Lessons from the Mountain

by Mary McDonough

  The hospital vigil began. My uncles prayed over him. One brought a loud man who walked around his bed, shouting, “Jesus, drive the cancer out.” We prayed for him to cross over soon, so the pain would end.

  It was a horribly painful way to die. I did not understand how my God could let a good man suffer such a miserable death. It shook my sensibilities. Hadn’t I said enough prayers? Wasn’t I good enough to be answered? Why do evil people live long lives and my daddy had to go so young? My dad never hurt anyone, and yet he had to endure this terrible suffering. But like his Jesus, he went through his Stations of the Cross in about the same time frame.

  We wanted to help him, but the morphine wasn’t enough to cut his pain. His rosary was his constant companion. When we placed the beads in his hands and told him we would take care of Mom and each other, he would relax. My mom left the hospital; she felt he did not want her there, for her to see him that way. The last night was a long one. My brother Michael didn’t want him to leave this earth being alone, so we stayed. The hours went on and on, and the gasping for each breath after what felt like hours of silence was like a horror film.

  They told us your hearing is the last thing to go, so we told stories around his bedside. We laughed as Michael and my brother, John, imitated him up in the bleachers at basketball games, cupping his hands around his mouth and yelling, “Take it away! Take it away! Take it away!” We talked about his famous pancake breakfasts, his backyard barbecues, the plane trips, and a failed boating expedition.

  One of the nurses came in every hour to check his vital signs. “How long do you estimate?” I asked her.

  “Just a couple of minutes,” she said.

  What? I was angry. What if I hadn’t asked? She would have just written in his chart and left the room, like every other time.

  We all gathered around him and held his hands. The phone rang. It was our mom.

  She knew.

  He was gone.

  We all had tasks, and mine was to take down the cards made by the kids on our block. I thought I was alone in the room, and started to take the pushpins out to pack up all the get-well wishes. Then I heard a rustling behind me. I turned around and saw the nurse pulling tubes out of him. She had pulled back the sheet, fully exposing him. The last sight I had of my dad was the catheter being removed. The image of my daddy lying in the hospital bed in the shadows of the green fluorescent light still haunts me. Later that day, I wrote in my journal:

  IN LOVING MEMORY

  Lawrence J McDonough

  Good Friday, 3:50 AM—1978

  My dad died on Good Friday. I was there when it happened. Me, Mike and John were with him from one PM in the afternoon on Holy Thursday until 3:50 AM Friday. We waited there until he left us.

  It was an unusual experience. I had never seen John cry before. I cried, too.

  Sometimes I feel very lonely and sometimes I feel he is here by my side helping me make the right decisions. I remember a lot of memories, mostly good. I loved my father and told him so. At least I did that. I miss him when I am alone. I remember how he used to hold me when I cried, like I am doing now.

  I find it easy to talk of his death. It was dark in the hospital, dark when we got in the car to drive home. Mike and I got in and I turned the key and “Dust in the Wind” was playing on the radio. After we told my Mom how peaceful it was at the end when he died, the birds started to sing and the sun came up. I went to my room, changed and it was light. I lay down, stared at the ceiling and felt the salt water in my ears.

  My father died on March 24, 1978. Easter was early that year.

  My Walton family came to help and support my McDonough family, and we were together again, this time on a sad occasion. Erin Moran called and cried on the phone with me.

  We had an Irish wake for my father, and when Richard Hatch called, he asked what was so loud in the background. I told him, “We’re having a party to celebrate my dad’s life. It’s how we do it here.”

  People still tell me wonderful stories about how my dad touched their lives. More than thirty years later, I still celebrate and miss him every day.

  COMA

  I am blessed with the most amazing friends. I am lucky. I had my own high-school friends from Chaminade, and my dear friends from the “Alemany Pack,” who went to a nearby school, Alemany High. Carol, Tim, Rozanne, Bobby, Kori, and Tom were there for me when my dad died. I love this story and can laugh still, even though my friends were shocked when it happened.

  We had spent days on end in the hospital until my father died. Then there were all the calls and arrangements to make. We had to make a difficult decision whether there would be an autopsy. My mother didn’t want him to endure any more hurt, as he had been through so many drugs and surgeries, and she didn’t want him experimented on. My brother and I argued that there might have been a therapy that slowed the disease and could be used for future cancer patients. He’d had a rare form, and his death might help someone. What if one of us developed it someday?

  It was tough, but Dad went back to the hospital for an autopsy.

  My friends knew I needed a break, so they arranged a movie night. I was so relieved to get away from the sadness for a few hours. They picked me up, we all piled into the car; we drove to the movie theater. Knowing I loved a good horror flick, they’d found a drive-in showing Coma. The movie started, and my friends realized very soon what the topic was. Tim looked sideways at Bobby; Rozanne looked at Tim; they all watched me.

  I kept my gaze focused forward. I didn’t want them to think I was ungrateful. As I watched, I realized the plot of the film had elements of the very thing my dad had just gone through.

  When the film arrived at the autopsy scene, well, that was it. Tom was obviously uncomfortable. Squirming in his seat, he turned to me and squeaked something like, “Good choice, huh?”

  When I started to laugh, they joined me, and the tension melted. They offered to leave, but I insisted we stay and “watch” the whole thing.

  I cherish my friends for trying so hard to make it better. They really did, too. Rozanne, Tom, and Tim sang at my father’s funeral. Twenty-eight years later, my dear Tim would come full circle and sing at my mother’s.

  GRANDPA

  In April, we were still on hiatus when we got the news Grandpa Will died. It was only a couple of weeks after my dad had died. I couldn’t believe he was gone now, too. This was the man who told me he would be on the show forever; he would never leave. Why didn’t I know he was sick? Why wasn’t I at the hospital with him? I knew hospitals, that I could do.

  We all had the opportunity to say good-bye to Will in a two-hour episode, “The Empty Nest.” We gathered around the grave in the familiar mountains in Frazier Park and said our scripted “good-byes” to Grandpa. It was a tough show for me to film. We still had Grandma Ellen, whom we thought we had lost, but was back, and now Zeb was missing. It was not only a “good night, Grandpa Walton” moment; it was “good night, Will,” our merry leader in the band of players, and “good night” to my own daddy.

  As I look back, I can’t say I freaked out, but rather I became more stoic as I dealt with each loss. Something in me hardened, and my resolve to be strong and take care of everyone grew deeper. The role of caretaker gave me purpose.

  BOZO HAIR

  I think I just needed to change something about me as a way to cope, or to feel like I had control of something after my father’s and Will’s funerals. One thing I did was get my hair permed. It was crazy, but my friends (with thick, beautiful hair) were doing it, and theirs looked so wavy and curly. My hair didn’t hold a curl, so I thought it was a great idea. Only thing was, my thin hair permed so tight, I didn’t get the soft curls I was expecting, but more of a Bozo look. My hair suffered the loss.

  Edie, the show’s hairstylist, about had a heart attack when she saw it. “What did you do to yourself?” she cried.

  The producers were not happy, either. My long, pretty red hair was now shoulder-length frizz. Edie twiste
d it away from my face and pinned it back for many episodes, then cut it out as soon as it grew. It was a bad hair time for poor Erin, but it was the first time in my life I ever had a current, popular do. I never got to have the Dorothy Hamill wedge, the Farrah Fawcett layers, or the shag, because they weren’t period and our styles had to be appropriate for the show. Maybe there was a little rebellion; gone was the good girl. Bring on the sassy, made-tougher-by-circumstance girl.

  …I am still scared at times, but I am so strong, independent, mule-headed, loud, opinionated, social, sensitive, outspoken, childlike, giggly and brutally honest.

  Later that year, something good happened to me. My first boyfriend. He was in the Alemany group. I did get to go on a date, to his prom, and I felt like a normal girl. I was so happy to have found someone who finally liked me and someone I felt safe with. I felt protective. He was mine, not yours…sorry. I didn’t want to share him. It was so private, I went to public functions with someone else to throw the press off. After all, hadn’t I learned what the press could do to the truth? He was my truth, and I wanted to protect us. He was my first love and put up with an awful lot. I was a scared girl who had lost her daddy and was navigating a rocky path. He was patient and kind, and I learned to love, let go, and trust. I felt alive, loved, and lucky.

  7

  I FEEL IN-BETWEEN AND FORGOTTEN

  I want so much to be normal, to be accepted as whole, as one on some world. Either at work or at school. But I am divided into two pieces. Maybe I don’t fit into either world.

  My journal tells it like it was. As I got older, it was harder for me to go back and forth from work to school. I first went to Chaminade in my sixth-grade school year. Going to middle school is hard enough, but to begin in March was awkward to say the least. Add in being a kid actor, and you have a recipe for disaster. The rumors started before I arrived, and many of my new schoolmates assumed they knew what I was like because of seeing me on television each week.

  I remember standing in the principal’s office on the day I checked in, feeling like an alien. I fought to maintain composure as office workers stared at me, and kids walking by in the hallway pointed and whispered. Later, I found out an innocent, nervous mannerism “confirmed” their suspicions. A girl saw me and ran off to tell everyone I was stuck-up. “You should have seen her flipping her hair.”

  Fortunately, not everyone believed the gossip, and they assigned me a guide for my first day. Caren Cline not only taught me the ropes, she became one of my best friends. We swore on that first day as she showed me to my classrooms that we would be in each other’s weddings, and we were.

  Some of the kids at school just didn’t know what to do with me. That first year, I got hate notes in my locker saying, Hey, Walton girl, go home. My locker was ransacked once—not sure why—maybe it was a hazing and it happened to everyone. I knew I was different and how could I expect people to get to know me, since I was hardly ever there.

  I craved consistency. I would be at work adjusting to set life, only to have the season end and dread going back to regular school. My journal entries from 1976 reflect my mood. I was a sophomore in high school:

  I start school on Wed. What a drag. I just want to work. I have 2 weeks left of studio school, then I go back to my own school. What a bummer. I don’t like the school scene at all. I hate it.

  I started school today. What a bunch of bull, lectures on success. School is so cliquey, everyone has a clique. It really bugs me. I have classes with Kate and I am glad. There are so many people I don’t know.

  We wrapped our seasons in late February or early March. I would return to Chaminade in the middle of their semester and hope I was at the same place they were at in their studies. Just as I would get attached to my friends and they would get to know me—poof… it was back to work in late May:

  I leave here in 2 weeks. Work will be a bummer, I don’t want to leave. I want so much to be normal and try to be a part of it all, but I can’t. I have not been brought up in a manner such as that. Since I was 9 I was crossed to another world. Was I freaked out as a child? I wasn’t, but now I feel as if it’s all caught up to me and I am very down and blue….

  I have always said that the transition from a totally adult world to a kid world never affected me. Also, being switched from studio school to normal school, I lied.

  I am in studio school for the summer; go to my own school for a month, then to studio school for 5 months, then back to school for 3 more months. It doesn’t really affect me at first but when I have to leave all my friends and all the people I have just started to get to know I get very sad. I never really get to know anyone before I have to leave, then when I come back I have to start all over again.

  All I do is cry for awhile and then I feel better, for a short time. Sometimes I get violent, sometimes suicidal. Well, that’s life.

  I remember at the end of one season—I think I was about fifteen—David and I ran around our second home, which was encased in the padded, soundproof walls of Stage 26. We screamed at it, as if those walls were to blame for our troubles. I kicked and pounded on it with my clenched fists, like somehow I could make it feel my pain of being pulled from one life into the other. When I couldn’t scream or punch anymore, I was exhausted, and my hands were red from hitting the imposing stucco exterior walls of the soundstage. No amount of abuse affected the edifice; it stood strong and unyielding in its power. I looked up at the straight, windowless building that held out the real world. I felt dwarfed, helpless.

  I started back to work today. I just don’t like it there. I don’t want to be there. I thought I was the only one who felt that way, but David does too.

  I had a love-hate relationship with the show. I was on a roller-coaster ride I couldn’t get off, trying to balance the changeup. I went back to work, and accepted my sentence: the seven-year contract my parents had signed years ago.

  Lately I have been having fun. I want to work now. I have decided to be an actress. There is a lot of Bull to get through, but I think I can make it if I don’t get hung up on it all. If I do I can always look at a leaf, watch a sunset, visit a tree or listen to snow fall.

  MY BIG EPISODE

  I have been having a great time with the crew and am working harder. Lately, I really want to be an actress but I don’t know if I can put up with all the bull involved in it all. I have been acting myself lately, not caring what others think. Maybe that’s why I have been having a good time. I just have to overcome my fears and climb over my obstacles. I can do anything if I set my mind to it. I just hope this show is good, really good.

  Every season there was at least one special episode that featured one of us. In the fifth season, I was sixteen when mine was “The Elopement.” So many episodes were focused on my looks, but I wanted to be known for my talent, not my appearance. It was tough to separate from being just the pretty girl and to be thought of as a serious actress.

  I had enrolled in acting classes, and one day while we were filming “The Elopement,” I shared that information with Ronnie Claire Edwards. I told her how much I wanted to be a better actress.

  She said, “Oh, Mary Beth, you don’t need to worry about talent, you have looks!” Getting ahead in the business would be easier for me. She insisted that was the reality.

  I felt the rug pulled out from under me. This was a sample of the “bull” I wrote about in my journal. Her comments strengthened my resolve to take even more classes. Acting classes brought me a relief I had not felt before. I had been flying by the seat of my pants for years, and finally I was learning the art.

  Ever since that lesson underneath the pepper tree when Robert Butler used the snake story to teach me about the fourth wall and breaking the illusion, I’d hungered to understand my craft. Maybe now I could figure out what was expected of me and how to develop a character, dig deep for emotions, and deliver compelling performances. It gave me purpose and focus and something to work toward, and I applied all my class work to every episode.
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  WHICH BETTY?

  Then one day, Ralph Senensky, a wonderful director, brought me to my ultimate choice. Ralph and I had discussed whether children should learn to act, or if it was enough to be a kid. Ralph believed when you got to be a certain age, it wasn’t enough just to act like a kid anymore; you actually needed to learn the craft.

  He explained it was like walking up to a bridge and deciding to cross over into the grown-up world, where the challenges were tough and the expectations high, or staying on the “safe” side, where you could continue to play around and “get by.” Ralph knew I had been working to bridge that gap between the cute child actor and an adult with believability, depth, and scope. I respected his knowledge and sensitivity toward my serious effort.

  The set was ready, the lighting done, and they were waiting for “talent,” as the performers are called. I was in the makeup room, my hair in rollers, and the AD kept checking in to see when I would be ready.

  I looked up at Edie, our hairstylist, as she told him, “Another fifteen minutes, at least.” I realized I was the one holding up production.

  The hair. Need I say more? There was such a focus on hair, wardrobe, and our overall appearance as we got older. We wore makeup and had 1940s-style hairdos every day. I was no longer the carefree, barefoot little girl in pigtails running around the set.