We were all ears, finally something positive, no matter how small.
“I can give her a massive shot of adrenalin to restart her heart and then we disconnect the life support. If she is strong enough her heart will continue to beat on its own.”
“And if she’s not?” asked Krista.
“Well, most likely she isn’t. And so her heart will slowly fail as the adrenalin wears off and she will pass away peacefully.”
Krista’s eyes welled up with tears.
“But she will go on her own terms when her body says it is time, not because a machine is turned off. Then you will know it was inevitable and not something you chose.”
Dyle nodded and Krista put her hands in her face before saying, “Okay, if that’s the only way. Then we should do that.”
The doctor got to his feet, “I’ll attend to it and let you know when.”
Within minutes an orderly with a small cart appeared and wheeled it into Lonnie’s room. The doctor followed and knowing what was about to happen the three of us held hands and wept.
The doctor came back out and stood with us. “It’s done,” he said. “I’ve given her the shot and removed her from life support.”
How my beloved Krista was holding it together I don’t know. She looked up at the doctor, “So is she…?”
“No, not yet,” he replied softly. “She is unconscious and unresponsive but her heart is beating strongly right now. How long that will last I can’t say. You can go in and be with her if you like.”
Krista shook her head, “I can’t.”
The doctor left us and we sat outside of Lonnie’s room as she fought for life.
After less than a minute I stood up.
“I can’t leave her alone. I’m going to sit with Lonnie. Do you want to come in with me?” I asked.
Krista and Dyle shook their heads. The shock was too much for them to confront this. I understood and went into the room alone.
Beep, beep, beep called out the heart-rate monitor which was the only piece of equipment left attached to Lonnie. It was an Oximeter, a small, unobtrusive device that was clipped to her finger. It displayed her oxygen level and heart rate. It was reading sixty beats per minute. That was good, a strong resting heartbeat.
With all the hoses, wires and endotracheal tube removed and the respirator turned off, Lonnie looked at peace as she lay there.
I sat next to her, put my hand on hers and started talking. I knew from my Medic First Aid training that hearing is usually the last thing to go which is why you never talk about an unconscious patient’s condition in front of them lest you trigger a bad reaction or even cause shock. I spoke out loud and told Lonnie what a wonderful mother she was, what an amazing wife to Dyle and how much Krista loved her. I thanked her for all the planning she had done with Krista in preparing for our wedding and the wonderful engagement party she had thrown for us months before in Los Angeles.
I leant forward and kissed her gently on the check and told her how lucky I was to know her and that she should hang on and be strong as I so wanted her as my mother-in-law and that we had many wonderful times ahead.
The beep, beep, beep had changed now. It had fallen to fifty one beats per minute. The adrenalin was wearing off.
For the next forty minutes I stroked Lonnie’s hand and held her gently as I talked about everything we had shared together, of driving to see her parents in Oceanside, of picnicking on the infield of Santa Anita racetrack, of Molly, her lovely little dog. But most of all I told her again and again how much Krista loved her.
It had been nearly an hour and Lonnie’s heartbeat had fallen to twenty-one beats per minute and had been holding there for a long time when the door opened a fraction. It was Krista.
“I wanted to see if you’re oaky?” she asked as she leaned in a little, trying not to look into that frightening room that was destroying her life.
“I’m fine. Come in and tell your mother you love her.”
“I can’t,” said Krista as she avoided my eyes.
“Yes, you can. She’s been waiting for you.”
Krista pushed the door open and stepped in.
“Tell her you love her,” I said.
Krista stood by her dying mother and said simply, “I love you.”
“Honey, she can hear you but she can’t see. Tell her who you are and what’s happening.”
Krista steeled herself and leant in close to Lonnie. “Mom, everyone’s here for our wedding. I couldn’t have done it without you. I love you so much.”
I mouthed to Krista, “Say your name.”
Krista understood, “It’s Krista, Mom. I love you I always will.”
She reached out for Lonnie and as their two hands touched the heart meter changed. It sounded one continuous droning tone as the display fell to zero and a single flat line displayed on the screen.
“No!” Krista exclaimed.
I was stunned, but I realized what had happened. “She was waiting for you. She wouldn’t go without you!” I said.
I rushed around to Krista and held her shaking body tightly in my arms as we watched her mother leave our world. Lonnie was forty-seven years old.
Now instead of holding a wedding we were planning a funeral.
WHITE WEDDING
We broke the news to our shocked friends when we returned to our house on Pelican Hill. They were shaken at what had happened but we told them that we would be taking care of everything concerning Lonnie and that they should try and enjoy their days in the Caribbean. The wedding was cancelled of course but they had the oceanfront villa we’d rented for them and they travelled all this way so they should make the most of it.
Dyle and Krista were understandably beaten down by the events of the past eighteen hours so it fell on me to pick up the slack. I called the minister, the steel band and the caterer and explained what had happened and that there would be no wedding. Then I had to start with the funeral arrangements.
Lonnie had wanted to be cremated and that’s when I found out that crematoriums are rare in the Caribbean. We would have to have her flown to Puerto Rico and then her ashes returned to us. Dyle and Krista didn’t need to be bothered with that so I took care of it.
There was one more thing still to do. One last couple, Steven and Brooke, were due in late that Sunday afternoon. Steven’s work schedule hadn’t allowed them to travel with the main group and so they had no idea what they were flying in to. At around two in the afternoon I received a call from them; they were at Miami airport excitedly waiting for their connection.
I had to throw a damper on their enthusiasm as I explained everything that had occurred and told them the wedding was off but to please come and have fun without us. Steven was quiet as he thought of his response.
“Look, you can’t cancel the wedding. Lonnie planned it for a year with Krista. It’s the wedding she wanted for the two of you. How would she feel knowing that something she did stopped the two of you from getting married? You have to go ahead with it.”
It was my turn to be silent. Steven was correct. I loved Krista and was going to marry her anyway; we just thought it would now have to be pushed to sometime in the future. But why not do it the way Lonnie had wanted, and hold the wedding in her honor?
I told Steven he was right and I’d see him and Brooke in a few hours. Now I had to explain this to Krista and Dyle, and then get back on the phone with the minister, the steel band and the caterer.
Wednesday November 1 rolled around far too quickly. The minutiae of the final wedding plans fell on Krista. That morning the three of us, Krista, Dyle and I drove to Princess Juliana Airport to extend Dyle’s stay in St. Maarten. Krista, ever the loving daughter, didn’t want her father returning to an empty house until he was strong enough and ready to face that loneliness.
As we stood at the counter I saw the American Airlines agent being given a special package from a baggage handler. I overheard their first few words and knew instantly what it was.
I turn
ed to Krista, “Don’t ask why, just take your dad and go outside for two minutes, then come back in, okay?”
With everything that had happened Krista went along with my request without question and led her father outside. I said “excuse me” to our ticket agent and stepped to the next counter.
“Are those Lonnie Henderson’s ashes?” I asked.
The clerk nodded.
“Okay. I’ll be back for them later. Please don’t say anything now; that’s her daughter and husband outside.”
Once Dyle’s ticketing was taken care of we left.
Two hours later I returned and collected Lonnie’s remains. I drove back to Pelican with our wedding cake and Krista’s mother’s ashes in my car.
The wedding was the best of times, the worst of times. Krista looked beautiful and set a place for her mother at our table. Lonnie and her love for Krista were mentioned in every toast. The sunset, instead of the usual reds and oranges, turned the sky a spectacular shade of gold. Under any other circumstances you would have written home and said how amazing the day had been, but these were no ordinary times.
Lonnie’s place setting – Mom
With the wedding done and our friends back in California we struggled to return to island life. Krista was promoted to running the Dive Safaris office in Simpson Bay which she took to and excelled at. High season arrived and Dive Safaris became the most popular dive company on St. Maarten and had contracts with all the major hotels and cruise lines that docked at the island including Disney and Carnival.
In low season Krista and I travelled extensively and I would fly back to England four times a year to see my mum and spend time with her.
In early September, 2001, we decided to take a big trip. We would fly Dyle with us to England, stay with Mum for a while then Dyle, Krista and I would fly to the south of France to vacation in one of our favorite places on the planet, Villfranche-Sur-Mer.
We had a wonderful time in Torquay at number 22 and early on a sunny Tuesday morning we headed up to Heathrow Airport in London.
We dropped off the rental car and hopped on the airport shuttle. The driver turned to us, “You Americans?” We nodded.
“Just came through on the news that a little plane flew into one of your skyscrapers. Let’s hope your pilot is a bit better than that one was.”
We arrived at the terminal and waited in line for boarding passes. Two ladies behind us were talking.
“I heard another plane just crashed into one of those big buildings.”
I turned to the TV monitors that play throughout Heathrow. They were all tuned to CNN as usual. As I looked up all the monitors went blank, every one of them. They had been turned off deliberately. Something was very wrong.
“If two planes have crashed into buildings then it’s not an accident,” I said to Krista.
We went to the gate and waited for our 3:45pm flight to Nice, France. Everyone was buzzing that something major was going on, but what?
The British Airways lounge was right across from our gate and the three of us walked over.
“We need to come in and see what’s happening,” I said.
The pretty agent behind the counter smiled back at me and slipped into her well-rehearsed speech, “I’m sorry, sir; unless you have British Airways club membership privileges then you can’t come in.”
I slammed down our three American passports on her counter.
“Are you telling me that you will not let three Americans in to see what is happening in their country right now?” I was furious.
She obviously knew the real story that was unfolding and just waved us inside.
As we walked into the first-class lounge we saw a giant projection screen dominating the room. A hundred people were crowded around it in disbelief. The twin towers of the World Trade Center were burning. I could see that the 106 floor of the north tour, where I had taken the KROQ winners to Windows on the World restaurant fifteen years before, was now totally engulfed in flames. I glanced at my watch. It was almost three, which would be 10am in New York. As I looked back at the screen the south tower disintegrated and dropped straight down more than one thousand feet. Everyone in that private lounge screamed out loud.
We were the second to last plane to take off from Heathrow before the airport was closed. Our flight took thirty minutes longer than scheduled as air traffic control diverted us over the ocean rather than allowing us fly across France and possibly be used in an attack on Paris. No one knew what was happening in the world anymore.
I went to the bathroom and spoke to the stewardess who told me that there were reports that all across America planes were being shot down and there had been attacks on cities everywhere.
A tank and two armored vehicles were waiting for our plane as we touched down in Nice. Instead of being greeted with croissants we were met with automatic weapons. We all knew the world had changed that day and not for the better.
The headlines of the French newspapers reflected that. Le Jour printed, quite simply, L’apocalypse while the biggest newspaper in the country, Le Monde, featured a long article about the terrible day entitled Nous sommes tous Americains – We are all Americans.
It was eerie to be so far away when your country is bleeding.
A week later we returned to St. Maarten and even in that Caribbean nation things had changed. It was sad to think of the effect that just a few evil people can have on billions.
Krista and I continued to love our life on that little island. Every day we would go off to work together, Krista to take care of the shop and me to run the dives. It was paradise and everything I’d hoped for.
The local police approached us and asked if we could train their helicopter crews in water safety and open ocean survival.
I jumped at the chance, having learned a little of that from the Royal Air Force while at college.
I drew up a basic course for the flyers who spent so much of their time in the air over water and I trained them for three long days and one night, figuring that accidents don’t only happen when the sun is shining. We ran surface techniques, entanglement and underwater egress using a sunken fishing boat in Simpson Bay as our stand in for a downed helicopter’s cockpit.
With our flight crew trainees in St Maarten, November 2001
Teaching the course was fun, challenging and strenuous but I would do it again in a second.
LOVE & PRIDE
In between my visits back to England to see my mum I would call her every other day. She would often ask me to tell her again about Villefranche Sur-Mer. Finally I asked about her fascination with that wonderful little seaside village. She told me that in all her journeys to Europe with Dad they had never made it to the south of France even though they had both dreamed of going there. The closest they had gotten was when they visited me in Spain in 1975.
Since Dad had died I’d taken Mum on many trips; we’d been to Hawaii, Cancun, Playa Del Carmen, the Florida Keys, Paris, Switzerland, Lake Tahoe and the Bahamas. By the time I hung up I had convinced Mum that I would take her to Villefranche for my birthday that coming May.
She was looking very frail when I picked her up from number 22. The National Health Service had issued her a wheelchair which she hated to use as she had been such a great walker but now it was her only option.
We made the best of it and had a wonderful time, just the two of us, exploring the restaurants, harbors and castles around Villefranche. We drove along the coast visiting Nice and Monaco and then into Italy where we ate pasta and drank red wine together dining outside in a centuries-old piazza, laughing and applauding the opera singers who serenaded us at our table. And all the while I knew it would be our last trip together.
Krista was in LA staying with her dad while I was in Europe with Mum. After our vacation came to its end far too quickly I dropped Mum back off in Torquay then flew out to California to join Krista for a few days before we returned to St. Maarten.
Knowing I was going to be in LA I made an appointment to ha
ve some much-needed dental work done and it was while I was burying my fingernails into the arms of the dentist’s chair in Burbank suffering through a filling replacement that the receptionist rushed in and interrupted the oral torture.
“I’m sorry, but I have an urgent call for Richard,” she said.
My heart dropped instantly. This was the worst kind of déjà vu. I had been here before when Katy raced into the production room at KROQ with that other terrible call in 1982.
Tragically, my premonition was right. It was Krista with news I didn’t want to hear. The heart flap that mum had had installed two years before had detached and she was in heart failure. She had been rushed to hospital but the doctors had determined that there was little they could do; the flap couldn’t be reattached because she was too weak to survive the invasive operation. Her heart was enlarged and she wasn’t expected to make it through the night.
I told Krista to book me on the next flight to England and I ran out of the dentist’s office with a hole in my tooth crying out for a porcelain filling and my mouth still numb from the anesthesia.
My only thought was trying to get over to see Mum before she died. I hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye to Dad, maybe this time I would be able to make it there and be with her before she passed away to tell my beloved mother how much she meant to me.
The ten hour flight seemed to take an eternity and when I picked up a rental car at Heathrow I hammered south at ridiculous speeds. This time the motorways were dry and the 200 miles flew by in just over two hours.
I had no time to look for parking so I left the car in a tow-away zone at Torbay Hospital and sprinted up the stairs to the cardiac ward on the third floor. It was a little after six o’clock and the shifts were changing, the night nurses just arriving and getting ready to take over their duties. Because of that there was no one at the desk to help me.
World in My Eyes: The Autobiography Page 49