But I was stopped. The land in this area was hard, and dark, and it rolled in smooth, undulating waves against the mercilessly open sky. And its startling beauty took my breath away.
I say it took my breath away because . . . it literally took my breath away. I’d always heard that expression and never thought to take it at face value. And to that point, it hadn’t truly been taken away. But that day it was.
I’d also always heard the expression, “One of the happiest days of my life.”
I’m making a long point by telling you all this, because I want you to know, truly know, what I mean when I say that, on Sunday, July 13, 2008, Patrick and I renewed our vows . . . it was one of the happiest days of my life.
—
IT WAS on to Chicago.
An ad for The Beast on the side of a New York City building.
Chapter 10
THE BEAST
I ALWAYS CRY AT weddings, and I cried at both of mine. After our vows renewal, I noted that the second time around is even more special. Why? Because this time you know what you’re getting into and you are still saying “yes.” It’s a real testament to what you mean to each other.
And I’m trying to be a bit light right now, but I have to say . . .
. . . Remembering the happy stuff can be harder than remembering the bad. And remembering the bad isn’t always a walk in the park either. But recalling the good times is very hard in a very particular way because the hurt digs down excruciatingly deep. Remembering has crippled me as far as moving on with my day, and then crippled me for the next one, and then the next. It put me down for an entire week, and then another week. I’ve slowly had to find my way back up to the surface again.
“Look. You’re still healing,” a friend says.
When you’re grieving, you never know what can knock you flat. And sometimes you can feel like you’ve gone a little mad. A year after Patrick’s death, I arrived at the ranch in New Mexico and had to, was compelled to, pick up all the pictures of him that I had nicely framed and march them to the far end of the house where I couldn’t see them. And then I closed the door on them. I know a woman who lost her husband, and she was given a beautiful photo album full of pictures of their wedding together. She threw it down the trash chute! She couldn’t bear to look at it, even to have it in the same room with her. I know . . . it just makes you too sad. Funny . . . only a month before, my beautiful framed photos had given me such comfort. I can only imagine that at some point they may again. Or maybe they’ll mean something entirely different to me.
Ah . . . And here I am thinking about those photos. His beautiful smile, how it looks like he loves me . . . good stuff again . . .
Wait. There . . . I’m coming back now . . . And . . .
. . . I feel better.
Maybe it’s emotional exhaustion, and I can let down now that Patrick is gone. When I had to live and battle his illness, I just kept going. The renewal of our wedding vows gave me a completion and positive energy that I carried with me to Chicago. I was a barrel of energy. Unstoppable. But though I still had plenty of energy at that point, well, maybe I didn’t have so much energy at that point, you know? I think about Chicago, and I feel tired. And no doubt about it, it was physically and emotionally draining, nerve-wracking also. We were taking a certain amount of risk by his going and shooting a TV series. I knew that Patrick was capable of doing some of the most amazing things, but there are some things that even he didn’t have control of. And once we were there, I knew I would have to think even faster on my feet, tap dance three times faster. And . . .
I’m still having trouble moving on to Chicago. Why am I having trouble? All I said is true, but . . .
Maybe my senses were getting inundated in there. Once again, I was faced with the worst of what life could be, and the very, very best of it. I still had my private angst, the tension associated with Patrick’s treatment and the feeling that the emotional pressure was beating me with a stick.
At the same time, I looked out on every day, and it glistened. I don’t remember a bad day in Chicago.
Chicago was happy. That’s what it is. With bad times, you can steel yourself and keep your head down as you plow forward. The happy times lay you open . . . vulnerable.
And Chicago was happy . . .
It was tough and it was challenging, and even as a tornado threatened to come through one evening and stranded me downtown when I was riding my bicycle, even that ferocious wind was like a current of air rushing into me, whipping the sound of aliveness in my being, you’re alive, you’re alive, and . . . he’s alive with you! Nothing was too bad. I rode back in the rain that night, the streets shiny and wet, still fairly empty from being evacuated. And it was magical.
In case you forgot—Patrick wasn’t even supposed to be alive at this point. Every day . . . every day was a living victory and a miracle. And it was like living inside a victory, not as a momentary thing but as something you are immersed in. A living, breathing victory. What an incredible place to be.
The challenges and hardships associated with shooting the The Beast in Chicago were a small price to pay for being able to live so preciously. And yes, it’s still hard for me to launch into telling this part of the story. But how do I not? It was an amazing experience, and it was a moment in time that was going to be an inspiration for many.
—
OUR WONDERFUL driver, Gus, was taking me home from the set at about two o’clock in the morning. Patrick was still due to shoot a couple more hours, and I wanted to take the dogs for their final walk before settling in back at our apartment. Lucas (our standard poodle) and Murphy (our border collie mix) rode happily in the back as we bumped along the late-night Chicago streets, content in the knowledge that a walk in one of their favorite dog parks awaited them.
I trusted Gus. He’s a good person, with a good sense of humor and lively intelligence. He asked me how I was holding up, if things were getting too much . . . and I remember saying, “In a way, this is one of the happiest times of my life.”
Gus kinda glanced sideways at me. “I wouldn’t say that to too many people if I were you.”
Hah! I hadn’t thought about how that would sound. My husband has pancreatic cancer and I couldn’t be happier! Wow, what a field day the tabloids would have with that quote!
“Yeah, you’re probably right about that.” I grinned.
The Beast was an ambitious project in what they were trying to accomplish, and the shooting schedule was grueling. An enormous amount of work and passion was going into the series. No shooting day was less than fourteen hours, and more likely sixteen hours, sometimes more. The number of pages of dialogue Patrick had to learn every day was staggering, in addition to trying to read the next episode’s script, give notes, make suggestions and changes, and then, he still had to show up and actually shoot the thing. But Patrick had transformed.
Before we went to Chicago, he had been spending the majority of his time in bed. Let’s just say that his activity level was very low. Very . . . low. To make the transition as smooth as possible, Donny stayed with him while I packed up the plane with our luggage, medical supplies and dogs and flew it to Chicago a day and a half early to set things up. “You better have a very big van, we don’t travel light!” I warned our driver before I arrived, and he showed up with a van that I probably could have fit all our stuff and a small pony and a couple of square dancers into. I quickly set up our living arrangements and made some calls, and then Patrick was due to arrive.
From the moment his foot touched down in Chicago, he was like a different man. He went from staying in bed all day to hardly ever going to bed. His enormous burst of energy floored me. I say that he “was like a different man,” but the fact is, he was like his old self, going nonstop, and always the extra mile. I got Patrick back! He was his usual take-charge work self, and even moved into some of the occasional “star” behavior, the stuff that would always drive me crazy, like making last-minute, arbitrary demands and suddenly
being the unquestionable authority on . . . just everything in the universe.
Wow, things were almost normal! But being a self-centered star was not Patrick’s only mode of being. One of the writers showed up at our hotel for a meeting and was surprised that Patrick was out with me, walking the dogs. Here he was, star of the series, fighting cancer, dodging paparazzi, and he’s out walking the dogs and picking up poop.
As usual on set, the crew loved him. Patrick’s situation with battling cancer brought an extra effort from all concerned. It was like all the crew, the directors, and the producers upped their game. Let’s face it, it’s pretty hard to worry about your usual petty grievances when a star like Patrick is battling a tough cancer and still showing up to work and never complaining. The respect level was high. And I know that the crew was aware of the significance of what they were witnessing. There was a sense of being honored to be involved in this endeavor.
Patrick was also adamant that he not be “written down.” Meaning, he didn’t want the show’s writers to make his role not so demanding, put him in fewer scenes, or delete action or chase sequences because he had cancer. And the writers didn’t. Actually, by the time they got halfway through the series, they forgot he had cancer when they were planning the episodes.
But in the beginning there was a little “getting to know you” time. The producers and director were worried about his doing too much. Not just because of the cancer, but also because he was the star and couldn’t get hurt. Patrick came back from the set one day, shaking his head, steam still fizzing out of his ears . . .
“They didn’t want me to jump over the wall!” he exclaimed to me with disbelief, “I’m supposed to chase this guy and jump over the wall after him. They wanted the stunt man to do it! ‘No, man, I’m jumping over the wall!’”
After some polite but heated discussion, he did the stunt. He wasn’t about to give up on doing those things. But everyone was learning what I had already long known about Patrick’s capabilities. He’d been doing this a long time, and though his illness compromised some of his strength, he knew his limits as always, and that bar was still set very, very high. And I loved it that I still saw that confidence of his shining through.
He also never took any pain medication when he was working. He didn’t want it numbing his mind and affecting his performance. His work was important to him, and he wanted to do the best job possible. He wasn’t there to “phone it in.” He was so adamant about not taking pain medication that once he was home and off work, I had to remind him that he could indulge himself in a little prescriptive relief. “Oh, yeah!” he’d say, like it was a novel idea, one he hadn’t thought of until then.
Patrick knew, as only he could, the limits of what he could and couldn’t take. Every once in a while I weighed in, taking measure from him on how he was feeling, asking if this was getting too hard for him with the level of pain he might be having. In one such discussion, he nodded at my concern but then shook his head with simple frankness . . .
“I’ve worked with worse hangovers than this,” and he leveled me a look.
That statement was so classic Patrick. So often he’d act as if he could do no wrong and was master of all, and in the next moment, thoroughly bust himself with funny and startling honesty.
And though sometimes he wasn’t feeling well, he could still find inspiration for a practical joke and a laugh. He could have some intense abdominal pain at times, and along with his treatment came some pretty bad-smelling gas. Patrick labeled them “Chemo-Farts.” Late one night on the first episode, he and his costar Travis Fimmel were shooting a scene where Travis, as “Ellis,” comes over and jumps into a parked car next to Patrick, as “Barker.” Everyone had put in a long day already and was tired, but still going full steam ahead. I was sitting next to Michael Dinner, the director, and in between takes, Patrick came over and whispered to me . . .
“I am having the worst gas,” he said. “That’s why I keep opening the car door between takes. So I can air it out . . .” And then Patrick went kind of silent . . . And he wandered back to the car when they picked up shooting again.
But as they shot, I noticed that Patrick was no longer opening the car doors. And he seemed to be concentrating inside the car. I think he was making good use of his time in the enclosed vehicle . . .
On the next long take, Travis jogged from all the way across the street, looking furtively this way and that, then hopped in the car with Patrick and closed the door.
Immediately, Travis blurted out, “Ooooh!” and tumbled out of the car! Patrick had just seriously blasted him with Chemo-Gas!
Patrick sat in the driver’s seat, trying not to laugh and to keep a straight face, but doing very poorly. Travis was recovering outside the car, hooting and shaking his head. And then there was me, trying so hard to stifle my laughter that tears threatened to spill down my cheeks.
Michael, the director, turned to me. “What happened?”
“Uhm, I believe Patrick just doused Travis with a Chemo-Fart.”
For the next two takes, Patrick and Travis couldn’t keep a straight face, breaking into broad grins and chuckles. It took monumental effort, but they finally pulled it together to get serious again.
—
THERE WERE still the emotional lows during this time. But there were also some positive things happening for me, whether I was hanging out on the set, reading scripts, or whatever. I was happy to “be there” for Patrick during this journey, and be whatever I needed to be for him. Without a doubt, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I had transitioned to directing and writing a few years back and loved it, but all that had been put on hold. Occasionally it was hard being around the set, since I was there merely as the “wife” and not really, officially, involved. But still, it was very positive—being around the shooting was stimulating, and it started me thinking creatively again. A wonderful thing for me.
I was also very touched by how many people befriended me. Roy, the director of photography, first camera Billy, Gino the gaffer, the writers, and many of the directors who came on board . . . all treated me as an equal. I can’t tell you what a difference that made. I got to share my passion for this work as we talked about camera, lighting, and scene set-ups, and it would be like a little piece of heaven for me. I put together a steadycam set-up for myself and the camera I already owned, and Billy made a special case for it (along with some great steadycam instruction!). Roy handed me different high-def cameras to play with. Several of the directors leaned over when I was sitting next to them, “So, Lisa, when are you going to direct an episode?” Of course I was delighted they’d asked, and laughed as I shook my head happily. “Naw, I’m here for Patrick. Maybe next season.” Their acknowledgment and support gave me much-needed hope in a situation where I felt like there was so little for me. Their support was better for me than any Bahamas vacation could ever be.
—
THE LOGISTICS of being in Chicago could be challenging. It was much harder to avoid the paparazzi than it was in LA simply because there were portions of the shoot that took place outside and were open to the public. After a couple of weeks at our hotel, I found us a wonderful, spacious, airy, two-bedroom apartment overlooking the vast, blue Lake Michigan, and the building had three different ways of getting Patrick in and out without his being seen. They were happy to let us lease for only five months, and the building was dog friendly. Up to that point, I’d been walking the dogs three times a day, and it took me a full ten minutes just to walk to where they could start doing their business! I seemed to spend most of my day walking the dogs and still trying to do everything else, and it was wearing me down! At the new place, I rented furniture and kitchenware and we could take the dogs right across the street to a fabulous park. It was a beautiful walk. And during the warm months we had front-row seats for spectacular fireworks displays right outside our windows twice a week. The apartment was also a front-row seat for the big air show Chicago has every year. We threw one of our partie
s for this, and of course, as pilots, we enjoyed the scream of jets going past our windows, so close it almost seemed like you’d felt their jet blast!
As I said, the shooting schedule was tough. It would have been tough for a healthy person, let alone someone fighting pancreatic cancer. As we moved into fall, some of the late nights saw temperatures dip to below freezing. Patrick persevered. There were times when it was difficult for him to get going because of painful discomfort, whether it was gas, trouble with his digestion or bowel movements, or some other mysterious ailment. And he made sure he was never too far away from a bathroom. But he always found a way to come through.
In the middle of this busy schedule, we managed to arrange a day to fly back to LA to appear on the all-major-network, televised, “Stand Up to Cancer” telethon. This was the first time that Patrick was going to do something like this to raise awareness for cancer. Up to this point he had been very careful not to put himself in that position. He didn’t want to be the poster boy for cancer. It wasn’t how he wanted to be thought of. But this was a special event, and its impact could be huge.
When we flew in, we were ushered straight to a hotel across the street from the Kodak Theater so he and I could change clothes. His being there was a secret, so we skirted past anywhere that people could see him and into the backstage of the theater. It was a live show, and there was a bit of a time crunch (remember Patrick is always late?), and he barely had a few moments to review the words that he was going to say, which I had helped write and shape for him, before we were ushered into the wings and it was time for him to walk out onstage to open the show. He got a standing ovation. The phone lines were instantly flooded, and people had to keep trying back to get through. It was an incredible show, and from Stand Up to Cancer’s efforts they raised over $100 million toward fighting cancer. Some of this money went to pancreatic cancer research, which has been woefully, embarrassingly underfunded.
Worth Fighting For: Love, Loss, and Moving Forward Page 11