Our plane back to Colorado was in the afternoon. A few hours before our flight I found Hunter in his hotel room just waking up. As I was stuffing his clothes into his suitcase and Hunter was getting dressed, he said to me in an offhand way, “Don’t kid yourself about the magic,” referring to my speech. I will never forget those words.
That was the last time we ever talked about that night. It wasn’t the last time he talked about it, though. Wayne Ewing, a documentary filmmaker, had shot the entire evening and made an edited version that he gave to Hunter. Hunter watched my speech over and over again, and each time he would have guests, he would make them watch the entire tape if they hadn’t seen it already, and even if they had. That’s when I understood how important that night had been to him. Of course he valued the affirmation from his hometown, the town he had left in disgrace forty years earlier, forced to either join the air force or go to jail while his wealthy friends went to Ivy League universities. That night some of those same people had come to pay him tribute, he had the key to the city, it was officially Hunter S. Thompson Day in Louisville, and the governor had appointed him a Kentucky colonel. He was vindicated.
Keith Richards, Jane Rose, Laila Nabulsi, and Hunter on the couch at Owl Farm. Hunter interviewed Keith in 1993.
But what mattered most to him were not those tributes, but my speech. It has taken me years to understand this. It meant much more than if I had just said, “I love you, Hunter.” It was a public confirmation that I had forgiven him for his failures and transgressions as a father, that I admired him for the right reasons. I was proud of my father, and now everyone knew it.
I used to think that that was the night that Hunter stopped wondering if I loved and respected him. Now I see that he knew it before I stepped up to the microphone. Nevertheless, it made him very, very happy to hear it spoken in front of a couple of thousand people. He needed absolution from me, his child, his son, his blood and heir. It wasn’t until after his death that I became conscious of this, but that didn’t matter. I gave him what he needed when he was alive.
Grandpa Hunter, or “Ace” as he preferred to be called, with Will at the IBM Selectric in the Command Chair in the kitchen at Owl Farm
Three years later, I learned to show my love for him in a very different way; Hunter endured two very difficult surgeries that pushed my patience and acceptance right up to my limits.
—
IN 1999, when Will was a little over one year old, I got a call from Deborah. She said that Hunter was going into the hospital for hip replacement surgery. He was sixty-two, and for the past several years he had been suffering from increasing hip pain. He rarely talked about it, but he took a lot of painkillers every day, and he didn’t walk much. He would go from his bed to his Command Chair at the kitchen counter. There, within arm’s reach, he had his typewriter, two telephones, the stereo, and about ten remote controls to operate the television and its associated devices, as well as the last several days’ worth of newspapers, his medicines, the stove, the coffee machine, a copy of each of his books, small Macanudo cigars, a jarful of pens, and blank paper and stationery. For things beyond an arm’s reach, like cooking, faxing, fixing drinks, getting newspapers, and so on, he relied on whoever was present, and there was nearly always somebody there. But this was not an acceptable situation to a man like Hunter. He had always been able to go where he wished, when he wished. His hip pain had greatly reduced his mobility, and he could no longer pretend that the pain was not agonizing.
And he hated hospitals. They were little more than prisons to him, with all their rules and restrictions. Hunter did not belong in a hospital. Finally, though, the pain was too much.
Jennifer, Will, and I went to see him a week or so before the operation. He showed us the hip joint, an extra-large version that the hospital had had to special-order for him. It was titanium and looked like a large, high-tech tent stake, the top of which had been bent to the side. It was a beautiful thing, shining and precisely made. He showed it to all his visitors. He described how the surgeon would saw off the top of his femur and replace it with this.
Deborah asked us to come and help take care of him at the hospital once the surgery was complete. The hospital was in Glenwood Springs, about forty miles from Aspen. We returned the day after the surgery and checked into the Cedar Lodge Motel a few blocks from the hospital.
We went to see Hunter and found him in a drugged sleep in a darkened room. Deborah was there. He looked old. The surgery had gone well, but the doctor was shocked at how little of the joint was left, that it was just a rough stump grinding into his hip bone. He had been “acting up,” and earlier that day had grabbed a long steel pole that reached across the bed above him and thrown it at one of the nurses.
A normal person would sleep off the general anesthesia and then spend a few days in bed, in pain but generally conscious, while his body began to heal, then spend several days in physical therapy learning how to work with this new joint to undo some of the unconscious adaptations bodies make to minimize pain. This was not Hunter’s plan.
The biggest problem was not his temperament, his dislike of rules and doctors, or his tantrums, it was alcohol. He and the surgeon had had a frank discussion about it before the surgery. Some doctors see a hospital visit as an opportunity to impose The Cure, a time for the patient to detoxify in a safe environment and start life anew, free of alcohol dependence. Hunter made it clear that he had no interest in The Cure. The surgeon accepted this and instructed the nurses to give him whiskey as part of his drug regimen. It actually appeared on the sheet that describes what drugs a patient should have when, and how much. It was something like “500 cc of whiskey every two hours or as needed.” He had to have alcohol in his system all the time or he would go into withdrawal, which could be fatal given how much Hunter drank every day. The withdrawal came on swiftly. His last drink had been the night before. By the time he was out of surgery, withdrawal had begun.
Hunter became delirious, irrational, angry, confused—but most dangerous of all, the withdrawal caused him to forget to take his dose of alcohol, accelerating the withdrawal and the accompanying mental confusion.
So Hunter had to go through detox in a drug-induced coma to protect him, as well as those of us caring for him. Deborah, Heidi, and I worked in shifts throughout the day and night to keep an eye on him, to keep an eye on the doctors and nurses, and to reassure him if he woke up and wondered where in the hell he was.
It was scary, seeing my father in a coma, watching the doctors try to balance the speed of withdrawal with the problems caused by immobility: bedsores, weakened muscles, and pneumonia. He was completely vulnerable. His rage and willpower could not help him now. He was old, pale, and drawn, and a victim of his own disease.
It hit me hard then that the most dangerous drug for my father wasn’t cocaine, it was alcohol. Hunter had never been a binge drinker or a stupid drunk. He was a maintenance drinker from the time he woke up to the time he went to bed. He didn’t slur his words, or suddenly go into rages (no more than any other time), confess his deepest feelings, become syrupy sweet, or pass out on the couch; you could say he handled his liquor well. In fact, he had disdain for sloppy drunks. If a guest at Owl Farm showed signs of not being able to hold his or her liquor, he would become impatient with them, and eventually tell them to leave.
He survived the detox without any major problems, and finally the doctors weaned him off the sedatives. He woke up, irritable, in pain, but coherent. He was aware that he was in a hospital, and he wasn’t happy about it. The detox had been the easy part. Now it got hard.
Being one of Hunter’s caretakers in the hospital highlighted one of the dilemmas of loving him. I found myself in the position of being both advocate and warder, trying, with little success, to enforce the recommendations of the doctors because I wanted him to recover, while also enabling the very things that slowed down the healing process: cigarettes and booze.
For instance, the doctors and nurses exp
lained to Hunter and to us, the caretakers, that he would have to limit his leg’s range of movement for several months until his body had fully healed around the artificial joint. If he bent over too far too soon, he could pop the joint right out of the socket, which would be extremely painful and possibly require surgery again, and would force him to start the whole healing process over. I’d remind him sternly, “Don’t bend so far! Remember, no more than ninety degrees!” At first he would grudgingly acquiesce, but he soon ignored me. Thankfully the joint stayed put and never popped out—someone might have lost a body part in the ensuing chaos of rage and pain that would have followed.
Then there was smoking. The doctor told us that it impedes healing by constricting blood vessels, and that it would be best if he stopped. Hunter had been smoking longer than he had been drinking, probably fifty years, and it was inconceivable that he would stop. Whenever the nurses weren’t around, he would smoke in the room with the window open. Many times I ended up pushing him in a wheelchair to a position just outside the emergency room doors where there was an ashtray and a couple of newspaper dispensers. He would smoke a few cigarettes, read The Denver Post or the Rocky Mountain News, and then demand to be returned to his room.
It was a long week. He was irritable, unreasonable, sometimes mean, demanding, ungrateful, and complaining. I tried to be patient. It was summer, thankfully, so I was eventually able to take him outside and onto the lawn. I would bring him lunch, his cigarettes, and his newspapers, and we would sit under a little tree for a couple of hours until he was ready to go back inside. He had resumed drinking whiskey as soon as his mind cleared, and this was a relief because it was one more familiar thing for him in a thoroughly unfamiliar and inhospitable place.
After about a week Hunter had recovered to the point that he no longer needed the high-touch, frequent, and intrusive medical attention and could move to another room. He could only walk with the use of a walker, and then only a short distance, less than one hundred feet, before the exertion and the pain overcame his need for independence and he had to rest. But he was thoroughly sick of the hospital and wanted to go home. Nothing at Owl Farm, with its narrow doorways, steps, high stools, and slick tile floors, was suited to a cripple. It would be a disaster to bring him home, where he would be completely dependent on Deb, not just for the usual things, but now for his complete physical care as well. We argued with him, tried to make him understand how utterly impractical it was, and that he would have to work hard in physical therapy for at least a week before he could even consider going home. He was unmoved. He just wanted to go home. We finally persuaded him to at least spend a few days doing physical therapy. Though he was weak, he did well the first day, and we were optimistic that he would be strong enough in a few days to go home.
That was too long for Hunter. If his caretakers would not take him home, then his friends would. The next day, Jennifer, Will, and I were in his room. At Hunter’s request, Jennifer had bought a tricycle for Will, along with a little helmet and Richard Scarry’s classic, What Do People Do All Day? Will was riding the trike around the room, and he and Hunter were playing hoops with a little stuffed basketball and the trash can. Suddenly three giants appeared, the three biggest men Hunter knew, all of them well over six feet tall and two hundred pounds: Oliver, Bob Braudis, and Ed Bastian, Buddhist scholar, filmmaker, and local entrepreneur. They had come to take him home. After some friendly chitchat, they hoisted Hunter in their arms and took him to Owl Farm. With difficulty they carried him up the steps (no railing) and to his (low) bed, where they left him (with no wheelchair and no walker). Being at home also allowed him to begin his cocaine use again, which further slowed down the healing process.
It had been well over a week and I had to return to work, so at this point Jen, Will, and I returned to Denver. There was a limit to how much I could do, both in terms of time off and psychologically. I was angry, tired, and emotionally worn out. I wanted to go home too.
Even now, every time we drive through Glenwood Springs on the way to Owl Farm, I feel a vague sick feeling and a desire get through the town as quickly as possible.
Yet, thank god I had been there. This would not have happened ten years earlier. He wouldn’t have wanted me there, and I wouldn’t, couldn’t, have done it. I wouldn’t have had the patience, and he would not have trusted me. By allowing me to help take care of him, Hunter demonstrated his trust in me. By showing up and spending my two weeks of vacation in a goddamn hospital and putting up with his foul moods and unreasonable demands, I validated that trust.
Jennifer, Will, and I came to visit a month or two later and found Hunter to be noticeably calmer and happier than we had seen him in years. He was less irritable, more likely to smile, and was generally a nicer person to be around. We attributed this to the absence of chronic pain.
Afterward, we rarely talked about the surgery, and it turned out that he remembered little of it, but he knew I had been there and stuck it out. And I knew that I could be there with him when he was weak, vulnerable, and not on his best behavior. We had survived the test.
With Hunter, Will, and Jen in the kitchen at Owl Farm, 1999. Once Hunter got over the reality of being a grandfather, he was a doting one.
Four years later, in 2003, we went through it all again. I thought it would be just like the previous experience, but this was much more difficult. Before he had been demanding and unreasonable. This time he was cruel.
His hip was no longer bothering him, but now his lower back was causing him great pain. As with his hip, he avoided walking as much as possible, and when he did walk, he hunched over to alleviate the pressure on the nerves in his back. He began using a rolling office chair as a kind of walker in the house. Driving became intolerable because even a small bump in the road was extremely painful, and it was hard for him to get in and out of his Jeep Grand Cherokee.
Hunter had become more reclusive over the years, preferring to stay home and have people visit him. It gradually became a huge ordeal to prepare to leave the house even for a few hours. This meant letting Hunter know several hours beforehand that he had to start getting ready. He would find a thousand ways to procrastinate. One trick he used when he really didn’t want to leave the house was to go to the bathroom, and then sneak down the hall to the bedroom. After half an hour we’d go check on him and find the bathroom door open and Hunter in bed again. There was getting dressed, and then preparing for travel. You’d think he was going away for a week—the bag had to be packed with all the essentials he might need, including cigarettes, drugs, whiskey, cookies, a flashlight, host gifts, practical jokes, and anything else he thought he might need while away from home for a few hours. Throughout this preparation he was certain to lose his temper at least a few times, but that was just part of the process.
I’m sure that his back pain was a big factor in his growing reclusiveness. He did not want people to see him moving like a cripple. Much better that people see him seated in the Command Chair, his throne. He also needed to be close to the bathroom, because one of the symptoms of pinched nerves in the lower back is a lessened ability to control one’s bowels. Incontinence is also a symptom of long-term alcoholism.
Finally the pain and inability to move comfortably led him to agree to back surgery.
The success of the hip operation made him more willing the second time around, and this time he involved me early in the process. I was honored and apprehensive.
He had picked the hospital, the Steadman-Hawkins Clinic in Vail, a couple hours from Aspen. The clinic was known for fixing up famous athletes’ orthopedic injuries. Hunter asked me to meet him and Deb in Vail for his first consultation with the back surgeon who would be performing the operation. I agreed.
It was a surreal interview. As part of the information-gathering process, the doctor asked Hunter questions about his drug and alcohol use. He explained that he needed accurate information to determine the risks of surgery. Hunter downplayed it all. When the surgeon asked how much he d
rank each day, he said several glasses. When he asked about cocaine use, Hunter said it was minimal. When he asked about marijuana use, Hunter said it was infrequent. Deborah and I knew differently. Hunter was uncomfortable but remained calm as we adjusted his earlier estimates substantially upward. A couple of drinks a day? Closer to a fifth of whiskey. Minimal cocaine use? More like several grams a day. Infrequent pot smoking? Only if you consider several times a week infrequent. On top of that, he was a chain-smoker. It was a rare moment indeed when Hunter did not have a lit cigarette either between his lips, in his fingers, or in an ashtray, along with the signature cigarette holder, the TarGard. On the ledge behind the kitchen sink at Owl Farm there was always a glass filled with TarGard filters and some liquid that dissolved the tar. I wonder how many vats, how many fifty-five-gallon drums of tar he avoided inhaling over his fifty-odd years of smoking because of those filters.
The doctor took it all in stride. He explained that alcohol and smoking were the two biggest impediments to healing, and that Hunter would be best served by abstaining from, or at least cutting back on, booze and cigarettes. Hunter replied that he was (still) not interested in The Cure or in quitting smoking. If the surgeon had a problem with that then Hunter needed another doctor. The doctor explained that his concerns were purely medical, and that Hunter would be allowed to drink before and after surgery. This was familiar territory to Deb and me. We very much did not want a replay of Hunter’s involuntary detoxification in Glenwood.
Stories I Tell Myself Page 16