The Patriot Post® · Farewell to My Wife
By this time, some of you know that my wife of 33 years, Yvonne, has passed away. Even though I was aware for over a week that it could happen at any moment, the other morning when I received the call from the hospital, it felt like a ton of bricks had landed on me.
In every way conceivable, it was a horrible day. It was cold, dreary and raining heavily. I tried to think the raindrops were the tears of angels, but I knew they were only my own.
We had met in 1984, when I was working on a script for NBC and Yvonne was a secretary in the movie department. The movie never got produced, but it wasn’t a total loss. We were married the following June.
It wasn’t the first marriage for either of us. We were seasoned veterans of the divorce court, each of us having been married twice before. She had two sons, I had one, but they were all adults.
We had our rocky times, especially when, in 1990, I turned 50 and found that rumors of ageism in the TV industry weren’t just idle gossip. Almost overnight, I went from being an award-winning writer who was experienced in both drama and comedy, who wrote quickly and didn’t carry on as if my scripts were carved in stone when it came to getting notes from the network and the producer, to being persona non grata.
It only took a couple of years of unemployment to eat up my savings.
Without a college degree, I couldn’t even get a job teaching English or scriptwriting. Yvonne got a couple of temporary jobs to tide us over while I stayed home and worked on spec screenplays, figuring that if I could sell even one of them, I could get us out of the financial graveyard.
But because I was over 50, I couldn’t even land an agent. In the meantime, I kept getting phone calls from credit companies, demanding to know when I planned to pay off my mounting bills.
I couldn’t even meet the monthly minimums, but I didn’t want them to think I had fled to Costa Rica, so I would write them a check for five or six dollars to show my good intentions.
But finally, borrowing from Peter to pay Paul or, rather, borrowing from Visa to pay MasterCard, caught up with me and we had to file for bankruptcy and sell our condo.
Then, a miracle occurred. Through a series of bizarre circumstances, I got my first staff job on a TV show, hired to be the Executive Story Consultant on Dick Van Dyke’s medical mystery series, “Diagnosis Murder.”
I had always dodged staff jobs before because I always assumed I could make a decent living as a freelancer. I was obviously mistaken and jumped at the chance to join the staff.
It wasn’t easy for me because I had never written on a computer, but now I had to because I was part of a small team.
Through it all, Yvonne hung in there, accepting that “for better or for worse” meant exactly that.
Fortunately, the two seasons on the show provided enough money to buy a house and, between my Social Security and small WGA pension, to meet our mortgage payments. For the past three years, the subscriptions have helped to pick up the slack.
It was a relief to finally put a roof over Yvonne’s head and keep it there.
Then, about six weeks ago, in the middle of the night, Yvonne fell in the bathroom. Because I was asleep, I wasn’t aware of it for a couple of hours.
By the time I was awake and able to help her to her feet, she had strained her ribs trying to stand up. I suggested getting her to a doctor for X-rays, but she hated going to doctors and decided she would only see one when she felt better.
But she didn’t seem to be getting any stronger, and when I’d suggest making a doctor’s appointment, she complained I was bullying her.
Finally, I decided to call in the cavalry; namely, her son and daughter-in-law. They were able to convince her to let us take her to a doctor. After checking her over, he decided she was suffering from anemia because she looked so pale.
We took her directly to the hospital. After a series of tests over the next few days, they determined she had stage four cancer of the liver.
Because of the prognosis and her age, we all decided to forego an operation, which would only have prolonged and increased her pain.
Fortunately, someone along the way had invented morphine. I hate to think what a hell her final days would have been without that constant drip.
I was going to the hospital in the morning, leaving in the late afternoon to go home to feed and walk the dog, then returning to the hospital for a few hours at night. By the fourth night, I had become so dopey, I had to keep reminding myself of the route home.
A few days before she died, Yvonne began to hallucinate. At first, she kept warning me that the hospital was about to explode. Then she let me know that she had initiated plans to adopt a baby from the Middle East. This came as news to me, but perhaps she had begun to think she was Angelina Jolie or one of those other celebrities who adopt babies the way other people collect stamps. Why the Middle East? I haven’t a clue.
In any case, I asked her if we were getting a baby boy or a baby girl. She said she didn’t care, so I suggested we get a baby girl because our first two dogs were male and they had both had cat-like tendencies, ignoring us if we were gone for a few hours, as if to let us know that if we didn’t need them, they could do without us. You’ve never gotten a cold shoulder until you get one from a feisty little dog.
That having been the case, I suggested that since we had lucked out with Angel, our little lady dog, I wanted the baby to be female.
Yvonne laughed. It was to be the last time I was to hear that delightful sound.
I realized that her time was growing short, but when the early morning call came from the hospital, I was still unprepared.
It seems that January 14th is destined to be my own personal day of infamy.
It’s several days later and I’m still unprepared. As someone else once said: “Death ends a life; it doesn’t end a relationship.”
For those of you who never met her, it’s your loss. She was a very upbeat and creative person. She had been a dancer, a property assessor, a legal secretary, a wife and a mother. She loved to make jewelry, but never wanted to turn it into a business because she wanted each piece to be an original and feared people would expect her to keep making the same items over and over again.
She even spent a year or two collecting and having me collect uniquely-shaped leaves that she would then paint and turn into broaches and earrings she’d give to her friends.
How exceptional a person she was is clearly borne out by the fact she was as beloved by her two daughters-in-law as she was by her two sons.
I was very lucky to have been married to her. I’m not sure how lucky she was; I know this will come as a shock to some of you, but I’m not always the easiest guy in the world to live with even when I’m not on my way to bankruptcy court.
As I mentioned earlier, I was married twice before meeting Yvonne.
The third time really was the charm.
In his “Diaries of Adam and Eve,” Mark Twain concluded Adam’s Diary by having him standing at Eve’s grave and declaring: “Wheresoever was Eve, there was Eden.”
He could have been referring to Yvonne.
Editor’s Note: Burt has been one of our Right Opinion columnists for a long time, and, while many on that roster are nationally syndicated, Burt really has been “one of ours.” From all of us here in our humble shop, we offer our condolences and prayers for comfort.