudy scream and pelt John with See's assorted chocolates.

After a big blowup, Trudy would walk around the house in a sulk, concealing her puffy eyes behind big Jackie O. sunglasses and giving us all the silent treatment. My dad would usually hide out in the backyard, nose in some book about quarks or black holes, smoking cigars, until the whole thing blew over. Occasionally, John would leave her, or she'd throw him out, but he'd always be back in a day or two with a sheepish look on his face, bearing flowers, jewelry, or one time, oddly, a portable black and white television set.

Karla says their arguments revolved around money. John never made quite enough of it to cover the lifestyle Trudy expected. Because of this, my parents have always lived beyond their means. For a long time our furniture consisted of plastic covered, hand-me-down chintz couches from my grandmother and a coffee table with folding legs. Nevertheless, Trudy drove a Lincoln.

John survived the Great Depression and piloted dangerous bombing missions over Nazi Germany, but he has always been powerless against the Force of Trudy. The only piece of advice he ever gave Leo about women was, "Never marry for beauty." But despite their long, stormy relationship, John will still stop us dead in our tracks whenever one of us complains about Trudy with the simple, but forcefully delivered, statement, "She's your mother."

John

2007-03-28T00:08:00.000-07:00

John was born in San Francisco in 1920 to Irish immigrant parents. He had two brothers and two sisters. His stern, devoutly Catholic mother, Mary, worked as a telephone operator. During Prohibition, his cheerfully alcoholic father, Frank, ran a speakeasy near Seal Stadium. After Prohibition was repealed, Frank ran a legitimate bar called The Balboa Club in The Sunset District. Mary never once set foot in either establishment.

John likes to say, "There are three kinds of Irishmen. The ones who are too friendly, the ones who aren't friendly at all, and bartenders." Eventually, Frank gave away too many drinks and lost his bar, so he began working as a bartender. "Everybody liked him. He worked all over town. He was known as the life of the party." He was also known to pass out drunk at work, although John refers to it as, "sitting at the bar, sleeping." It was my father who usually had to carry him home. "But," he says, "that's OK."

John speaks romantically about the Great Depression. I suppose that's because both his parents had jobs, so they weren't as badly off as many. He went to St. Ignatius High School and two years of Junior College before Pearl Harbor was bombed and he and his brothers enlisted for service. Fran joined the Navy, Bobby joined the Marines and John joined the Air Force, serving as a bomber pilot in the European Theatre. All three sons came home alive and relatively unharmed. To this day, John talks about his experience in the war almost constantly. When I was a kid he told me he personally killed Hitler. He also once told me he designed our swimming pool to look like a part of some river he flew over in Africa, and I believed him until someone told me it was just kidney-shaped.

After the war, John returned to San Francisco. John loves the city, but he likes to tell you how the beatniks ruined it. I'm not sure exactly what he did there between the end of the war and the late 50's, when he met Trudy, but I do know there was a lot of drinking, clubbing, and, "running around with cute broads." Once in a while he likes to show me the clipping from Herb Caen's column calling him an, "eligible bachelor about town."

John is 6'2 and slender. He has one brown eye and one green eye. He can wiggle his eyebrows one at a time on command. He can't lift his right arm over his head since he broke his collarbone in a plane crash during the war. He always carries a handkerchief in his pocket and he was a snappy dresser until sometime during his late 70's, when he took to wearing Sansabelt slacks, loud Tommy Bahamas shirts, Adidas with white socks, and giant eyeglasses he must have picked up at Rite Aid, which are always smudged and look a little crooked.

John smokes cigars. He gave up cigarettes before I was born because, "Cigarettes'll kill you." Cigars, he is convinced, won't kill him because he doesn't inhale. Trudy doesn't allow smoking in her house, so he used to spend most of his time at home smoking in the backyard with a book, or in his car in the driveway, listening to the radio.

John sings all the time. He loves Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, Benny Goodman and any mixed tape I happened to throw in the cassette player in the car as a teenager. He doesn't care for Frank Sinatra and was once thrown out of a Vegas Casino showroom for heckling him. He says country music is for rubes, but that's only because Trudy listens to it. To tease her, whenever John sneezes he yells, "Aha! San Antone!" Trudy loves Bob Wills, Maddox Brothers and Rose, Hank, Lefty, Buck Owens, Patsy and Loretta Lynn because, "She's a coal miner's daughter too." She hates Tammy Wynette because, "She's such a victim."

John is an atheist. He taught me that believing in God is exactly like believing in the Easter Bunny. "Except people who believe in the Easter Bunny don't go out and kill other people in his name!" Whenever Jehovah's Witnesses came to our door, he'd invite them inside and then lecture them on how they were being oppressed. Both my grandmothers regularly gave my dad grief for not having me baptized. I finally suggested to him that maybe he should do it just to make them happy. "I mean, what's the big deal?" He stared down at me, smiling, and said, "You want to be baptized?" Then he dipped his fingers in his scotch and splashed me on the forehead and on both shoulders. "There you go, kid. You're baptized."

Trudy the Divorcee

2007-03-18T15:28:00.000-07:00

Another thing about Trudy is that she is very secretive. And not always about something important. Ask her any question and you will hardly ever get a straight answer. Instead, she'll smile, giggle and give some flippant reply. What time is it? "Time to buy a new watch." When will you be back? "Who wants to know?" Why did you marry Dad? "Beats me."

If you ask her the wrong thing in front of someone she is keeping a secret from, she'll give you a sideways glance, shake her head almost imperceptibly and softly mutter, "Mmm-mmm." Then she'll immediately change the subject. If you are on the phone with her and ask about something she doesn't want to address, she'll just say, "I have to go to the bathroom. I'll call you right back," and hang up. If you ask her about something she really doesn't want to tell you, and her back is to the wall, she'll burst into tears. (Trudy can cry at the drop of a hat and stop on a dime. You never know when this is coming either. One time I set her off by asking why she fills those little green baskets they sell strawberries in with empty Great Lash mascara tubes, and keeps them under her bathroom sink.)

What little I do know about my mother's life before I was born, I have pieced together from stories told by other family members, and from gathering crumbs Trudy has accidentally dropped through the years. With the knowledge that she is ferociously protective of her secrets, only the uninitiated or a fool would ask her direct questions like, "Why did you leave your first husband? Why were you living in an apartment in Mill Valley? Why did you send Karla to live with Grandma and put Leo in foster care when you lived there?"

Actually, Karla and Leo, who were 6 and 3 at the time, did live with Trudy, but only on the weekends. I don't know why they didn't live with her full-time. And I have no idea why Leo couldn't just stay with his father, my grandmother, or any of Trudy's three sisters. I didn't even know there was a time Karla and Leo didn't live with our mom until I was in high school, when Karla asked Trudy about it in a moment of anger. Back to the wall, Trudy ran out of the room sobbing, and my father yelled at my sister for upsetting her.

Because Trudy refuses to talk about it, my sister, brother and I have concocted several far-fetched theories about why she farmed them out. We considered a mental breakdown, serious illness, or custody issues that could have forced her to hide the children. But I don't see Trudy's decisions being shaped by forces outside of her control. Ever. The most plausible reason that we came up with, the one I have settled on, is that Trudy simply wanted them out of her hair for a while so she could, "get her act together."

That explanation is so much more Trudy's style. In fact, she uses that phrase almost daily. It's her mantra. "Is it 11:00 already? I was supposed to be at the hairdresser at 10:30! I have really got to get my act together!"

Trudy's Second Husband

2007-03-14T09:47:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, my parents sold their house and moved into an apartment. Their five-bedroom house was too big for them, plus they couldn't afford it anymore, so my sister and her husband bought them a two-bedroom condo near the beach.

Since they moved in, Trudy has refused to park in their assigned parking space in the garage of their new digs because it is too far away from their apartment. She doesn't park in front of the building, where she would be very close to their front door, because there her car would be exposed to the elements. Instead, Trudy parks in the garage, in the area marked, "2 Hour Parking - Guests Only." Last week, when I came by to have lunch with my dad, I found a stack of notices on the kitchen counter ordering my mother to stop parking in the, "area reserved for visitors," and threatening to tow her car.

Appropriately enough, about 50 years ago, my father met my mother because she repeatedly parked her car in his space at the apartment building where they both lived in Mill Valley. Trudy parked in my dad's space because it was much more convenient to her apartment than her own space was. My father tells this story with a shrug of his shoulders and a resigned, "Well, what could I do? I had to marry her," smile on his face. My mother smiles too, fondly remembering that she drove a white Cadillac in those days.

We Still Call Her Ruth

2007-03-09T09:30:00.000-08:00

In 1944, the year her father was killed, Ruth changed her name and left Sacramento.

Her destination: Hollywood. Her goal: "To become a star. A singer, not an actress. Anyone can act." Her brand new stage name: Karla Kennedy.

Tangential Tidbit: Obviously, my aunt changed her surname to Kennedy long before Jack's ascent to the presidency. Oddly, years later Trudy's school girl crush on President Kennedy led her to wrangle tickets for herself and Ruth/Karla to his inauguration. I have the home movies to prove it. They screamed and cried throughout the entire ceremony like it was a Beatles concert. 21 years later, I wore Trudy's kelly green taffeta inaugural ball gown to my senior prom.

And speaking of Trudy: In 1952, eight years after Ruth changed her name to Karla, my mother named her first born child Karla. When I asked her if she named my sister after my aunt, she looked puzzled and shook her head. I've never asked my aunt about it.

But back to 1944: Upon arriving in Los Angeles, “Karla” got herself a room at the Roosevelt Hotel and a job at Paramount Studios as a keypunch operator. I don't understand what a keypunch operator does exactly. Both Ruth and my dad tried to explain it to me, but I still don't get it. A keypunch is a big machine that punches holes in cards. I don't know what the cards were used for, but Karla knew how to keypunch and there was a big need for keypunch operators, who were usually women, right around WWII.

The reason Karla chose to work at Paramount was that her favorite star, Alan Ladd, was under contract there and she hoped to meet him. When she finally saw Ladd on the lot she was crushed to discover that he was only about 5’4. She even heard he had to stand on a box to shoot his love scenes.

Because it was war time and housing for soldiers was scarce, there was a four day limit to hotel stays. So, Karla needed to find another place to live, quickly. (What she later found out was that girls, "in the know," just went down to the front desk and re-registered under a different name every four days.) She ended up moving around the corner to a boarding house on Orange Drive, where some young performer types were living. The place was crowded, but it sounds like it was lots of fun. There were girls sleeping on the couch and on the floor and the guys all stayed out back in a guest house. Karla remembers Claude Rains used to sneak in late at night to visit his girlfriend who was resident.

Throughout the 40’s and 50’s, Karla sang in most of the popular Los Angeles nightclubs and lived the fast-paced, exciting life of a young Hollywood hopeful. She did some modeling, and occasionally served as the attractive accessory of an actor out on the town. She had a date with Gary Cooper, went on vacation with Howard Hughes, and was flown to Vegas by mobsters for a weekend (along with my mother, who refuses to give many details except that they bought them new dresses).

But Karla never made it as an entertainer. Mostly when she hobnobbed with celebrities, it was while serving them drinks at The Crescendo, a night club on the Sunset Strip. She didn't appear to be sad or bitter about it. As far as I could tell, she was happy with her life and loved to gossip about the stars she waited on. For instance, she told me, “Eva Gardner was a sad drunk but that’s because Frank Sinatra was mean to her and forced her to have an abortion.” How you glean that kind of information while serving them highballs is beyond me. Also, she loved Lenny Bruce who was very nice, hysterically funny and once gave her a fountain pen. She blames, “that stripper,” for getting him on, “the drugs.”

After growing up hearing so many exciting stories, it never occurred to me that my aunt was unhappy. Until I saw the inside of her condo a few months ago. Before then, there was only one indication that perhaps Karla's life hadn't turned out the way she had hoped. I've never heard her sing.

The Hollywood Mystery Condo

2007-03-06T08:44:00.001-08:00

Ruth was going to be in the hospital for a couple of weeks after her accident, so my mother decided she had better run over to Ruth's condo and collect her mail. I don't live far from my aunt, so when Trudy called in a panic and asked me to meet her there, I sped right over. My sister and I were dying to know what it was like inside that condo. Well, I was dying to know. My sister probably could have lived happily with the mystery.

When I got there, Trudy was waiting for me out front. This is not something Trudy does. Trudy doesn't wait; Trudy keeps other people waiting. In fact, I believe this was the first time she had ever beaten me to any location, ever, including her own home. I knew something big was up.

This wasn't my mom's maiden visit to the condo, she'd been there a few days before, but she was afraid to go back in alone. (On occasion, my mother has been known to complain of, "out of body experiences," so she may have thought she was hallucinating on the first trip and wanted a rational witness.) A tenant leaving the building to walk her dog held the door open for us, and we took the elevator to the second floor. Trudy filled me in on the ride up, but I was still unprepared for what I saw.

My mother put the key in the door but could only manage to get it open a few inches, just wide enough for us to squeeze through, one at a time. I went first. I thought something had fallen against the door, so I stuck my arm in and felt for the light switch. After I flipped it on and stuck my head inside, I realized that a stack of boxes was wedged up against the door, preventing it from opening all the way. I squirmed my way inside and all I could see were more boxes. They were stacked to the ceiling. Everywhere. Except for a narrow path leading down the hallway, past the kitchen, which was to the right. The kitchen was full of boxes too. The refrigerator door stood open and boxes were pouring out of it as well. There were boxes on the stove, in the oven, in the sink and in all the open cupboards.

I moved past the kitchen, following the narrow path to the living room, which I couldn't enter because it was entirely full of boxes and shopping bags from every department store on earth (including the decades-defunct Joseph Magnin), unopened UPS packages ordered from several catalogues, as well as plates, Christmas ornaments and silver spoons ordered from The Franklin Mint and a variety of other collectibles companies. Buried under the sea of shopping was a white upright piano, a wet bar, and probably a sofa and some chairs but I didn't see them. I remember I turned to my mother to say, "holy fucking shit," or something of that nature, and I knocked over a stack of empty containers of French Vanilla Viactiv Calcium Soft Chews with my purse.

The path took a sharp left turn and led to the bedroom, where there was nothing but racks of dresses, many with the tags still affixed, and boxes of unworn shoes. A bed was covered with clothing as well. The en suite bathroom was filled with products: medicine, make-up, perfume, curlers, all covered with a thick layer of dust. A pair of worn-out light blue slippers sat by the sink. Suddenly, spontaneously, Trudy shouted, "My sister is not crazy!" I disagreed, adding lamely, "But that doesn't make her a bad person."

It was then that Trudy pulled the quack doctor card from her sleeve. In the 70's she had Dr. Peacock, who provided her with vitamin shots and diet pills. He also pulled my braids and slapped my ass every time he came to my parents house for drinks, shouting, "I delivered you!" Dr. Peacock eventually had a stroke and died, so in her advancing age, Mom placed her faith in Dr. Medvey. "I called Dr. Medvey and he says there is nothing wrong with Ruth." Dr. Medvey is the one who keeps my mom in an eternal mid-menopausal state.

We decided that since Ruth would be staying with my parents during her recovery, there was no reason to address her hoarding problem right away. I came up with a vague plan to slowly introduce the fun idea of a thorough, "spring cleaning project," once she was feeling better. On the way out the door, I put forth the idea that Trudy herself might have a few more "collectibles," cluttering up the house if she hadn't had my father and her children around taking up space. To which she replied coolly, "Oh, do I have all of you to thank?"

My Favorite Aunt

2007-03-02T15:20:00.000-08:00

My aunt Ruth is 80 years old. She has macular degeneration, which means she is legally blind. But does that stop her from driving all over LA in her 1976 gold Chevy Camero? It didn't until one afternoon last summer, when she was making her way into Hollywood on Cahuenga to fill a prescription from her eye doctor, and she collided head-on with, "some girl who wasn't looking where she was going."

The "girl" had minor injuries, but my aunt was seriously injured. She had internal bleeding and they had to cut out part of her spleen and some of her intestines. She is lucky to be alive and lucky that she didn't kill anyone else. When I got to the hospital, Ruth was in bad shape, but she was conscious. Standing next to her bed, holding her hand, I joked (gently), "So, no more driving, right?" Ruth replied, "Well, I guess not. They'll never insure me now. And my car is probably totaled." By the way, not only had she been driving blind, but she no longer held a license. She had tried to renew it earlier in the year by having her boyfriend fill out the paperwork (because she couldn't see it), but then they wanted her to take a vision test. She told them she forgot something in the car and never went back.

It's been several months since the accident and Ruth is doing alright, but she has lost a lot of weight. Food tends to go right through her because of her intestine shortage. Trudy thinks she looks fabulous. "Have you seen Ruth? She looks 50! I am so jealous." When I asked her how Ruth was going to stop losing weight, my mother looked at me blankly and said, "I don't know." Like, it was the most ludicrous question she'd ever been asked.

When my mom would have one of her meltdowns, Ruth was the only one who could venture into her bedroom and calm her down. I remember Ruth as being very “groovy,” back in the late 60’s and 70’s. She wore cool shift dresses, high, pointy heels and lots of costume jewelry. And she often wore “fashion wigs,” so she’d have totally different hair every time I saw her. She always had boyfriends, two or three at a time. At one point she was dating a DJ named Dera, who had a creepy, overly-modulated voice and used to bring me stuffed animals; a compulsive gambler named Big Stan, who was really big and tall and sweet and wore turquoise jewelry and would give me money if he won at the track; and a scandalously young waiter from Chasen’s restaurant whose name I forget.

When I was a kid, I was Ruth’s favorite. She used to like to buy me toys and take me places, like to the movies and the zoo. That’s probably because Trudy wasn’t around a lot of the time and because she didn’t have any kids of her own. And that’s because, Bobby, “that-good-for-nothing-bastard ex-husband of hers,” who loafed around all day on public golf courses while she waited tables, left her one day, out of the blue, with all her savings. The reason they had no kids it turns out is that, unbeknownst to Ruth, Bobby had had a vasectomy before they were married. No one talks about him in front of her, but whenever he comes up Trudy always sighs and says, “Yeah, but boy, was he good looking.”

When I was about five or six, Ruth would bring me to her condo in the Hollywood Hills and let me try on her wigs and swim in the pool. That was in 1969. She hasn’t let anyone into her condo since then. No one. Not any of her family, not any of her boyfriends, not even a repair man has seen the inside of that condo since 1969.

Until the accident.

Recant

2007-03-01T13:36:00.000-08:00

I just got a voicemail message from Trudy telling me she is making a "fabulous stew," so would I like to join her and my father for dinner. Yes, my mother does occasionally cook. When she does it is always the same thing: Fabulous Crock Pot Stew.

Actually, it is really good. I'd include the recipe, but it's a family secret. Unless you happen to own the book, "Rival Crock Pot Cooking." For the record, I own a Crock Pot myself. Once in a while I make the "Famous chili," which can be found on page 177.

Anyway, my aunt and her boyfriend have been invited for dinner too. More about them to come.

Trudy

2007-02-28T17:09:00.000-08:00

Trudy is from Sacramento. She was born in 1933, the youngest of four daughters. Her father worked in coal mines in Kentucky and then after moving the family to California, he ran floating crap games. He was shot to death when Trudy was 11 over a gambling debt. To support the girls, her mother pumped gas in a filling station during WWII. It sounds to me like they were poor and kind of ... trashy, but my mother won't admit it. She will turn up her nose and say, "We were broke. Not poor. There's a difference."

Trudy married for the first time at 17, had a daughter and a son, divorced, married again at 28, moved down to Los Angeles and had me. Shortly after that, she took a job back up in Sacramento and flew down to LA to live with us on the weekends.

Trudy is 5'2. In her prime she looked like a movie star and she knows it. Not Liz Taylor exactly, and not Debbie Reynolds really... but someone else kind of like that. She poses for every picture the same way: one leg forward, hand on hip, head slightly cocked, perfectly calibrated smile. Not too toothy. Trudy NEVER leaves the house without her face on. She used to spend hours in her bathroom putting on makeup and talking to me and my friends through her bathroom window while we laid out in the backyard. People used to sometimes mistake her for Suzanne Pleshette when she'd be shopping in Saks or Bonwit Teller. Trudy hated it when people mistook her for Suzanne Pleshette.

Trudy expects to be treated like a movie star and usually is. Everyone loves Trudy, and Trudy loves anyone who doesn't bore her. Random men were always sending her flowers and doing her favors. My father brought her coffee in bed every morning of her life until he got Alzheimer's and forgot how to use the coffee maker. Which is probably why for a long time she insisted my Dad was, "faking it for attention."

Trudy is permanently on a diet and always cheats. In the 70's she used to go to Dr. Peacock for "vitamin shots," and she kept a bag of Black Beauties in a drawer in her bathroom that my brother dipped into on a regular basis.

There is a clear lucite sign sitting on Trudy's coffee table that reads, "Thank You for Not Smoking." She also has a four foot tall metal sculpture of a clown standing next to the fire place. She likes to brag that the only other one in existence is owned by Jerry Lewis.

Trudy always grocery shops in the middle of the night. She claims she can cook, but never does. We ate out or had take in almost every night. She keeps medicine and food long after it's expiration date. She once gave my friend cold remedy that was 12 years old. She can also get a stain out of ANYTHING. It's weird.

Trudy is prone to temper tantrums. She always threw one on Christmas just before the guests were to arrive, then she'd retreat to her room for a good cry. At about 10 or 11pm, after everyone was assembled and dying for dinner, she would reappear, her face on, charming and cheerful as ever, and looking glamorous.

Sometimes she would lie in her bedroom, in the dark with a cold washcloth over her eyes for days. Anyone who dared go in there to ask what was for dinner, or if you could go outside and play, could get something thrown at them, or worse, have to hear her moan, "No one cares about me. No one helps me around here. I don't care. Do what you want." Then, suddenly, the next day she'd bounce out of her room, perky and fresh-faced, shouting, "Come on! Let's take a bike ride to Dinah's for pancakes!" or, "Who feels like going to Disneyland?!"

It's Trudy's world, we just live in it: Trudy always parks where ever she likes and throws away her parking tickets. Just after my sister got her driver's license at 16, she was pulled out of class and sent to the principal's office. Trudy was on the phone. She wanted my sister excused for a "family emergency." She then told my sister to hitch-hike to the airport, asap. It seems that Trudy had been late to catch a plane and so she left her car running with the keys in it, curbside. You know, where the skycaps stand? There. My sister arrived just before they towed the car away.

Trudy fantacizes about doing some kind of charity work but never does. For awhile she talked about holding crack babies at a local hospital, but that dream inexplicably faded away.

When Trudy likes something, it's "fabulous." She whispers when she says someone has, "cancer," or that they are "Jewish," or "Black." I am fairly certain that Trudy has never used the word, "vagina," but if she did, she'd whisper it for sure.

Speaking of vaginas, my mother thinks virgins can't use tampons. When I was a teenager she would sometimes poke me in the breast, or slide her hand down my back when I was on the way out the door with a boy and whisper, "Are you wearing a bra?" At 17, I asked her what she used for birth control. She gave me a haughty look and said, "I manage." To this day, Trudy continues to menstruate because she, "isn't ready," to finish going through menopause, "yet." In other words, my 73 year old mother could still get pregnant.

Trudy shops like a maniac, buys in bulk, and doesn't like to throw anything away. She has kept all of our school papers and board games, every piece of clothing she ever wore, and until recently, several rooms in their house were filled with empty boxes, "in case." And for some reason she keeps a giant garbage bag full of novelty Christmas watches on hand.

Trudy is highly sentimental. She keeps one of those big paper calendar blotter things in the kitchen so she can keep track of special days. For instance on March 7 it will read: "Leo's 35th Birthday!" and she'll draw a little happy face next to it. Or say, on May 5 it will read, "Karla and Jeff's 10th Anniversary!" and she'll draw little wedding bells next to it, or on August 27 it will read, "JB died." And she'll draw a sad face with tears squirting out of it's eyes.