Dad said he would be checking into Swedish Hospital in Seattle for two weeks, where they would monitor his condition and build up his weight and strength for the next round of treatments in Wisconsin, scheduled to begin January 19.
He spoke of his aversion to hospital food, as my mother had done before him. It saddened me to think of my father, the gourmet and raconteur who had so captivated dinner table audiences over the years, unable to truly enjoy his meals. I thought of his deep, rolling laugh that used to fill every corner of a room, and wished I could hear it again. But now his laughter returned only intermittently, in bursts that were caught short by the grim reality of his struggle for survival.
He no longer had his heart in the writing process. His life was too cluttered with bleak hospital corridors and little rooms and infernal machines, and men and women in white smocks with clipboard-charts. These were, as well, constant and painful reminders of Beverly and her monumental suffering.
I visited Dad regularly at Swedish Hospital, where I found him sitting up or lying in bed, with a catheter attached to his chest and tubes at his arms. He wore a pale green gown that emphasized how thin he had become. He had a birdlike appearance now, and this made me think of character descriptions in his stories, particularly in Dune, where the features were compared with those of hawks. I saw little of the hawk in him, however. This was a less aggressive bird, with a sweetness and gentleness of disposition.
Of course there was the one time I appeared in the doorway of his hospital room with Kim. She had brought him a gift, but Dad went into an alarmed microphobia posture, dispatching her without even looking at what she had brought for him. Children carried too many germs, he said, and he couldn’t risk having her near him. Kim, only thirteen, went to the waiting room, her feelings hurt. She got over it when Jan, Theresa and I explained to her that her grandfather loved her very much, and that he may even have been correct from a medical standpoint.
Now he was as thoughtful as anyone could be, asking about us and about his grandchildren, inquiring how they were doing in school, what their special interests were. I wanted the laughter to return to his heart and voice, wanted him back to his normal self, driving everybody crazy around him. I hated seeing him so subdued and devoid of his former spirit.
In what had become a family tradition, albeit one I wished had never been necessary, I took him jokes and humor bits from my “funny files.” There were also handmade cards from Jan and Julie, short stories from Kim and drawings from Margaux to her “Pop-Pop.”
At Swedish Hospital, Dad was at first quite pale, but as days passed and he received care the color returned to his features and he put on a few pounds. Like his old self, he monitored his vital signs constantly, and the medical personnel were quite open with him about everything. The signs were good, especially considering his age and what he had been through. Dad spoke of how well the first round of treatments had gone in Wisconsin, and of how much he looked forward to returning to work on “Dune 7.” The new book was barely under way when he had to leave it. He said we might work on a Dune book together one day—perhaps a Dune “prequel” idea I had suggested to him, set in the mythical time of the Butlerian Jihad. He said my writing had come a long way.
He had his up and down days, and seemed to want me to stay longer when he was feeling good. Perhaps this was the opposite of the way it should have been, for I might have lifted his spirits on down days given enough time. Overall he was upbeat, far more cheerful than the rest of us. Theresa was almost always there, either in the room or in a nearby waiting room, and I knew it was difficult for her. She and my father had made many plans, and had only been married for a few months.
On January 10, 1986, a Friday, I parked my car near Swedish Hospital and walked a couple of blocks, leaning into a cold, wind-driven drizzle. Moments later, in the warmth of my father’s private hospital room, he was sitting up and alert. He recounted a number of Zen parables, some of which I recalled hearing before, emanating from his conversations in the 1960s with Zen master Alan Watts.
One was the tale of a Zen priest and a young proselyte in his tutelage, both celibate. Walking alongside a river in India they encountered a beautiful young woman in a white gown, moaning that she couldn’t get across the water to her wedding without spoiling her dress. Upon hearing this, the priest carried her across, while she lifted her skirts above the water. Then the holy man and his young associate continued on their way.
Soon it became clear to the priest that something was troubling his companion, so he asked what it might be.
“We’ve taken vows of celibacy,” the youth answered, “but that beautiful woman, I must confess…she tempted me sorely.”
“Oh, you’re still carrying that young woman? I left her back at the river.”
As if to sum up the folly of existence, including his own, Dad told another Zen parable: “Before I achieved satori (sudden enlightenment) a mountain was a mountain, a river was a river, and a tree was a tree. After I achieved satori, a mountain was still a mountain, a river was still a river, and a tree was still a tree.”
He seemed at ease with himself this day, full of smiles and good cheer, and I left with a powerful thought: Dad’s going to beat this!
His laughter was returning. He was upbeat, felt he was winning the battle. Dad knew that the power of the mind could defeat the ills of the body. In his domain, the mind ruled supreme.
On January 15, 1986, I wrote in my journal that I had been experiencing excruciating pain, radiating from my neck to my shoulders. I couldn’t turn my head to the side, and when working on Prisoners of Arionn I had to set up a music stand behind my typewriter for the material I was retyping, so that I could look straight ahead. It was difficult jogging as well, but I ran in pain. A physical therapist wasn’t of much help to me at all.
On January 17, one of Dad’s last days at Swedish Hospital before leaving for Wisconsin, I visited him and showed him the cover art for my soon-to-be-released Berkley paperback, Sudanna, Sudanna. It depicted a Picasso-like man on an alien world, with a powerful wind blowing his cape. My father showed great enthusiasm for it, said it was very striking and different from most science fiction covers.
He returned to Madison on the nineteenth, ready to strike a final blow against the illness. Theresa accompanied him. I spoke with my father by telephone that day, and two days later. In the second conversation he filled me in on his medical condition and treatments. He spoke of cancer in his pancreas, colon and liver, and his words were a blur to me. It was hard for me to discuss this, and he detected my depressed mood. “I don’t want people around me to prepare for the worst, Brian,” he said. “It’s under control, really it is.”
I said I knew he was strong and that I was fine—that it was only the long-distance telephone wires making me sound that way.
Just before midnight on Friday, January 24, Penny telephoned, crying. She said Dad had taken a sudden turn for the worse. During surgery the doctors had found extensive cancer, much more than expected. She was catching the first plane to Wisconsin to be with him. I telephoned Madison, but couldn’t get any more information. I didn’t know why my father had suddenly gone into surgery, but it sounded very bad.
My mind went numb. I decided to get there the only way I could, by driving. How many miles was it? Around two thousand, I thought. It was the middle of the night in the dead of winter, during one of the worst cold snaps on record, with snow, ice and record-low temperatures across the heart of the country. Wisconsin, my destination, had sub-freezing temperatures and icy roads. I packed hurriedly, throwing things into a small travel bag, and, of all things, a cardboard box. I couldn’t find any other luggage, didn’t have time to look for it.
By 1:30 A.M. I was driving north on Mercer Island, heading for the interstate. As I reached Interstate 90 and headed east I fought back tears, vowing I would be with my father in his time of need—that there would be no repetition of what had happened with my mother. I cursed myself for not being able
to fly. A full moon was out, casting a cold glow on snowy mountain peaks ahead of me in the rugged Cascades. The mountain where my parents had honeymooned as forest service lookouts was in that range, to the south. The highway was slick, and I had to keep my speed under fifty miles per hour.
I made several stops along the way to telephone Jan and check on Dad’s condition, but didn’t obtain any new information. At 11:00 A.M. the next day, without sleep, I reached Missoula, Montana, nearly five hundred miles from home. Now I learned from a phone call to Jan that Dad was fine, that he had undergone surgery and was in satisfactory condition. Apparently the earlier reports from his doctor had been incorrect. He was sitting up in bed in good spirits, wondering what all the fuss was about. Penny and Theresa were with him, and Dad wanted me to turn around and go home.
Jan said Bruce was on a trip, and she could not reach him. Bill Ransom, however, had been in touch with her, and he was offering to fly ahead and meet me in Billings, Montana, to help with the driving. Our earlier plan had been for Jan to do this.
I felt somewhat foolish, with fifteen hundred miles still to drive in some really treacherous weather and terrible road conditions. I was developing a cough and checked into a motel to sleep the rest of the day and await further developments. By the following morning, I received confirmation that Dad was doing extremely well. Through Jan I passed word to Penny and Bill Ransom that I was heading home. It was eleven degrees in Montana that morning, with a pale blue sky and sunlight sparkling on ice alongside the roadway. It was so cold that the ice didn’t melt from the hood of my car for a hundred miles.
By Monday the twenty-seventh, I was back on Mercer Island, still behind on my sleep, with a hacking cough. Penny telephoned from Madison to say that Dad was up and walking around. Doctors were shaking their heads in disbelief, saying no one else recovering from that surgery had ever walked before five days. He was up in three.
When I spoke with my father that evening, he sounded chipper. In all the confusion I didn’t understand what his surgery had been all about, but assumed it must have been exploratory in nature, or perhaps to cut away some of the cancer cells, as an additional treatment. In the process of this surgery, Dad said he had received a vertical incision from his chest to his midsection. He said it rather matter-of-factly, leaving me impressed by his courage.
I was doubly impressed when I learned that before going into surgery, Dad asked his doctors and nurses how long it took other patients to recover. He wanted to know what the record was, and earlier he had asked similar questions with respect to the chemotherapy and hyperthermia treatments. With each answer he received, he tried to beat what other patients had done. He insisted on having his morphine dosage cut in half, was out of bed in half the time it took other patients. He was using his competitive nature in a new way.
The following morning, January 28, 1986, Dad was watching the launch of the space shuttle Challenger on television, broadcast from Cape Canaveral, Florida. When the shuttle exploded in the sky, killing all aboard, Dad was terribly upset and started shaking. His doctor made him turn the TV off.
Still, as days passed, Dad sounded better each time I talked with him. He was sweet and appreciative of my calls. He assured me that the cancer was in remission, that he was completing the round of treatments that had already been scheduled in order to play it safe.
When she was sure Dad was all right, Penny flew back to Port Townsend. This provided the rest of us with additional reassurance, and we looked forward to seeing him in February.
In my household and in telephone conversations with my brother and sister, we commented that his recovery was absolutely amazing. He needed to complete his treatments, but the indications were clear. He had the cancer on the run.
At 7:00 in the evening on Friday, February 7, 1986, I telephoned Dad and asked how he was doing. He said great, that he had a new laptop computer and tape recorder in his room, and he was writing a short story about his dream experiences while under anesthesia. It was, I would learn later from Bill Ransom, the beginnings of the “Soul Catcher-like story” that my father had been seeking for several years. His dreaming mind had come up with something the conscious mind could not produce. He also composed an essay for Writers of the Future, an anthology of short stories by talented new writers. He was always willing to share his knowledge with others, even when he was fighting for his life. In that essay, he wrote, “Remember how you learned, and when your turn comes, teach.”
My father and I talked about a new movie contract that had been sent to him for one of his novels, The Green Brain. Then he paused for a moment and said, in the gentlest of tones, “We were in Hawaii a year ago, weren’t we?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll bet it’s beautiful there. And warm.”
“I wish I were in the tropics right now, Brian. It’s too cold here for my blood.”
We didn’t specifically mention what day it was, the second anniversary of my mother’s death and the first anniversary of her ceremony at Kawaloa, but I knew it was on his mind, and that he had never, despite all the changes in his life, forgotten the love he felt for my mother.
At the close of the conversation, I said, “I love you, Dad.”
“I love you, too,” he said.
They would be the last words we would ever exchange.
Four days later I was taking care of Margaux, who was playing in her room upstairs. I was at the dining room table with my Prisoners of Arionn manuscript spread out in front of me, writing a chapter in longhand.
Shortly before noon, the Mercer Island Police knocked at my door. A uniformed officer told me my sister had been trying to reach me, and that something was wrong with my telephone. He said it was urgent, and left. From the telephone in my study I was able to dial Port Townsend. My heart was pounding through my chest.
She was crying, and gave me the shocking news that Dad had died of a pulmonary embolism…a blood clot that lodged in his lung, blocking the flow of blood. We spoke of his many attributes.
I learned later that Dad had been working on a story with the new computer on his lap, when suddenly he called for a nurse and said he wasn’t feeling well. He had been in a cheerful mood, happy to be writing again. It was shortly before 11:30 A.M.
Like my mother, who accurately predicted many years earlier that she would die in a distant land, Dad had predicted—back in the 1960s—that he would pass away at a keyboard, typing out a story.
It is clear that Frank Herbert leaned toward the scientific and away from the occult, and that he wanted to believe in a universe that was based upon analytically provable premises. He was not one to have faith in the existence of a Supreme Creator. This is not to say that he ruled out the possibility of paranormal events. He had experimented with Rhine consciousness in the 1930s, and had shown intense interest in Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious. My father relied upon gut feelings, and depended upon the abilities of a “white witch,” my mother.
Some people assume that the remarkably accurate predictions in Frank Herbert’s stories were made purely on the basis of reason and genius, linked with a process of intensive research and analysis. After all, it doesn’t require occult talents to accurately predict shortages of finite resources on this planet and fallen heroes. It is significant to note, however, that he never argued with my mother when she prepared astrological charts before making important decisions. In fact, he walked the fence when it came to astrology, as can be seen in the dedication he wrote for the book Eclipse by Brian Brewer (1978):
…It is well to remember that more than half the Earth’s human population still uses astrology as a guide in the making of decisions. There is a possibility that a kernel of truth remains at the core of this ancient belief. We are Earth creatures. It would be remarkable if the rhythms that influence this planet where we evolved produced no effects on our flesh comparable to the influences upon our religions and philosophies. When we look at the heavens, we look at a cosmic clock that has marked every evolutiona
ry development upon this mundane surface. That clock is still ticking….
After talking with Penny, I sat in my study in stunned disbelief. Margaux wandered in and looked at me quizzically. Intending to tell her that Pop-Pop had died, I held my arms out and asked her to come to me. But she held back, as if sensing I was going to tell her something terrible.
She approached eventually and stood close.
I couldn’t put the awful event into words. “I really love you, honey,” I said. “You’re so sweet. I’m glad you’re here with me, do you know that?”
She smiled, the toothy grin of a four-year-old, and rested a small hand on my knee.
A reviewer for The New York Times once quipped that Frank Herbert’s head was so overloaded with ideas that it was likely to fall off. In God Emperor of Dune, my father described Leto II, who through genetic processes had acquired all human information. In “Pack Rat Planet” and Direct Descent, Dad wrote of a vast Galactic Library, a storehouse containing the written wisdom of humankind. Frank Herbert, like Leto II and the Galactic Library, was a repository of incredible, wondrous information. His words captivated millions of people all over the world. He had worked so hard, but suddenly, in the ugly retch of a pulmonary embolism, it was all taken from him, and from us. I was struck with the utter, horrible waste of it, and I was angry.
I thought as well of the poignant passage written by his friend Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451, concerning an old sculptor who died:
He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them just the way he did. He was an individual. He was an important man. I’ve never gotten over his death. Often I think, what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died.
Dreamer of Dune Page 55