A Little Thing Called Life

by Linda Thompson

  “Mrs. Thompson, you don’t understand,” her doctor went on. “Suffocating is a very horrible death. You can stop smoking now and maybe even live a few more years, but if you continue to smoke, I’m afraid there’s no other way to put it, you will die a horrible death.”

  My mother continued to smoke, but she inexplicably also continued to live. Not that it seemed like any kind of a blessing after a time. It was the most god-awful death imaginable, because she truly was like a fish out of water, gasping for breath, even with help from her oxygen tank.

  As soon as I arrived at her house each month, I’d go and sit on her bed.

  “Mama, can I do anything for you?” I asked.

  “Honey, just breathe for me,” she said.

  And I would. During my visits, when I went out for a run in the park near their house, I breathed as deeply as I could, knowing that she couldn’t. The very act of breathing is something we often take for granted, but not me, not after witnessing what my mother endured. I am grateful for each and every breath I’m fortunate enough to take.

  With emphysema, the sacs in your lungs fill up with air and fluid, making it so you can’t expel the air. This means you can’t take in a good breath because the little air sacs are already full. She didn’t want to have food or anything around her face because it further inhibited her breathing. She was five foot ten, but her weight sank to 86 pounds. It was a slow process of suffocating and starving to death, and it was excruciating to witness.

  “I don’t know what I’ve ever done in my life that God would punish me this way,” she said. “That I would have to suffer so.”

  Obviously, this was a very difficult time for all of us. But I could tell it lightened my mother’s spirits immeasurably to see the boys each month. And as sick as she was, she was still a wonderful, doting grandmother. And as all good grandmothers do, she gleefully ignored all of the parameters I tried to impose at the start of each of our visits.

  “Mama, please don’t give them candy, because they’ll get too wired, and it’s not good for them,” I always said when we arrived.

  “Of course not, honey,” she reassured me.

  Then, when I was busy helping my father or otherwise occupied elsewhere in the house, the boys knew it was just the right moment to go in and find her in her bed.

  “Mammaw, where’s the candy?” they asked.

  “You just step up there and it’s right there in that little box,” she said, pointing to where she’d had my daddy hide candy for them on her bureau.

  She always had banana kisses and chocolate drops. They knew exactly where she kept her candy, and they knew she would never say no to them. Even though they weren’t allowed too much candy at home (but, really, they were), I couldn’t be too upset about these lapses in the regular rules. I was so glad to see her smile and felt blessed they got the time with her that they did.

  This was a tremendously emotional, stressful period. I was grieving over my mother’s horrible demise, taking place right before my helpless eyes. I was concerned about being the best mother I could be for my sons, and worried about whether I’d be able to support us and keep our house. I constantly despaired over the looming probability that my sons would grow up fatherless, and I also had to deal with the uncertainty surrounding Bruce’s agonizing struggle and the unpredictable process of his ongoing transition.

  In the midst of all this mental and emotional chaos, a Canadian knight in shining armor, named David Foster, seemed to arrive just in the nick of time, on a white steed, galloping to my rescue. I’d continued to see David sporadically that winter and into 1986. After we’d gotten together several times to play tennis and racquetball, he made a confession to me.

  “Listen, I think I’m falling in love with you,” he said.

  “Whoa, wait, what?” I said. But I felt the same way. I was definitely swept away by David.

  I had a hard and fast rule against getting involved with married men. I still do. But I was exceedingly vulnerable at that time in my life, and David was very determined to be with me, confessing that he’d seen me sitting across from Huey Lewis at the Grammys and had instantly fallen in love with me.

  “I’ve been in love with you since the first time I saw you at the Grammys in your red dress,” he said. “I couldn’t take my eyes off you then, and I can’t get my mind off you now. I never thought my marriage would be forever. I can help you. I can be a father to your boys.”

  With everything going on in my life, I wasn’t strong enough to resist him. I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. I don’t know how much of what he said was true, or how much was just feigned charm and the lines I needed to hear. I can’t deny I found a huge measure of comfort in his reassurances. He made me feel like a desirable woman again after feeling all the insecurities I had experienced after Bruce’s revelation. We were helplessly, hopelessly falling in love.

  Even so, I tried to fight it, as I’m certain David did, too. I didn’t want to be the other woman. I really kept trying to move away from him, and I dated several other people over the next six months, including the actor Christopher Lambert. However, my dating other men just seemed to fuel David’s desire to be with me even more. He was insanely jealous, even though he was himself married.

  “I don’t want to be the reason that you leave your marriage,” I told him.

  In the summer of 1986, I was in Nashville filming Hee Haw. I was attending a small dinner with several friends, including Kenny and Marianne Rogers, Cathy Baker, and the comedian Gailard Sartain. During our meal, the phone rang. Surprisingly, it was for me. My first thought was one of concern. Something had happened to my mother. Why else would someone be calling me here? But it was David Foster.

  “I’ve done it! I’ve left my wife,” David declared.

  As is David’s way, he has since turned this into a funny, irreverent story that casts him in the hangdog role. In his telling, he called me in the middle of a raucous party where everyone was laughing and having a grand old time to give me his sad, serious news, and I could barely hear him over the frivolity. Of course, that’s not how it really happened, but that’s part of his sense of humor. In actuality, I went into the other room, leaving the noise of the group behind me, so I could really talk to him.

  “You what?” I said.

  “I’ve left my wife,” he said. “I want to be with you.”

  “Listen, please don’t make me the reason you’re doing this,” I said. “If you’re unhappy, and you don’t want to be there, that’s one thing, but I don’t want to be the reason you’re leaving. I don’t want that on my conscience.”

  “No, no, I’ve never been happy,” he said. “Yes, you’re part of it, because I want to be with you. I’ve fallen in love with you, and I want to be with you.” I now know what a tremendous toll that decision took on David. It weighed heavily on both of us for all the years we were together.

  I had no reason to doubt him. And I had fallen in love with David, too, no matter how hard I had tried not to. But it did lay heavily on my conscience for many years, and I allowed myself and others to beat me up with guilt for longer than I should have.

  I took David at his word and agreed to begin an exploration of our feelings for each other, which developed into a deeper, long-lasting love, resulting in marriage, which kept us together for nineteen years. Considering the length and depth of our union, I hold a deep conviction that David and I were meant to be together. Even so, I’m not proud of how we first came together. But I am no longer embarrassed by it, either. I have allowed myself to be human, and have long since forgiven myself, which is a step in the right direction toward healing.

  At that time, after all I’d just been through, and all I was facing on my own, I didn’t have the strength to resist the comfort, and love, and affection David offered me. And looking back, I’m glad I didn’t. My dad used to tell me that, at the right time, with the right person, under the right circumstances, anything can happen. I’ve found that to be true in my life. I be
lieve some of that magic was at work when David and I found each other. I am grateful for the years we shared together.

  It wasn’t just a romantic bond we were forming in those days, either, but also a creative unity that would lay the groundwork for the greatest collaboration I’ve ever experienced. Not long into our relationship, David came to me with an idea.

  “Hey, why don’t we try writing together?” he said.

  “I’d love that,” I said.

  I invited David over to my house, and we went out to the guesthouse, which ultimately became his studio. He was always opinionated, bossy but brilliant, and we worked very well together. He wrote incredibly beautiful, intricate melodies, which stirred emotions deep within me, inspiring me to tap into the creative reservoirs of my soul. David was extremely appreciative of my lyrical gifts. We were already becoming a great team. He wrote the music, and I wrote the lyrics. It seemed to be a songwriting marriage made in heaven.

  “So in Love with You”

  You are to me

  What poetry

  Tries to say with a word

  You are the song

  All the music

  My heart ever heard

  I can’t escape

  The air that I breathe

  Even speaks of you

  And I’m not ashamed to say

  That I feel this way

  I will stand before God

  Give you all that I’ve got

  I can promise you

  I’ll be true

  I reveal here and now

  As we both take this vow

  I am so in love

  I am so in love with you

  Words can’t express

  What I confess

  With each beat of my heart

  I’m overwhelmed

  With a passion I felt from the start

  I vow this day we’ll never part

  Our love will grow

  As years come and go

  I’ll remain by your side

  There isn’t anything

  That I would deny

  I will stand before God

  Give you all that I’ve got

  I can promise you

  I’ll be true

  I reveal here and now

  As we both take this vow

  I am so in love

  I am so in love with you

  LYRIC: LINDA THOMPSON

  Chapter Seventeen

  Navigating Life

  As David and I began to explore our relationship, I quickly discovered how intoxicating his personality could be. The first six months were a honeymoon of sorts and he was extremely sweet and devoted. We were newly, madly in love, and in these early months together, we shared many beautiful, poignant moments. Our bond was intense and passionate.

  As I had already discovered with my two former loves, with extraordinarily gifted individuals almost always comes complexity. David was a spectacularly multifaceted genius. He still is. The David I have gotten to know over the many years we have shared a relationship of one sort or another is a compassionate, caring, philanthropic, highly charged, passionate, brilliant, and paradoxical man. Not unlike the Elvis I knew and loved. He is a loyal friend and ally, and is that person who would put himself out to help another. He is the one to call to organize entertainment for a charity event. He extends his talent, time, and energy to show up for a good cause. After all these years, I believe him to be, at the very core of his being, a good man.

  Early on, David and I compared notes about our hometowns. I was always honored to be from Memphis because of its rich history, including the musical heritage of the rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and country genres. It’s always been said that songwriter W. C. Handy pushed the blues through a horn on Beale Street. And because music was David’s life, I was excited to share this heritage with him.

  I took David to Memphis, the former cotton town on the Mississippi River, steeped in cultural riches and Southern pathos, where I’d come of age. We went to hear blues on Beale Street, a special experience, the music making its way out every door as you walk along. We went to the Rivermont Hotel, where I’d stayed when I was Miss Liberty Bowl.

  One day, we ended up at a little park on the bluff overlooking the Mississippi. Admiring the view, we sat on a bench, looking at Mud Island and the barges sliding by. David put his head in my lap, and I ran my fingers through his hair. We never forgot that moment. We were deeply in love.

  Shortly after that trip, we went to see his hometown, Victoria, British Columbia. When I got off the plane and first entered Victoria, I noticed all the lampposts were adorned with gorgeous, colorful flowers. Everything was perfect, not a brown spot on anything. The charm of the town was overwhelming. I was enchanted by the city’s beautiful Victorian architecture and its famous formal gardens, as well as the harbor.

  “I’m so embarrassed,” I said, turning to David. “Are you kidding? You were so nice about Memphis, but you grew up in Disneyland. It looks like Main Street in Disneyland.”

  We laughed about that. We still laugh about that today.

  Victoria was beautiful, and the people welcoming. Canadians are a lot like Southerners in that respect. They’re very hospitable, down-to-earth, and familial. Even though David grew up in a different country and was from a smaller family than mine, we were raised very much alike. We both grew up humbly and were instilled with the same values. David maintained a deep devotion to hard work, personal improvement, and his family, and these were all qualities I valued in a partner.

  Meeting his family in Victoria for the first time, especially his mother, explained a great deal about the man he’d become. As I came to understand, David grew up feeling very special, which he absolutely was and is. When he was about five years old, it was discovered that he has perfect pitch and enormous musical talent, and he became a bit of a child prodigy. He was the only boy in his family, born right in the middle, with three older sisters, and three younger sisters. His mother thought he hung the moon; she nurtured his talent and pampered him. She was a great mom, but I think in some ways she spoiled him because he was the only boy, and because he was undeniably gifted.

  David’s mother was a fantastic woman. She hand-sewed all of her seven children’s clothing, knitted, and darned their socks (which explained where David got the notion that this was something I should be doing for him). She cooked, she baked, she donated her time to philanthropy, she was impossible to live up to, but in the best possible way. She knew it, too, and she was cute about it.

  “I ruined him, didn’t I?” she used to joke about David.

  It was true. She was strong, formidable, personable, caring, just a great lady. After David and I eventually married, I used to always joke that I’d married him for his mother. “A husband you can find, but a great motherin-law, that’s another thing,” I often said. “If you find one of those, marry the man.” I adored her and would often good-naturedly say, “None of us women could ever compete with you and the kind of woman you set as an example for David.”

  Of course, her special treatment paid off in the end, as David became wildly successful—he’s been nominated for 47 Grammys and won 16—and was always extremely devoted to his mother, taking good care of her, along with the rest of his family.

  After that initial visit together, we developed an annual ritual of spending a month in Canada each summer, during which we visited with David’s mother and six sisters, as well as his many nieces and nephews, and took all of our young children out on extended boat trips. David’s mother often went with us, much to my delight, as I genuinely enjoyed her company.

  David’s boat was a sixty-three-foot Hatteras yacht with a salon, galley, and three staterooms and three heads (boat talk for bathrooms). We loved being on board together and had a lot of romantic times there, especially in the beginning. When it was docked in California, we took the boat to Catalina Island and Newport Harbor. In the summer, we cruised through the Gulf Islands of British Columbia and the nearby San
Juan Islands of Washington State. With a boat like that, it was easy to feel like there was a bit of magic in the world, and after the last few years with Bruce it felt good to be swept off my feet and onto the water.

  From the start, being with David required a commitment across nearly every aspect of my life; because we both had children from previous marriages, we couldn’t wade tentatively into things. Besides David and his kids, I had the boys, acting, and my songwriting career.

  When David and I first got together, between us we had five children ages five and under, including David’s daughters, Sara, age five; Erin, age three; and Jordan, age one; and my sons who were four and a half and two and a half. David’s older daughter, Amy, from his previous marriage, was a teenager and did not spend time with us as regularly as the little ones, but we did make an effort to always make her feel welcome. Our children scarcely remember anything before about age five, making it hard for them to recognize the good we tried to do for them, or how much we cared for them during their very early years. During those initial months, I think David and I really tried to do our best to unite our family. But of course, as time went on, the reality set in that, often, blended families are less “blended” than they are “curdled,” with lumps that are virtually insoluble.

  Merging our two very full lives proved a complex process, as it always is in a new romantic partnership. David and I had both been disappointed in our failed previous marriages. We were both healing from sadness, loss, and feelings of accountability in the aftermath of our respective divorces. We related to each other on many levels and frequently leaned on each other.

  But not long into our relationship, our differences in parenting style and our sense of responsibility for our children complicated the process of uniting our families. David always wanted to take trips alone, just the two of us; I always wanted to take all the children with us on vacations and even working trips. David thought I was too permissive and affectionate. I thought he was too harsh and irritable. Our family dynamic deteriorated into Daddy’s girls against Mama’s boys, David against Linda, his against hers, and it spiraled from there. Our history was at least partly to blame. David and I were each dealing with our debilitating guilt about the circumstances of our coming together—an angry ex, a transitioning ex—and the kids quickly sensed the tension beneath the surface of our family life.