by Goldie Hawn
“Hmm. Maybe a six.”
“Why don’t you come over for a cup of coffee?”
“Okay.”
As I put down the phone, I think to myself, He sounds so uninspired. I hate that.
Out the kitchen window, I watch his Pacer idle into the driveway. That was fast, I think. I run to put the coffee on. I watch him saunter up to the kitchen door and hear it slam behind him. I am so glad he’s here.
Sitting at my kitchen table, stirring his coffee, he sits opposite me with a wistful expression. “You know, Go,” he says, “I’m not afraid of dying…but I’m so lonely sometimes.”
I stare at him, my own spoon frozen in my cup. I feel like I could die. I can’t bear to think of my dad feeling lonely; he has always been so self-sufficient, so self-generating and so creative. This admission knocks the wind clean out of me.
Maybe I should tell him I’d like to take that road trip we’ve always dreamed of. Just then, Oliver chases Kate through the kitchen screaming, reminding me how difficult it would be to get away these days. Instead, I change the subject and start to talk about my preparations for my next movie, Best Friends, with Burt Reynolds. That always cheers him up.
“Mom’s going to meet me in D.C., Dad. You see, first we’re filming in Buffalo, and then the company’s moving to Washington. Isn’t it neat? I’m going to be in our hometown, making a movie. Why don’t you meet us there?”
“Nah.” Daddy sighs. “I don’t care to go back to Washington. Been there, done that.”
“I’m gonna miss you, Daddy. I wish you’d think about that. But I’ll call you, all the time, as usual. Give you the scoops. And when I get back, let’s talk about that road trip we’ve been planning for so long.” I’ve said it anyway.
He perks up. “Great, Go.”
The call comes early one morning. I am in a hotel in Washington, rushing around trying to get ready for the day’s shooting. My mom is in the next room, I’m late as usual, the kids are playing, and I haven’t even washed my face yet.
The telephone rings and I pick it up while pulling on a shoe.
It is Patti. Her voice is shaking. “Goldie, Daddy’s in the hospital. He collapsed in his kitchen last night. An aneurysm has burst his aorta. Please, you and Mom have to come home right now.”
My world goes cold. I saw this.
Mom and I can barely hold each other up. We are both too scared to cry. We don’t know where to go or what to do first. Norman Jewison, my director, somehow appears magically in front of us, hugs us both and says, “Just go. Don’t worry about anything. This is only a movie. Go home and be with your father.”
Mom and I hardly speak on that long journey back to Los Angeles and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the place where I gave birth to my children and where my father is now in critical condition.
Staring out the window of the plane, I pray to the God I prayed to to save my son. “Please, God, please let him live. He’s only seventy-three.”
When we arrive at the hospital we meet up with Patti and her two sons, my beloved nephews Michael and David. Shaken to the core, we are led into the Intensive Care Unit, a world of strange beeps and sounds, measuring the pulses of life. Daddy is hooked up to all sorts of machines. We have never known him to be sick; he hardly ever went to see a doctor.
Mom, my sister and the children and I visit Dad every day for eighty-two days. We are now shooting the movie in L.A., which allows me to be with my father as much as possible. I rush from the set every night after work, to sit with him and stroke his hair and whisper how much I love him. My mother, who never divorced my father and never met anyone else, rarely leaves his side. Patti and I do our best to shore her up. Those eighty-two days are some of the longest of our lives.
Sometimes when I arrive late at night, he is asleep and I scribble little notes for him. One night I write, “You know, Daddy, I want to tell you how important you are to me and how all your advice and your philosophy is part of all of us now. I know you thought it went in one ear and out the other but it didn’t. See you tomorrow.” I kiss him good night, and ask the nurse, “Please give him this when he wakes up.”
Those final weeks of the film when I am trying to make people in front of the camera laugh, when I am secretly dying inside, are truly awful. One night, I am in the middle of the breakup scene with Burt Reynolds at the end of the movie when I get a call from the hospital.
“Come right away, Goldie.” It is my father’s favorite nurse who cares for him. She is a sweet girl who Daddy jokes he will marry one day. Tenderly, she adds, “He’s not doing well. Could you come to the hospital?”
With the insistence of Burt and Norman, I flee the set, still wearing my costume. Luckily, this is one of many false alarms. But then, soon after the film wrapped, the inevitable phone call came. “You’d better come to the hospital, Goldie. Your father’s blood pressure is dropping. This could be it.”
After running every red light trying to get there for his final breath, I run into Intensive Care, but something is wrong.
The machines that had been whirring and ticking, bleeping and monitoring Daddy’s life force, have fallen silent. All I see is his beautiful body lying there—lifeless. I throw myself over him. I can’t believe he’s gone. I’m hurting inside. I’ve lost my best friend. This isn’t possible. I wanted to say, “Come back, Daddy.” It was too late. All that can be heard is the sound of the nurses, who loved him, weeping softly. My mom, my sister and my nephews all run into the room. We hold each other hard, and we cry. We cry for an unusual man who did unusual things.
This loss feels unbearable for a while, as if no one in the world has ever felt this much pain.
He wasn’t the best husband, and I guess he wasn’t your all-time perfect father either, but he was an unusual man who did eccentric things. In truth, perfection is only something we can strive for. I am so lucky to have my memories, to be able to feel his love from this distance, to share in the wonder of his spirit. That will never leave me.
I have since come to learn that loss is part of being alive; it’s part of loving. Sadness is just as important as joy. Letting go of someone we love is the hardest thing we will ever do. Pain provides us with the vital ingredient in the genetic makeup of our character; it is part of the DNA of our philosophy. Some people never surrender to love for the fear of being hurt. But to not have loved, to not have felt the immense joy it brings, would have been a far worse kind of death.
To the tune of a lone fiddler, we buried Daddy.
“My father was a king among men,” I told the assembled throng. “His crown was studded not with precious stones but with love, kindness, humor, music, dignity, honesty and integrity…From the day he hocked his violin for a sax and took it into the woods and worked at that instrument until he learned to play it, he was committed to a philosophy that carried him through the rest of his life. It kept him learning and discovering new things up until the day he left us.
“When he met our beautiful mother, they gave us life. He learned to change our diapers at the same time he taught himself to repair watches. He opened a watch shop and became an institution in our small city. He played the fiddle at night for all the great world dignitaries and repaired watches by day. We were so proud of him…He taught us the simple pleasures and curiosities of life…Daddy kept us laughing. His sense of humor was a gift from God as well as his gift to us.
“He was a man of few words, but when he spoke we listened. His words of wisdom to me when he sent me to New York will ring in my ears forever: ‘Always look like you know where you are going…Keep your feet on the ground. If you need me, the umbilical cord is stretched to wherever you are…Don’t pick your nose in public. And remember to put the butter back in the icebox.’
“He has passed these philosophies to each of us in his own way. We have grown straight and tall because of him…This was our father, the tenderest, most gentle person I’ve ever known, and I was so proud that not only did I understand what he felt but that I agr
eed and I rejoiced and thank God for him and his influence in my life and the life of my family.
“Not only did he see his loved ones clearly but also himself without illusions. He loved without pomp or pretense, and he never stopped loving all of us even when we let him down. He told Patti and I time and time again to stop rushing and don’t forget to smell the flowers along the way. Well, Daddy, you’ll see, we will take your advice and continue your dreams. I wish everyone on earth would follow your dreams and objectives, then for sure we would have more peace on this earth and goodwill toward men. Daddy, your light will always shine inside your children, and we will never stop loving you.”
Kindred spirits: Eileen Brennan and me during the filming of Private Benjamin, before her accident. (© Steve Schapiro)
fate
You often meet your fate on the road you take to avoid it…
I watch the brown leather riding crop as it slithers down my chest, carving a path around my breast, trailing lower and lower. I don’t dare look up at the person who’s holding the crop. I’m holding on for dear life. I bite my lip until tears come from my eyes. I am helplessly losing control.
Inadvertently, I catch the eye of the perpetrator, “Captain Lewis”—otherwise known as my friend Eileen Brennan—and that’s it. I collapse into howls of uncontrollable laughter. Eileen, who can’t hold it together either, joins me, as do the entire cast and crew of Private Benjamin.
“Cut!” the director, Howard Zieff, yells out through the laughter, his own face creased with mirth. “Okay, now, let’s try this again.”
We do the scene ten times before we can do it without cracking up.
Eileen and I are on the same wavelength, hearing the same music that connects our timing without words or need for translation. It’s like having a dance partner you’re at one with: no matter where he takes you, he never throws you off balance.
Comedy has its own special language, and in sharing the same rare and unspoken understanding of what’s funny you feel that in some way you have met a soul mate. That’s what Eileen is to me, my comedic soul mate.
Our joyful time working together ends all too soon, and we promise never to lose touch as we do so many times when we fall in love on movie sets only to get caught up again in our lives. Before we know it, years go by without even a phone call.
It is now almost a year later, and Eileen and I have made a plan to meet for a long-awaited dinner and keep our promise to never lose each other.
My children and I are living alone now, in my new beach house in Malibu, while my house in Pacific Palisades is being remodeled. Broad Beach is far from town, and even farther—around forty-five minutes—from my planned rendezvous with Eileen in Venice Beach.
I feel strange tonight, and have a weird feeling that I should cancel. I’m really tired and just don’t feel like going. An indefinable heaviness presses down on me. I’m unable to settle on anything, listless and restless. I so want to see Eileen and share our times together; I haven’t seen her for far too long, but, for some reason, I just don’t feel like it tonight.
Maybe I’m just dreading that long trip down the Pacific Coast Highway late at night. It’s a horrible road, one of the most dangerous in Southern California. Looking out my window into the dark, I shiver. I pick up the phone and try to call her to cancel, but she’s changed her number, as I have many times. Frustrated, I walk around my bedroom, trying on this outfit or that, discarding them all on the bed as I decide what to wear. I try to reach her again, this time through other people, to tell her I don’t really want to leave my children in this house we’ve only just moved to. She’ll get it, being a hands-on mother herself; she’ll understand, and we’ll just rearrange our dinner for another night. But no one has her number.
Finally deciding on what to wear and realizing that I am already late, I kiss the kids good night reluctantly and jump in my car. I secretly hope that she will have given up on me and gone home. Then I could turn around, head back home and shake this ominous feeling.
It is totally dark. I have never known it to be so completely black. Looking up at the night sky, I see that there isn’t a moon. My fingers gripping the steering wheel, I have such an uneasy feeling nagging away at me. I say to myself, You’d better be careful driving tonight, Goldie. Something bad could happen. Even though I am already an hour late, I drive well below the speed limit.
I turn down Washington Boulevard in Venice Beach and search for the restaurant down a dark street. There it is. I’ve passed it. I look both ways and make an illegal U-turn in the middle of the street. Porsches are good for something. I find a parking spot right in front of the restaurant. Lucky me.
Dashing out of my car, I run straight through the door and see her shining face. She’s here; she’s waited for me. It is so good to see her. Her great big smile makes my heart sing.
“Get in here, girl, and sit down,” she says. “Where the hell have you been?”
“Eileen, I am so sorry. I tried to call you, honey, and cancel. I don’t know what’s with me today. But you changed your number, I couldn’t reach you.”
She throws her head back and lets loose that cackling laugh of hers. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t. Now, have a glass of wine and tell me everything.”
“My God, where do I start?”
We talk about our children; we laugh about our time together on Private Benjamin; we order food and play catch-up. We talk about our recent trip down the red carpet when we were both nominated for the Academy Awards. We recall how we both came away empty-handed. I tell her of the sadness of my separation, and we speak of her love life. She makes me laugh, as she always did.
Dinner is great, but it is getting late. I look at my watch and then up at her smiling face. “My darling Eileen, I’m pooped, and I’ve got a long ride home.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
We argue over who pays the bill and I win. We kiss all the waitstaff as we wend our way through the tables and out the door. They close the little restaurant behind us. Wandering out into the pitch-black night, lingering on the sidewalk, neither of us wants to say good night. Hugging me warmly, she says, “Kiss the kids for me,” and peels off to cross the street.
“Kiss the boys!” I call after her.
Watching her cross the street, backing up to wave good-bye, I feel like there’s a long cord of energy connecting the two of us. Unlocking my car door, I hear her call.
“Goldie!” I turn. “Let’s not leave it so long…”
But she cannot finish her sentence because a car flies out of the night, seemingly from nowhere, slamming into her sideways and tossing her into the air like a rag doll.
I am paralyzed. I can’t speak. I can’t even scream.
Time stops as I watch the car lift my dear beloved light, my joy, my friend into the air. I want to run and catch her, to break her fall. I want this not to be happening, but I am frozen stiff in a waking nightmare.
Her body slams to the ground and lies there, completely still. I begin to shake, my body vibrating from head to toe. People come running out of their homes and the restaurants. But I cannot move. I’m afraid of what I will see. I am afraid that dear Eileen is no longer alive.
I start walking around in circles upon circles upon circles, always the same circle. The owner of the restaurant, the one we were just joking with, comes and puts his arm around me. He tells me he’s called an ambulance. He tries to break my repetitive circling, but I can’t seem to stop. “It’s okay,” he says. “The paramedics are on their way. Everything is going to be okay.”
“No, no, it’s not going to be okay,” I tell him. “No. No. This isn’t happening.”
Looking across the street, I see people crouched beside Eileen. Strangers. Breaking the momentum of my little circles, I find my feet running toward her at last, not wanting anyone else to touch her. I lower my eyes, finally finding the courage to see her face. She looks like she’s sleeping. Her beautiful face seems to sink into the asphalt, as if it were a pi
llow. The only indication that anything is wrong is the blood trickling from under her head.
“Eileen,” I call softly. “Eileen?”
But she doesn’t respond.
“Oh my angel. My sweet angel.”
Just a few moments before, we were so alive, so happy, so joyful, and then, the next second, everything changed. In the blink of an eye, in less time than it took for her to say good-bye, a darkness descended on our light, extinguishing it.
I see her chest rise and fall, and relief floods me.
“Thank God!” I sigh. “She’s still breathing. Thank you, God.”
I am shaking so violently that my teeth are chattering. I can barely speak. The restaurant owner takes his coat off and puts it around my shoulders. “Come away now,” he says, pulling me away. “The paramedics are here.”
I watch them as they insert intravenous tubes into Eileen with breakneck speed, clamp an oxygen mask over her face and attach her to a lifeline. They lift her onto a gurney. They slam the doors behind her and take off, flashing lights and sirens clearing their path. I start to run after them as she disappears from sight. Standing in the middle of the street, I pray with all my heart. “Please don’t let her die.”
A policeman comes up and takes me by the arm.
“I have to go with her,” I tell him, running to my car.
“You’re in no condition to drive,” he says, pushing my car door shut. “I’ll take you.”
We follow the ambulance, and he asks me lots of questions, but I can’t answer one of them. When we get there, they wheel Eileen through one door and me through another. Looking down, I see that I am clutching her purse. Trying to steady my hands, I go through her phone book for numbers of her family. I call her sister, and I call her ex-husband.
I don’t know how long I sit in the corridor. Nurses keep bringing me cups of coffee, but I let them go cold. Every time the door swings open from the ER, where they are working on her, I stand up, hoping for good news. Finally, a doctor comes to me, his hands limp.