Farewell to Sam and Rose
No matter how old you are, everything changes when your parents die. The wall between you and death collapses; suddenly gone are the only people who could speak with true authority. My life has been spent chasing mentors, each of them being like a substitute parent, but when your real parents die, you realize certain things are irreplaceable. They go and never come back. It's a blow. This is what it means to be an orphan.
My mother got sick first. By this time, I'd been sick myself, with prostate cancer. I won't go into detail, except to say it reminded me of the fragility of life. We are all walking on a wire. The key is to behave as if you will live forever. Her first symptoms presented themselves as anxiety or forgetfulness. This was in the late 1980s. She was still my mother, still the same woman with the same face and hands, but the curtain was coming down. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Each day was a little worse than the day before. She got lost in her own neighborhood, then her own house, then her own mind. She couldn't recognize friends and family. It was very hard on my father. Here was this woman, the great love of his life, sitting next to him as always, but already gone. It was obvious to me that something had to be done; the situation could not go on. My father could not make that decision because it was too painful. My brother could not do it because he was too close. Distance allowed me to see the situation more clearly. I flew to New York, went to the apartment, took my mother to the Riverdale Home for the Aged. When my father objected, I said, "This is what we're doing." It was the most painful day of my life. My father went over there every morning, did what he could, watched her fade-God knows what he was thinking.
She died on April 30, 2000. I stood at her graveside, said the prayers, and cried. A man without a mother is a man without a country, an exile. You never recover from it. My mother was the Bronx and the family and the streets at sundown and the merchants in the shops and the smoke and the smell of cooking and the train rattling over Jerome Avenue, the safety and love of family, everyone at the table, the world when the world was whole.
My father was now alone for the first time in more than fifty years. He did not talk about what was going on inside him, how he felt, any of that. That was his generation-they worked for us, gave up their lives and bodies for us, without a whisper of regret or complaint. My brother and I went on with our lives, too. It's the way with the titanic events, a death in the family, the loss of an indispensable person. The world should end, but it does not. It goes on, and carries you with it.
About eight weeks after the funeral, I was in Kennebunkport with Jane. I tend to get bored in Maine, and spend most of the time driving around. One morning, as we passed a Ford dealership, I said to Jane, "I want to buy a new car."
"Why?" she said. "You already have two other cars and a truck."
"It's an urge," I said.
We went in. They had just come out with On-Star, the service that tells you where gas stations and restaurants are, gives directions and the rest. I was impressed, saw a future in which no one gets lost and everyone eats just what they want to eat. I left with a new Ford. That night, my father called me. "What are you up to?" he asked.
"Nothing," I said. "Just hanging around."
He said, "Well, why don't you come down to New York and see me?"
"Is anything wrong?"
"No," he said. "Everything is fine. Just take a ride."
"Well, I just bought a new car," I said. "I think I will go for a ride."
Jane and I left for New York in the morning. We were on the road for two hours when my brother called and told us, "Dad is going into the hospital."
"What's wrong with him?"
"I don't know. The doctor says he's fine, but he's insisting he be admitted to the hospital."
It was strange.
We drove on, passed little towns and diners, the road stretching before us. We took a wrong turn in the Bronx and somehow ended up on the streets where I grew up. It was as if something was leading us there, showing us all the settings of my childhood-where my father taught me the value of work, where we hugged in the street after his return from Ceylon. Jane wanted to see everything, all of it. I took her to the old shops and corners. I took her to P.S. 70 and the apartment on the Grand Concourse. We knocked on the door. A woman answered. There were thirty, forty people inside. I think it was a crack house.
Everyone was at the hospital-my nephews and nieces-sitting in the hall, waiting. My brother took me aside.
"What the hell is going on?" I asked.
"I don't know," said Melvyn. "Dad wants to see us in his room alone."
He was sitting up in bed. No tubes, no wires, none of that. He waved us over, brought us close to him. He was lucid and calm. "I want you two guys to know something," he said. "You've been great sons. I love you both very, very much. And I am very proud of you. Now, both of you, give me a hug."
We bent over and hugged him. I could feel his fingers clasping my back. "Now go," he said. "I need to rest."
Later, when we were sitting in the hall, the sirens went off. The nurses and doctors ran into the room, and he died. Lay down and died.
This was June 30, 2000-exactly two months after my mother went.
When my mother was laid out before her funeral she had a pained look on her face. She had gone through hell before she passed. But my father had a peaceful look on his face when he died. He was ninety-three or ninety-four. We never really knew their exact ages. He wasn't in pain, he was just ready. That's how I'd like to die.
Until a few years ago, I was terrified of death. It occupied a lot of my time. Then my friends started to die, contemporaries, like Sydney Pollack, Bernie Brillstein, Guy McElwaine. I went to see Guy at his house, at the end, when he knew he was dying. And you know what? He was smiling.
"What are you smiling at, crazy man?" I asked.
"You," he said, "because I can see that you are afraid of what's happening to me. But I'm not afraid, so why should you be? It's just another journey."
I thought about this again and again. It bothered me. Finally, one night, I sat down with a glass of wine and sort of interrogated myself. "What are you scared of?" I asked. "It's the natural progression, part of the journey. Besides, you can't get out of it. No matter how much you worry, it is going to happen. So why not just face it like you've tried to face everything else?"
The next morning, I went out and bought a cemetery plot. I have come to terms, made peace. Not because of religion, or because of anything I've been told, but because I've lost friends and I've lost family. Maybe this is what happens if you live a long life. Maybe it's the gift of survival. When more of the people who really mattered are gone than remain, the balance tilts to the next world. Your parents go, your friends go, and you realize you will go, too, and it's okay. Death makes the rope taut-without it, we would have no stories, no meaning.
I do not want to leave. I have a nice house and a nice pool and it's a beautiful day and my cellar is filled with wine and my humidor is filled with cigars. I don't want to go anywhere. But when God calls, I will go, and I won't be crying.
Oceans
Hollywood has changed. There was a golden age and an age of rebellion, and we are now in an age of post-glamour. The stars are faded, the pictures are abbreviated, and the screens are small.
Well, that's what some people tell you-that Hollywood was never the same after the old system was broken-but don't believe it. I have seen era give way to era, can compare epoch to epoch. The stars now are exactly the same as the stars then: The hot spots and clubs have changed, the styles and fashions, but the underlying motivations, the human drives, which are to be discovered and lauded and respected, never change.