And, in that moment, I realized that until then most of us around Kate had been exercising those same powers in relating to her. Norah stifled her tears as she admitted that Miss Hepburn had failed to recognize her on this particular visit. I counted the months, no years, since I had had an actual conversation with Kate, a genuine volley of more than two sentences; and I had blithely accepted the fact that her daily physical activity had declined to little more than moving from her bedroom to the stair lift to the living-room recliner and back. Peg told me that in my absence that afternoon, she had asked Kate how I had met her in the first place. “At a dance,” she had replied, “in Philadelphia.” Peg and I laughed, wondering what decade she was imagining. Sadly, the fireplaces at Fenwick had sat cold for years, ever since oxygen tanks had been parked at Kate’s side.
I made efforts (not always successful) to see Kate whenever I traveled east, and my visits invariably followed a medical scare or rumor of her demise. She watched some of the television coverage of September 11, 2001, and seemed to understand the violent attack on Manhattan that day. “But we’re not in New York,” she comfortably observed.
Over the next twenty months, I saw her condition remain stable, relatively still and stressless. But when I called her on her ninety-sixth birthday, she could not speak into the phone; and those around her all asked in somewhat ominous tones when I was visiting next.
I arrived in Fenwick eighteen days later, on May 30, 2003, and Kate’s appearance alarmed me. Her eyes widened as I entered the living room and sat beside her; but they appeared sunken, their bright light extinguished. She managed a weak smile of recognition, but she looked weary and miserable. A tube carrying oxygen was fixed to her nostrils. A dramatic weight loss suggested that she had not been eating.
Hong, who had been filling Norah’s shoes in Connecticut for years, and Norah herself, who was spending as much time in Fenwick as possible, said that in the past few weeks Miss Hepburn had ingested little more than liquefied yogurt and nutritional drinks. Every now and then, she showed interest in a small piece of toast with jam, which she would hold up to her mouth for two minutes at a time—sometimes putting it down, sometimes swallowing it whole. I kept thinking of my conversation with her a few years prior, about her own ability to hasten her departure from life by not eating, and wondered if she had taken to questioning every mouthful. Or had eating simply become a burden, maybe even painful? When I asked about her new diet, Hong and Norah hastily urged me to talk to the circumspect Erik Hanson.
I called him from the kitchen and learned the recently diagnosed truth, that a very aggressive tumor—large and hard—had been discovered in Kate’s neck. Various medical options had been considered; and, after factoring in her age and diminished quality of life, it was decided to let nature take its course. When I pressed Erik for further details from the doctors, he simply said, “Any time. Maybe tomorrow . . . but, with Kate, who knows? But we’re not talking years.” Nurses were administering over-the-counter drugs to quell any pain.
In saying goodbye to Kate that afternoon, I held her hand for several minutes as I told her, hardly for the first time, how much she meant to me. And I whispered into her ear that it was all right for her to “let go” whenever she wanted, that if she were tired, she could simply go to sleep—during the day, when there was always a friend or family member by the side of her chair, or at night, when a nurse kept bedside vigil. I didn’t fool myself, thinking my words would make much difference; they were just my way of saying that she would not be alone, and that everyone around her felt she had long since displayed more than a lifetime of strength and courage.
Within two weeks, getting beyond the chair in her bedroom became too much of a challenge; and Kate’s intake of liquids decreased. I monitored her condition daily by telephone. On the afternoon of Sunday, June 29, 2003, Cynthia McFadden thoughtfully placed the call I had been anxiously awaiting. After showing us for almost a century how to live, Katharine Hepburn showed us, at last, how to die.
I think about Kate often, as I will for the rest of my life. Lately, I’ll admit, I’ve been having a little fun steering myself time and again into the same daydream, one of my own deliberate invention: It’s a balmy night in June, and I’m in a white dinner jacket at the Merion Cricket Club in Haverford, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia, for the first promenade of the summer. A lively band breaks into a bouncy new Cole Porter tune. Suddenly, a striking young woman appears—fresh from Bryn Mawr—with big, luminous eyes and high cheekbones. A gentle breeze blows through her auburn hair. We notice each other; and, with her long legs, she is striding right toward me . . .
Kate Remembered Page 33