When Liz failed to show for a couple days one week, much to Gillian’s disappointment, I called up Stu and told him how much Gillian missed his wife’s company.
“I thought I was being a nuisance coming over all the time, and I felt horrible when I heard that Gillian got upset by my absence,” Liz later related. “After that, I don’t think I missed a day. Gillian and I had some great conversations. She was just a wonderful, wonderful person.
“Despite what was happening to her, she remained remarkably upbeat. I remember us laughing a lot, especially once when she told me a funny story about what happened at the 24-Hour Fitness one day when you and her were working out and one of the female trainers you knew said to you, ‘Is this your daughter?’ And you said, ‘No, this is my wife.’ And I guess that woman’s face turned crimson in embarrassment. Gillian got the biggest kick out of that.”
On the final day of June, the Milligans staged their wedding party—they had exchanged vows a couple months earlier—at Sam’s Seafood Restaurant in Sunset Beach, and Gillian insisted on attending the event even though she wasn’t feeling well that Saturday afternoon.
We went but remained for less than an hour.
Gillian, typically, expressed her apologies to both Stu and Liz for her brief stay.
“I’m so sorry, Liz, but I think it’s better that I go home,” she said to the new bride. “Please, don’t be mad at me.”
“Mad at you?” replied Liz incredulously. “I’m just so happy you came. I love you, Gillian.”
Liz Milligan would be there in our home during Gillian’s final minutes of life and played a vital role that day and many of the ones leading up to it.
So, also, did Sunni Webber.
She had become a confidante of Gillian, and she would take her to early evening gatherings at the Life Center Assembly of God Church and routinely engaged her in lengthy conversations about various faith-related subjects.
“I remember several nights when we’d sit in my car together in the driveway in front of your home and talk about the hereafter and heaven and God and Jesus Christ, Our Lord,” said Webber. “Gillian always would cry a lot but never expressed any sorrow for herself. She had accepted her destiny. But she also was very human. She admitted she was frightened. ‘You know you’re going somewhere,’ she would tell me. ‘But you wonder where. This is not like a planned trip. This is a trip of eternity.’ But in those final weeks, she always was in so much pain. She was such a courageous person.”
September 2001 (Hospice Care)
I remember waking up with a sorrowful emptiness and knew it wouldn’t be a pleasant day.
It was a Tuesday morning, a week away from the worst terrorist attack in American history. We were set to have a meeting at the UCLA Medical Center with our oncologist, Dr. Lee Rosen, and his staff.
As we drove to Westwood—Gillian’s mother came along—there was a tense silence in the car, the chilling kind of silence that always pervaded when we returned to Long Beach after one of these consultations that always ended darkly.
After the City of Hope disappointment, I, finally, had come to accept the inevitable, and I knew that the words we would hear today from the medical people wouldn’t be soothing.
And they weren’t.
I noted the grim-faced visage of Lee Rosen as I escorted Gillian into his office in which a couple of his nurses also were present.
After Gillian sat down, she addressed her oncologist.
“What do you think we should do next?” she asked softly.
Rosen didn’t hesitate in his reply.
“I think the best alternative now is hospice care,” he said.
I felt that familiar shock of adrenalin cut through my body and sighed audibly.
Gillian nodded and didn’t speak. Neither did her mother. Neither did I.
I cast a quick glance at Gillian, and her eyes had moistened.
A blur of images permeated my thought process—my meeting Gillian in the Crystal Palace train station; my holding the five-month-old fetus of our son in the hospital room; our ducking out of the way of New Year’s fireworks (falling rockets) at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin; our sitting in a crowded beer garden at Englischer Park in Munich savoring the beer, bratwurst and ambiance; our South of France forays; our poignant visit to Renoir’s mansion in Cagnes-sur-Mer; our Middle East adventure; our laughter; our tender, devoted love for each other.
She got up and said, “Thank you, doctor.”
Rosen, still grim-faced, warmly embraced her.
The forty-five-minute trip back to Long Beach took an eternity. The car reverberated with the eeriness of silence.
Gillian was a mere thirty-five and knew it was now certain she wouldn’t be celebrating thirty-six, knew she wouldn’t be celebrating another holiday season, knew it was now a certainty that her time in this world soon would be at an end.
I wrote and spoke for a living, but I was at a loss for words that morning. Maybe I should have consoled Gillian in some way, but I didn’t. I remained mute. I later spoke to Gillian’s mother about it. “There’s nothing you could have said that would have helped,” said Mary. “Gillian knows your feelings on the matter. You don’t have to express them.”
I didn’t, but to this day, I find myself cursing my silence. Maybe I should have told Gillian how much I loved her, how much she had enhanced my life and how much she had been an inspiration to me in so many ways. Maybe I should have told her that until she had come along I was a chaotic mess without any moral compass.
I didn’t do the radio show that afternoon, and Gillian, as well as her mother, accompanied me to El Dorado Park, where I went on a run. And incredibly, during it, Gillian and her mom walked awhile.
Even after being informed by her doctor that the only viable alternative for her now was hospice care, she still chose to exercise, which she continued to do until her final week.
During that time, she never spoke about her imminent date with mortality, although she did lapse into the past tense on occasion during conversation.
“Oh, Douglas, I’m going to miss going to see the big fights in Las Vegas and going to World Series games,” she said. “But most of all, I’m going to miss being on our European vacations and just being with you.”
I remember we were seated together on a sofa in the front room of our home when she said that, and I turned my head away from her so she would not see my tears.
That weekend we remained home, and for the first time, Gillian was unable to accompany me to El Dorado Park. But she still was taking short walks around the neighborhood with her mother, although it was becoming progressively more difficult.
The sadness inside became more intense. To see someone you have cherished so passionately in such a debilitated state is unbearably hard. I was engulfed in an emotional gamut of helplessness, bitterness, emptiness, regretfulness and, perhaps most of all, sorrowfulness.
Such feelings manifested themselves in different ways. I no longer had an appetite and began skipping meals. My weight, usually around 165, dropped to 155. Sleep became almost impossible as I lay in bed at night next to Gillian, whose breathing had become increasingly labored and whose pain threshold had reached its limits despite her regular intake of oxycodone. I’m sure my insomnia only deepened my depression.
But worst of all was watching Gillian’s precipitous descent. It was like a ghoulish dream sequence of watching in vain a person being inexorably pulled under by quicksand—and yet this wasn’t a dream. It was real, too real for my distressed senses.
I kept thinking about the doctor’s statement to Gillian about the end being near when she couldn’t get out of bed.
She still was managing that feat, with great effort, and that Saturday night she even insisted on attending a Long Beach State women’s volleyball match at the Pyramid. She had come to enjoy the sport and had become friends with the 49ers’ nationally renowned coach, Brian Gimmillaro, and his wife, Dania.
I helped her into the arena, and she
quietly watched Gimmillaro’s ladies easily emerge victorious from the top row of the arena, even though there were times during the match when she was grimacing in pain.
That Sunday, her final Sunday, she even asked me to take her to a vegetarian Indian restaurant in Artesia called the Woodlands. Indian food had always been Gillian’s favorite.
We went there that evening—her mother came, too—and Gillian ordered a plate of okra, which she picked at sparingly. It would be the last restaurant Gillian would visit, and Gillian barely could make it to the car, as both her mother and I assisted her in the difficult journey.
The next day, I got up early, wrote a column for the Press Telegram, spent a few hours with Gillian and then went to the ESPN Zone to do the McDonnell-Douglas Show. It would be the final one I’d do that week and actually would be the final one I would do until I came back from bereavement leave in the first week of October.
That Monday evening, as I watched the football game between the Denver Broncos and New York Giants in the front room, Gillian was in the kitchen helping her mother prepare dinner. I remember walking in and seeing Gillian slicing up some vegetables.
Her mother had informed me that her daughter had walked around the neighborhood that afternoon, which amazed me.
The hospice nurse had been making regular visits and informed me privately that those young people like Gillian with terminal illnesses had a fanatical desire to live and often did so much longer than expected because of it.
“They don’t want to let go, and who can blame them?” she said. “But at the end, they must let go.”
I didn’t realize during that Monday night of September 10 that this would be the last evening I would be able to engage Gillian in a normal conversation.
And, tellingly, Gillian that night was unusually talkative after I turned the lights off in our bedroom.
As we laid next to each other in the darkness, Gillian, without any prompting, began speaking feelingly about life and its glad offerings.
She reflected about friendships, vacations, resorts, museums, rivers, lakes, work, family, books, paintings, films, traveling and, of course, love.
“Oh, Douglas, I’m just so fortunate to have been given the chance to do and to see so many great things in my life,” she said. “I think we all tend to take life for granted until you know the end is near. Then you realize you were so fortunate to have been a part of it.”
I listened to her soliloquy, and I was moved by it, as I marveled at the admirable grace she continued to display under circumstances that defied comprehension. Not once during it did she mention her fatal condition, which had caused her so much pain and grief. Not once did she deviate from her stream of consciousness about the virtues of life.
Eventually, she grew quiet and lapsed into sleep, but I remember myself that night alternating between a restless wakefulness and a restless slumber. And then, at 4:00 a.m., I could hear Gillian’s soft voice beckoning me to call the hospice nurse for pain relief. I momentarily thought I was in the midst of a dream until she gently tugged at my right arm.
And then later would come the phone call from my friend Mark Emerzian about passenger planes crashing into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon.
Tragic, unexpected deaths were occurring in New York and Washington, D.C.
And death, not unexpected but to me just as tragic, was happening in my own household.
For the next few days, with morphine coursing through her veins, Gillian remained bedridden, opening her eyes on rare occasions and speaking in whispered, barely audible tones. No longer could she walk on her own.
Our Calico cat, which Gillian had picked out of a pet store’s adoption section three years earlier, lay loyally next to her during that time, departing only for the litter box and for food. Named Orphie—as in orphan—she had always been partial to Gillian and innately seemed to know the severity of her condition.
Gillian constantly had people near her. Her mother was a regular presence, as was my mother, a retired registered nurse who had come down from Fowler alone in her car despite being ninety. Liz Milligan showed up every afternoon. Esther Fawcett always was around. The hospice nurse came twice a day to perform her duties.
I often sat in a chair next to the bed and held Gillian’s hand while either reading Auden poems to her or relating to her the day’s events, which that week were of a historical nature.
She sometimes would utter a whispered response not quite decipherable or would manage a slight nod, although Sunni Webber later would tell me that Gillian reacted in a spiritual manner when she and Gillian’s mother one afternoon spent a couple hours reading scriptures from the Bible.
“Gillian would nuzzle her head into her pillow, and a beautiful smile would cover her face during our readings,” said Webber. “It was as though she was having a very contented dream. She just seemed so peaceful during that time.”
My insomnia took hold of me that week; my periods of sleep became more infrequent as Gillian’s condition worsened.
I had slept next to Gillian in our bed until Friday, when Gillian, no longer able to walk on her own, was moved into a hospital bed that had been ordered by the hospice nurse for safety reasons.
“Sometimes Gillian might be squirming around, and we definitely don’t want her falling out of bed,” the hospice nurse said, in explaining her decision.
The hospital bed was placed in the front room, and that Friday evening, the final one in Gillian’s life, sleep totally eluded me as I laid on a nearby couch listening to Gillian’s ominously labored breathing and feeling an aching desolation that didn’t go away for a long time.
I arose several times to check on her—as did her mother—but she didn’t respond to our queries. Her eyes remained closed, and she continued to struggle mightily and loudly with her breathing.
The Final Day
I called the hospice nurse that morning at seven o’clock. She came over promptly and told Mary, my mother and me that Gillian’s blood pressure was decreasing rapidly and that she had only a few hours to live.
We all sat in the front room and waited as Gillian squirmed in her bed and continued to gasp for breath.
I kept asking the hospice nurse if Gillian was suffering, and she kept patiently assuring me she wasn’t.
“This is just the normal reaction of a person when the system begins shutting down,” she said. “And because of her age, she also is instinctively fighting to live. You can do her a favor if you tell her it’s time to let go.”
I turned and ran into the den and erupted in tears. I felt I was coming apart emotionally.
How do you tell someone who had brought such joy and comfort and stability into your life to give up her own?
It took me awhile to regain my composure, and I’m not sure I did. But I finally returned to the front room and stood over Gillian, who continued to squirm and gasp for air.
I leaned over and whispered into her ear, “Honey, it’s time to let go.”
I was stunned by Gillian’s response.
“Let go of what?” she whispered back.
I turned to the hospice nurse, and tears once again were trickling down my cheeks.
But I remained standing over the bed as Gillian continued to squirm and to struggle to breathe.
The three older women—Gillian’s mother, my mother and Esther—remained seated on the sofa. Liz Milligan, who was Gillian’s age, had arrived and stood close watch over Gillian.
The hospice nurse told me Gillian’s vital signs had become almost nonexistent—her blood pressure had dipped to zero—and that she had been called to another residence.
“I’ll try to be back as soon as I can,” she said.
“Are you sure Gillian’s not suffering?” I asked again.
“Absolutely,” she said. “She doesn’t feel any pain.”
About an hour later, I leaned down to Gillian and once again whispered in her ear, “Honey, it’s time to let go.”
Her hood
ed eyes gazed up at me for the final time, and she whispered in response, “I understand.”
Gillian Mary Howgego Krikorian would take her final breath moments later, at 2:35 p.m., as her mother, my mother, Esther Fawcett, Liz Milligan and myself were gathered around the bed. I would kiss her gently as Liz closed her eyelids. I stared at her a few minutes and then repaired to my backyard, where I sat on a lounge chair in front of the swimming pool weeping uncontrollably, lost in the solitude of my grief.
The Aftermath
Later that afternoon, a stream of friends came by to offer condolences. One of them, Rich Archbold, the executive editor of the Press-Telegram, urged me to write a column on Gillian. Although I wasn’t exactly in a creative mood, I’m certainly glad Archbold gently prodded me into doing so.
I did it for Gillian, who deserved a better fate in life, as so many ill-starred people born into this world do. The response to my piece that appeared in the September 17 edition of the Press-Telegram was astounding. I received more than one thousand letters and probably a like number of e-mails from people expressing their sympathies. T.J. Simers, the acerbic sports columnist for the Los Angeles Times, dropped an item in his column about how moved he was by my article. The fight announcer Michael Buffer mentioned Gillian’s name on an HBO fight telecast a week later from Las Vegas before a show featuring Fernando Vargas.
A memorial service was held on September 19 at the Life Center Assembly of God Church in Lakewood. A crowd of more than five hundred came, and there was standing room only in the balcony. Those present included the Hall of Fame basketball player Jerry West, the one-time Los Angeles Dodger general manager Fred Claire, the longtime publicity director of the Los Angeles Angels Tim Meade, the high-powered Los Angeles public relations mogul Steve Brener, the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach executives Chris Pook and Jim Michaelian, several well-known area sportswriters and many local dignitaries and politicians.
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