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Theater and Legacy






Late last year, I had an amazing conversation with an unforgettable person.

You can read it here:  http://thiscantbebroccoli.blogspot.com/2019/11/death-is-easy-theater-is-hard.html

That person spoke about doing theater while living with a terminal illness.

At the time, they thought they had about a year left, but we kept in touch, and the disease progressed much faster than anyone anticipated.

Early last week, they passed away.

I don't always spend a lot of time getting to know the people I interview for this series, but this was an exception that has added so much to my life. In a year that has already seen so much turmoil and heartache, this felt like yet another tragedy that was too expansive to process.

As I begin to wrap this series up, this seemed like a sign that maybe I should call it quits early, but one of the joys of getting to know this person was her tendency to bring so many people in her life into friendships with each other. I grew close to many of her colleagues, one of whom also happens to be her husband.

He spoke with me this weekend, and I am forever grateful to him and his family for their generous spirit, and to her, even though she loved to send me jokes that weren't funny and photos of bad Halloween costumes.

Here's the interview:

ME:  Before we start, you going to be okay to do this?

THEM:  You're the one that's gonna cry, not me.

ME:  That's probably true.

THEM:  You were crying on the phone when we were setting this up.

ME:  I just feel like...There's so much right now? But I mean, you know that more than anyone, obviously.

THEM:  This has been--You know, it's funny. Because with everything going on in the world, when something like this happens to you and your family, it's all there is. You aren't thinking about anything else. The whole world could blow up, and this was all I was thinking about up to now, because--

ME:  Because you have to.

THEM:  You have to.

ME:  Was there anybody at the end who still didn't know she was sick?

THEM:  I think word had gotten out to about everybody by then.

ME:  What's your inbox like?

THEM:  Full. People coming around. We're Southern so when somebody dies, you come around, you drop off food. We got lots of food. I'm going to have to bring some of it over to a shelter or something, because me and the girls can't eat it all.

ME:  How are the girls?

THEM:  Oh, they're.

     (A beat.)

ME:  Don't you do it.

THEM:  You got me with that one.

ME:  Want to take a break?

THEM:  (Laughs.)  We can't go taking a break now. We just started.

ME:  We can do whatever we want. It's my interview.

THEM:  I thought it was my interview.

ME:  But, no, do you want a break?

THEM:  No, I'm okay. The girls are--They're dealing with. I'm dealing with it. It's the worst week of our lives. It's been the worst years of our lives, but in some ways the best.

ME:  How so?

THEM:  Not many people know they gotta get their s*** together because they're going to lose somebody. I lost my mom--My mom wasn't sick. She died when I was young. It was a surprise to all of us. That messed me up for a long, long time. That I didn't get to say goodbye. There's only two ways something like life and death go--You get to say goodbye or you don't. I think if you do, it's a gift. It's a gift to be able to say goodbye, and I know [she] felt the same way about it.

ME:  Doesn't make it hurt any less though.

THEM:  No, it hurts like hell. I won't be the same. I know the girls won't be the same. But they're good girls. Tough like their Mama. Not like me, thank god. I'm the mushy kind.

ME:  No, you're not.

THEM:  (Laughs.)  I'm not as mushy as you.

ME:  I have my sociopath moments where I'm just a robot.  It comes in handy.

THEM:  I bet it does.

ME:  I wish I could summon it now, but--

THEM:  Feel the feelings, Kevin.

ME:  Nope.  Next question--

THEM:  (Laughs.)  That series you did on those rednecks fighting? Oh my god. That was a good read.

ME:  You liked that?

THEM:  I haven't slept, as you know. Can't sleep. And I don't usually read your interviews, because you never ask the questions I want to ask.

ME:  You want to take over?

THEM:  Let me take over, I'll get to the bottom of things.

ME:  I'll email you the password.

THEM:  But I was up late, not sleeping, which when you been married to someone for twenty-seven years, and they're not there anymore, you have a hard time going to bed. I start reading that series, and that took my mind off things for the first time in forever, so thank you for that.

ME:  I'm glad that crazy bunch of lunatics made you feel better.

THEM:  You make that into a movie, I better play Charlie.

ME:  I think it's so interesting that you and [her] were a theater couple.

THEM:  I don't know if she could have been with anyone else. Had to be someone with the same interests, I think.

ME:  How did you meet?

THEM:  We were doing a show at this ass-up theater in [Name of City].

ME:  What's an ass-up theater?

THEM:  Where they don't know their head from their ass. Yahoos.

ME:  Okay.

THEM:  She walks in to the first rehearsal and I turned to my friend who was doing the show with me, and I say 'This woman is going to be a #$%-ing nightmare.' I was right. I was a goner too, because as soon as she talked to me the first time, I could never stop thinking about her.

ME:  How long after that until you started dating?

THEM:  We were dating by the end of the week. We were married six months later.

ME:  Six months?

THEM:  I would have married her after six minutes. She was--You just--I never had any doubts about it. She was it.

ME:  Good luck to the rest of us trying to live up to that.

THEM:  We didn't have--I tell the girls--We didn't have a perfect marriage. Well hell, they saw it. We had ups and downs, but you got to ask yourself, Can I see being with anybody else? Is anybody else going to know me like she knows me? I couldn't see that being true.

ME:  You told me on the phone that she told you if you got remarried she would haunt you?

THEM:  She wasn't kidding either. I already had my whole--This shelf in my closet fell down when this woman she didn't like came by to drop off some food. I said, 'Relax, [Name of His Wife], I had her stay on the porch the whole time.'

ME:  The closet shelf fell down?

THEM:  I put that shelf up myself. I don't make things that fall down. Made a mess. She was trying to tell me what's what. She still wears the pants and she ain't even here yet.

ME:  When did she have to tell everybody at the theater?

THEM:  We got a little lucky--this pandemic is terrible, I'm sorry to make it sound like I think it's not, but for us, it was a little lucky, because the theater didn't need her so much these past few months, and that meant we didn't feel pressure to tell people before we were ready.  We told them at the beginning of August.

ME:  How did everybody there take it?

THEM:  The ones who didn't know were upset. The ones who did were part of a plan to have a--a transition. The theater will go on. That's what she would have wanted, and it's what's going to go on even without her there. They would love to do a memorial for her when it's safe. Someone suggested renaming the place after her, but she didn't want that.

ME:  Why not?

THEM:  Well she read that interview you did about that damn plaque.

ME:  (Laughs.)  So it's my fault she doesn't want a bigger legacy?

THEM:  No, she had a thing about it. That was all. She told me it would weird her out having a theater named after her, but she thought it was a nice idea.

ME:  You do a lot of work with the theater, don't you?

THEM:  I do, but I took a hiatus.

ME:  You think you'll go back?

THEM:  I don't know.

ME:  I know when she and I spoke, she had been trying to reconcile with someone that she had worked with who went off to start their own theater and it was kind of a point of contention. Do you know if they ever got to a good place again?

THEM:  Yes. In fact, I think things were better than they were before, and he would call her and get her advice on things, and I knew she liked that. She never was a mentor to people, because--I don't want to get on her case about it, but it wasn't something she went looking for to have with anybody, but she found--towards the end, I think--that she liked that. Being somebody that could help out the next generation.

ME:  You know, she was the one who suggested that we do this.

THEM:  Oh, I know.

ME:  Did she always like orchestrating things?

THEM:  That was her. She was a director. She was a good actress too, but her thing was directing. She loved it.

ME:  Why is that, do you think?

THEM:  It was, I think, a chance for her to nurture in a way that she had never gotten from--not just from directors that she worked with, but everybody in her life. Her father was not a loving man in the way he was with his kids, and I know that bugged her. She was always kissing on and loving on our girls. That's how she was as a mom, because she never got that.

ME:  My mom's like that.

THEM:  Always good with being loving to you?

ME:  Yeah.

THEM:  You got a good mom then.

ME:  Yes. Thank you.

     (A beat.)

THEM:  You all right?

ME:  Yeah, I'm not going to--Ugh.

THEM:  All this hits you when it hits you.

ME:  Because I'm thinking about the girls and you and--

THEM:  It's hard.

ME:  It just sucks.  It just--Everything just sucks. This is.

THEM:  But you know, Kevin, the thing is--there's you and there's me. Talking to you and knowing you've been sending the girls little messages to see how they're doing, and you're asking after me, I appreciate that. That's taking care of people. You can't always change the world and you can't change people getting sick, but you can take care of the people you got and the people you know. If you make that what you're trying to do, then you're putting some good back.

ME:  I'm mad she never got to play Maria.

THEM:  I'm not. You think I wanted to see that s***?

ME:  (Laughs.)  It might have been good.

THEM:  She told you she couldn't sing. It would have been--

ME:  (Laughs.)  So what?

THEM:  (Laughs.)  See, your ass wouldn't have been the one sitting there listening to it.

ME:  Did you two laugh a lot even towards the end?  I know humor was something she said she used to deal with things. It's something we bonded over.

THEM:  We always laughed. That was one thing we always did.

ME:  She told me--When we talked the last time--I didn't know for sure it was the last time, but I had an idea--to ask you about the wigs?

THEM:  Those #$%-ing wigs.

ME:  What was with the wigs?

THEM:  She would wear the ugliest wigs.

ME:  After she lost her hair?

THEM:  Jesus, the woman--the woman at the theater who does costumes and all that--she brought by all these beautiful wigs, expensive wigs for her to wear, and she didn't want any of them. She went online and bought--It was like sci-fi. Green hair. Little pink haircut.

ME:  Like Party City wigs?

THEM:  Like--Yeah, Halloween store wigs.

ME:  She was always sending me Halloween costumes that she loved.

THEM:  Halloween was her favorite. I'm sad she didn't get that far, but we had Halloween in our house every day. Always--I told the girls, 'There's no money left for you, your mother blew through it all on green wigs.'

ME:  What did doing theater teach the two of you about getting through this?

THEM:  For her it was knowing that it's all gotta end sometime. The best shows and the worst. It's all gotta close down and the sets gotta come down and it doesn't make it...It doesn't make it less than.

ME:  She talked about how much she loved putting up sets and taking them down again.  How it's a beautiful ritual.

THEM:  It is.

ME:  And how about you taking care of someone who's living with a disease?

THEM:  What did theater teach me about that?

ME:  Yes.

THEM:  It taught me if I can make it through a show where I had a week to learn to tap dance, I can make it through anything.

ME:  (Laughs.)  You learned to tap dance in a week?

THEM:  I surely did not.

ME:  (Laughs.)  Oh my god.

THEM:  It wasn't tap dancing, but it was something.

ME:  So--God.  (Laughs.)  So you're resilient is what you're saying?

THEM:  I just know if someone says tap dance, you tap dance, because that's what you signed up to do. I signed up to love somebody. If you wake up and that somebody needs you, you do what you need to do. It's not hard.

ME:  It must be hard though, the day-to-day--

THEM:  It's hell on earth, because they're in pain, and you can't do s*** about it, but, most people, when they're in pain, they don't need you to do anything anyway. They just need you to be there. I made sure I was there. A lot of people were there. I couldn't believe it.

ME:  You didn't think that many people would come in to support you?

THEM:  I knew they would if I asked, but I couldn't get over the people who did it without being asked.

ME:  Were you okay with that?

THEM:  Not at first, but I got there. You have to. You can't do it by yourself. I don't know how some people do that.

ME:  Did your community show up for you?

THEM:  A thousand percent.  A thousand percent.

ME:  I write a lot about communities that have become toxic. Can you talk about how your community supported you?

THEM:  It was people showing up. Not going online and posting prayers. Showing up. It's no different than when you need them to come see the show instead of posting about how sad they are they missed it. Don't be sad, be here. Show up. That's what they did. Leaving notes. Leaving food. Coming to see her. If she was too sick, they would--the kids from the high school stood outside her window and sang songs from the show she directed there.

ME:  I bet she hated that.

THEM:  Don't tell 'em, but she #$%-ing hated it.

ME:  (Laughs.)  I was going to say.

THEM:  She loved the kids, but she was nauseous that day and they were singing that song from Rent everybody loves, and she hates Rent. She said 'Can't you tell them I'm dead already?'

ME:  Those poor kids.

THEM:  She did love 'em.

ME:  I know.

THEM:  Sorry to spoil the Hallmark moment.

ME:  She did not want to be some sentimental symbol of anything.

THEM:  She sure didn't. And she wasn't. 'Don't get precious.'

ME:  Is there a charity that she loved that I can donate to and maybe I can get anybody reading this to donate to as well?

THEM:  You going to be honest, Mr. Broccoli, and tell your readers that you told me to have one prepared for when you called me?

ME:  Screw you.

THEM:  You be nice to me, I'm a widower now. I get one full year of free passes.

ME:  Not from me, a******.

THEM:  (Laughs.)  First her, now you. I'm never going to get any rest.

ME:  What's the charity?

THEM:  The Pink Fund.

ME:  I'll put the link to donate. Thank you for doing this.

THEM:  Thank you.

ME:  Love to you and your family.

THEM:  Love to you too.

You can donate to The Pink Fund by going to https://www.pinkfund.org/get-involved/donate-now/donate-online/

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