I knew I wanted music at his funeral. Songs he would like. His own songs. John was still making frantic attempts to reach the older boys, and found them finally. Beatie and her husband were still missing. All I knew was that they were in Lake Tahoe for the weekend. For the first and only time in her entire life, she had forgotten to leave me a number. And I had no way to find her. All I could do was hope she’d call me.
I asked Julie to come to dinner with her family, and told her how much I loved her, how much she had given me and Nick. She was afraid that somehow I would blame her. How could I? She had given him her life, her home, opened her heart to him in every way. For five years, she had given him what no other human could have. There is no way on earth I can ever forget that, nor will I.
People were called, flowers arrived, faces appeared. It is all a blur now. I drifted in and out of my children’s rooms. I sobbed much of the time, as I still do now. I went to sit in his room and could not believe it. I felt as though he would come home any minute. This was a trick, a joke. He was kidding. It was all so wrong, so crazy. How would I live from that day on?
And then, suddenly someone put a phone in my hand, and I heard an all too familiar voice. It was Tom. Someone had called him. He said he was coming. And within minutes, he was there with me, holding me, a powerful presence, a strong force to sustain me and to lean on. I was not sure then if he came out of sympathy, or something more, for Nick’s sake or mine or his own, and perhaps he didn’t know either at that point. Maybe he just felt he had to be there. But whatever his reasons, I was grateful for his presence. For the next week, he never left me. And whatever he had done before, whatever had happened to frighten him, whatever pain he’d caused me when he left, no longer mattered. He was there for me when it counted, when I needed him most, just as Nick always said he would be. And I know that Nick would have been grateful to him, as I was. I could just hear him say “Take care of my mom for me.” He did, Nick, better than anyone ever could have. It washed away all the pain of the summer before. It was the only thing that kept me going. And I had to do what I could to help the others who were counting on me to be strong. Everyone was counting on me to get them through it. And for once I feared I couldn’t do it, but knew I had to manage somehow.
We decided on yellow roses for the funeral. I called my niece Sasha in New York and asked her to fly out and sing the “Ave Maria,” as she had at Beatie’s wedding. Nick would have been pleased to know she was coming out to sing for him, as he was crazy about her.
We listened to tapes of his songs, to find one we could play. Other people made calls. And I called my mother’s best friend in New York and asked him to tell her in person. I asked John to call Bill’s parents. They had a right to know, as did he, wherever he was. Nick was his son. I wanted him to know what had happened. And John was gentle and kind when he called. And still we could not find Beatie.
There were twenty people or more at my dinner table that night, and I looked around blindly at familiar faces. My publisher and her husband, Carole and Richard Baron, were there, and Lucy, who had taken care of Nick and loved him for eighteen years, Nick’s psychiatrist Dr. Seifried, Julie, her husband, Bill, and their children, who were as devastated as we were. My friends, my assistant, Heather, and Tom, and seven of my children were there. The only ones missing were Nick and Beatie. And although I had asked him to stay, John had gone home for a few hours to regain his composure. I suspected it felt awkward to him to have Tom there, although after more than two years in my life, he was a familiar figure by then.
And Beatie called finally as we finished dinner. I don’t think I ate. I read Nick’s birthday letter to me at the table. And when I spoke to Beatie on the phone, she said she had called just to tell me how much she loved me. It was unfair beyond words to reward her loving gesture with so much pain, but I couldn’t wait to tell her. The press had been calling all day, and I wanted her to know before she heard it on the news and saw it in the papers. Her screams rang out in the car just as the younger children’s had. It was a familiar sound now. But for Beatie it was perhaps even worse. We had lost “our” baby. She said they would drive home immediately, and be home in a few hours. The blur continued after that, but finally she was in it. We all cried endlessly. It was truly a nightmare, one from which I knew we would never wake up, just as Nick had chosen not to in the end, for whatever reason.
The next day we went to the funeral home, to pick caskets. John came with me, my two loyal friends Kathy and Jo, my assistant Heather, and Beatie. Without even asking me, my whole staff had chosen to work all weekend. The entire office crew came in to help make “arrangements,” a word I had always hated. And seeing the caskets in that abysmal room in the basement of the funeral home was so ghoulish I couldn’t bear it. We picked a room for him, a box for him, a suit for him at home. It became crucial to find the right tie, right shoes, and have his suit pressed. It was absurd the things one clung to. His shoes were all strewn around my dressing room so I could pick the right ones. It took me days to put them away, as though if I left them there, he would return to fill them or put them away himself.
On Monday I went to the cemetery, and looked at what they referred to as “estates” for him. John and Beatie joined me, and as the people at the cemetery told me how much they loved Nick too, I began to feel nauseous. I thought it a miracle by then that I hadn’t fainted. I looked like a small, sad black bird, in clothes that were beginning to hang on me. I hadn’t eaten, and didn’t care if I never did again. What was there to eat for? Nick was gone.
We all went to the funeral home for the first time that night, with the children and close friends, and I had to decide if I wanted to see him. I did. I wanted to hold him, cradle him in my arms, rock him to sleep as I had when he was a baby, hold him for a last time. But I was afraid that if I saw the truth, it would truly kill me, so feeling guilty for it, I didn’t. My three oldest children did and were destroyed by it. Julie did, and a few others. The sobs coming from that room nearly undid me.
And on Tuesday, hundreds of people came as we sat with his closed casket, covered by a blanket of yellow roses. The children were there and sobbed, John, Julie and her family, familiar faces of people I have known. A few stand out in the crowd, but I think I was so deeply in shock by then that I remember very little. It is a small mercy. I am aware that Tom was always there with me, supporting me, greeting friends, and crying beside me. He loved Nick too. We all did. Tom came back into my life then, which would have pleased Nicky no end. Perhaps it was his last gift to me, to bring us back together, which was what he had wanted.
I was startled at one point at the funeral home to look up and see Bill standing there, hesitantly, with his parents. He looked well, and unchanged in many ways. He was wearing a suit, and I could see instantly that he was in good shape, and appeared to have straightened out his life. And as I looked at him, all I could think of was the bond that Nick had been between us. Nearly twenty years had passed, yet the gift he had given me so long ago had been one of the greatest of my existence. I walked toward him, we hugged, and I told him how sorry I was, and we walked to the casket together. And what had once been love, then disappointment, melted into grief, and slowly became friendship, the bond Nick had given us, and left us with in the end.
There was so much I wanted to say to him, to tell him, about Nick. I owed him so much, and he had missed it all. His lifestyle and his demons had swept him away from us, and now the tide had brought him in, too late for Nick, or for himself, and all I could feel was compassion and sadness for him, and gratitude that he had survived and returned.
Bill told me that, by chance, he had put himself in a program a month before, and cleaned up for the first time in twenty years, and had been planning to come to see Nicky. It was a cruel turn of fate that Nick had left us before he could do it.
I saw him the next day, on the steps of the church, off to one side, with his parents and a friend, as I waited for the pallbearers to come up the stairs
with the casket. I hugged him again, without words this time. We talk often now and meet from time to time. He has come to know Nick through us, and we have become loving friends. I hope that Nick is being a guardian angel to him, and will keep him safe. One tragedy is enough. He has shown me kindness and healed an old wound. But most of all he gave me a great gift in Nicky. I will always be grateful to him for it, and wish him well.
The funeral was beautiful, in a handsome cathedral, there were eleven hundred people there, Nick’s friends and mine, people who knew him from the music scene, my publishers, our family and friends. Trevor and Todd were pallbearers along with Bill Campbell, both of Nick’s nurses, Cody and Paul, and two of Nick’s friends, Max Leavitt and Sam Ewing (Sammy the Mick), and his beloved friend and roadie Stony. Nick’s little brother, Maxx, walked beside them, and as they carried Nick to the altar, I walked slowly behind him alone. Four months before to the day, he had walked me down that aisle at Beatie’s wedding, and I had told him how much I loved him. He had been there for me, and now I was there for him. I did it for Nick, and felt I owed it to him. I carried one of the animals he had slept with all his life, a small shaggy character named Gizmo. He sits on my desk now, along with the other, a little white lamb Nick called Lambie. (I put duplicates of them that I had kept over the years in his casket with him the next day, and kept his old ones.)
My niece Sasha sang the “Ave Maria,” we played one of Nick’s songs, “I Am All Alone,” which demolished everyone, and Trevor, Todd, Beatrix, and Max Leavitt delivered eulogies while the children and I and eleven hundred people sobbed as we listened.
(photo credit 1.38)
Grace Cathedral, September 24, 1997. Nick’s funeral.
Tom and I at top of stairs. Group ascending stairs, counterclockwise on left: Maxx, Todd, Sam Ewing, Bill Campbell, Stony (Nick’s friend and roadie with Link 80). Clockwise on right, behind leaders: Trevor, Paul, Cody, Max Leavitt
And at the end, Val Diamond sang “Wind Beneath My Wings” from Beaches that said everything I felt about him. “Did you ever know that you’re my hero? … I was the one with all the glory, while you were the one with all the strength. …” And everywhere I looked around me there was a sea of yellow roses. From now on, yellow roses will always remind me of Nicky.
When we left the church and walked down the steps behind Nick, I turned when we reached the bottom, and looking up, I saw more than a thousand faces as people stood still, without moving a hair, silent, respectful, row after row after row of them, like statues, mourning with us, as the church bells tolled in the steeple.
Three hundred people came to the house afterwards, and then it was over. Almost. We had to bury him the next day, or leave him at the cemetery at least. I was awake all night the night before, but came up with an idea around six A.M. I couldn’t bear seeing my children in their sad little black dresses again, and knew they had had all the pain they could take. The formalities no longer mattered. It was only going to be the family and a handful of friends at the chapel at the cemetery. I called everyone at the crack of dawn and told them we were celebrating “Bad Taste Day” in honor of Nicky. Since he had had the bad taste to leave us in the lurch, we had to dress in a way that would be truly embarrassing to him. The truth was he would have loved it. It was just his brand of humor, and I was doing it to help the children.
Everyone showed up in the worst outfits I have ever seen, in sparkles, sequins, tie-dyed shirts, flowered combat boots, and rock star glasses. John outdid himself in Versace, and although I have worn nothing but black since, I wore something colorful that day. The kids loved it, and we kept it brief. A musician friend played show tunes and things from Sesame Street, there were brightly colored roses in the tiny chapel, two priests said a quick prayer, and outside a fleet of motorcycle cops waited. The mayor had provided a motorcade for us, to keep the press away. There were no dry eyes amongst the policemen when I shook their hands before we went into the chapel.
I suppose we were meant to say good-bye to Nicky there, but I can’t see why. I did not leave him there. I took him away with me in my heart. He will be ever next to me in a thousand ways. He is a part of the very fiber of my being. I cannot lose that, or pry it from me, or give it away. He belongs to me, as I belong to him, because of the hearts we gave each other, the years, the tears, the defeats, the victories, the endless joys we shared. I can’t ever lose that, or him. Ever.
But loving Nick wasn’t about losing. It was about winning. It was about hoping and believing, and trying, finding new avenues and racing down them, and then trying others when they failed. Nick taught me a thousand valuable lessons, how to love foremost among them. How to give your heart until it breaks, or you die, whichever comes first. The lessons Nick taught me were too valuable to forget, or throw away, or walk away from.
What is my life like now without him? At times, it seems intolerably empty. He has left a hole in my heart the size of Texas. Bigger than that. Much bigger. The size of Nicky.
I still can’t believe that he is gone. I do things to fill the days, and nights, sometimes frantically, sometimes quietly. I sort through albums and look at his pictures. I copy them for other members of the family. I have organized his videos, read all his journals. I call the lawyer in New York to see about releasing his last recording. I have worked on this book. And organized a memorial concert with the bands he loved, and a foundation.
I want his memory to live on forever. I want people to remember him, to know him, to love him, to know how important he was to me, how much I loved him, and how much he loved me, how much we all loved him. I want them to know what an extraordinary person he was, how much he laughed, how much joy he brought us, how talented he was, how brilliant and loving. Will that fill the void? I doubt it. I suspect that nothing will. There will be a hole in my heart forever, like a doughnut. The years that I gave him, with so much passion and energy, were his, and he took them with him. There is nothing that can replace them or ever will.
I have eight other wonderful children to love and care for, and keep me company, each one of them as infinitely precious as Nick. My life belongs to them now, as it always has. And I know, or at least I hope, that in time we will laugh again, live again. I hope that wonderful things will happen to us, and when they do, I know I will want to tell Nick about it, and I will miss him more than ever. It is a cycle of longing for him that will not be easily broken. Nick became not only my son, but my best friend. His life was not only a bright light for all of us, but a symbol of love and hope for all those who loved him and all those he met.
His room is still intact. I have tidied it up, straightened it as though he will come home again. I cannot bear the thought of taking it apart, or giving his things away, although perhaps we will some day. But I prefer to think it will always be there, forever. I have not gone to see his little house at Julie’s. It will be much too painful for me, or is for now at least. I will go there in time. As I do here, Julie tidies it, and sits there peacefully sometimes. It is the house, the room, the place where he died. A memory and a visual I cannot bear to think of. Someone said in one of the condolence letters that one day we will think of him as someone who lived, not someone who died. And I like that. He lived well and hard and with endless love and passion and excitement. Life to him was one long concert, full of leaps and jumps and noise and lights and music. That is who Nicky was, and who he will always remain.
As for the rest of us left here, we remember, we think about him, we talk about him, more and more with laughter as time passes. There are endless stories about him. And without him now, some days are better than others. It’s hard to believe that he’s gone. Sometimes, for an instant, I still forget, or want to. Others dream of him, and think they see him. And I always seem to feel him near me. I have no experience with these things, and can’t decide if he is truly nearby, watching me, or if it is simply wishful thinking. I would like to think that he can see us, that he is in fact near, and that he is at peace now. I hope more than
anything that he is happy. He deserves it, as we do.
This has been infinitely hard for us, harder still to find a blessing in it, a gift, a victory, yet they are there, if one is willing to see them. His life was a victory in the end, he accomplished so much in so little time, and he was a gift to so many. He gave us all so much. He gave as good as he got.
In some ways, Nick’s greatest gift to me was one of healing. In losing so much when I lost him, I faced my own worst fears and greatest demon. It was loss that I feared most all my life, and that Nick made me face with the kind of courage he always expected of me. He gave me no choice but to live with his decision, the risk he took, the choice he made, and to accept it. I still fight it sometimes, and on bad days, I whimper to myself that I can’t do this. But I can, and I have to, just as he did. I cannot escape the pain, or the loss, or the memories, or the fact that I miss him so unbearably at times. I must learn to live with it, and make our lives not only good, but whole again.
Joy will come again, and has in many ways, with time, and through the people we love and who love us, and the children. We will share happy times again, and we have each other. We are beginning to laugh again, and I see the children smiling. And the Campbells will have a new baby a year after Nick died. Hope has come to each of us, in different ways, like final gifts from Nick. Spring will come, and many summers, and there will be holidays without him, when we will remember all too clearly when he was with us. But the memories linger, the sweet perfume of all he brought. He left each of us something, a gift, a dream, a memory, a little more courage than we had before, a bigger dream than we might have had without him.
Life is about dreams, and hope, and courage. The courage to go on, even after those we love have left us. And in our hearts, Nick isn’t gone. He dances on, as dazzling as ever, smiling and laughing and singing. A shooting star we will cherish and remember forever. He gave me joy enough for ten lifetimes. That will never leave me.
His Bright Light Page 28