by Kathi Koll
I had a roommate at the hospital, and the poor thing was miserable, in her forties and overwhelmed with her “late in life, surprise baby.” She had to put up with my fan club of visitors. The giggles from my girlfriends. The tears of happiness from my husband. The inexperienced questions I bombarded her with. Wherever she is today, I owe her a lunch. Oh my, she’d be in her eighties by now.
All went well until the middle of the night. I felt my neck. It had swollen practically to the width of my shoulders. When I touched it, it sounded like I was popping plastic bubble wrap. I showed the nurse who came in, and she panicked, which scared me. Within minutes there was a team of doctors at my bedside examining me, then rushing me off to be X-rayed. During childbirth, I had experienced a spontaneous pneumothorax. An air pocket in my lung burst, dispensing air outside of my lung and into my chest cavity. The doctors worried this would put pressure on my lung and cause it to collapse. They watched it for a few days as the air pocket slowly healed itself and the air dissipated. I was too naive to be alarmed, but I was sad. I wanted my mom.
One night, a nurse walked into my room and spotted me quietly crying.
“What do you have to cry about?” she asked curtly. “You have a healthy baby. The girl down the hall just lost her baby.”
Eyes filled with tears, I said, “My mom just died a couple of months ago. And my dad is in the hospital across the street because of a severe drinking problem. I have no parents right now, and I feel so alone. I just want my mom.”
The nurse left the room quickly, and I never saw her again. I have no idea how she felt, but I learned that night that things aren’t always as they seem. Judgment of others is never fair, and it’s usually inaccurate if you’re basing it only on what you see. There is always so much more to the story.
Initially, life was devastating after my mom’s death. I longed to call her and ask her about all the silly little things that are so important in an everyday relationship between a mother and her teenage daughter. How do you make baked apples? Where did you pack my ski clothes? What’s the name of the lady at the cleaners? The hardest questions were the ones a first-time mother would ask. What do I do now? Is it normal for her to cry like that? Did I do such-and-such when I was a baby, too? Answers I’d never get. She’d never be there to answer the phone. She’d never be there to be my friend. I’d never have the chance to be on equal footing with her. To see what it would be like to be an adult with her and not the child she had so constantly watched over.
Beyond all the drama, I finally arrived home with little Jennifer. What a blessing and diversion she was from the death of my mother five months earlier. Patrick and I had taken classes at the Red Cross on how to feed, change, and bathe a baby, but we still felt so unprepared. Little Jennifer wasn’t like the plastic baby dolls we practiced on. She cried. She screamed. She had colic. I had a lot to learn, but Little Jennifer was the beginning of the rest of my life.
My dad was released from the hospital about six weeks after my baby was born. I had planned to meet him at a home he had rented at the beach. He insisted on getting there first and readying the place with groceries for Little Jennifer and me. Patrick was to follow in a few days. I was looking forward to a new beginning with my dad, but when I walked into the little beach cottage, I found him passed out on the couch. I ran out with my baby to my friend Bootsie’s home a few blocks away. I told her mom what had happened, and I was immediately welcomed to stay the week with them. My brothers came and took our dad back to the hospital. I was so incredibly hurt, but I know my dad was upset, too. He didn’t mean for that to happen. He really didn’t. But it did.
This was the first time I’d shared with anyone the problem of my dad’s drinking—echoes of my mother’s “never tell”s in the back of my mind. I had known this family all through high school. Bootsie was one of my best friends but never knew what was going on behind my closed door.
They say one has to hit rock bottom before they can really get up, and that’s exactly what happened to my dad. That was the last time I ever saw him drink. Leaving the beach house, he was so violently ill, so defeated, so ashamed. He reached a tipping point and somehow managed to pull himself together. Finally. After all those years. So much longer than any of us had hoped—and too late for my mom—but he did it.
I have always tried to find positives out of terrible situations. It’s something my mom instilled in me, and I try to instill in my children. It’s bizarre to think this, but the positive part of my mom’s death was that it catalyzed the truly close bond that formed between myself and my father. Yes, I loved him through thick and thin, but my mom was always the strength of the family. She was the one who stood out like the North Star. My dad was sometimes lost in the galaxy. It’s strange to think of it this way, maybe, but he finally had a chance to shine.
Life was still hard, though. We had an amazing support system, but Patrick and I still struggled as young newlyweds and brand new parents. I never thought owning a washer and dryer would mean so much to me, especially at the age of nineteen, but boy did it. Patrick and I were married a mere month when I became pregnant.
“Do you think we should do something about me not getting pregnant right away?” I shyly asked Patrick on our honeymoon.
“We don’t need to worry about that. It’s not that easy. You can only get pregnant one hour of the month, and the chances we hit that are one in a million,” he answered as the confident husband I knew I had married. Albeit twenty-one years old and obviously not very experienced with the ways of the world.
There I was, nine months later, little Jennifer in the car seat as we hauled off to the laundromat with my car loaded with laundry, and a bag of diapers in the trunk. Not Pampers, I might add, but the real thing. Who would have thought? My friends were going to sorority parties in college, and I was deep in laundry with a jar full of change, reading movie magazines while I waited for the spin cycle to stop, rocking a baby who should really be in her crib taking a nap.
“Patrick,” I excitedly shouted as he opened the door to our tiny second-floor apartment. “I have a great idea. I know we can’t afford a washer and dryer, but how about if you go on a game show and win one?”
“What? Are you nuts?” he answered.
“No, seriously,” I quickly answered without telling him I had already submitted his name for the TV show Hollywood Squares and he had been accepted.
“Well, what the heck,” he answered with more of a grimace than a smile.
He was getting used to my “creative ideas.” Never having a dull moment seems to be a theme that has followed me throughout life.
The anticipated day came with much fanfare from our family and friends with a party being planned upon our return. My dad said he’d babysit little Jennifer so I wouldn’t have to amuse her in the audience while Patrick was being “My Star” of the Hollywood Square stars.
“Patrick, which square do you choose?” asked the host, Paul Lynde.
“I’ll take square number one,” Patrick answered nervously. Paul looked at Charlie Weaver sitting in the top left square and asked the first question. Charlie answered with a somewhat ridiculous answer. The cameras focused on Patrick, and without a second of hesitation, he said, “No, Charlie’s wrong.”
“Yeah! He got it right,” I squealed as the audience applauded.
“One down, two to go, Patrick. Where to next?” Paul asked.
“I’d like square number four.” It was directly under his first square. I don’t remember the question, but I do remember Patrick won the square easily. Two down, one to go. We were on track for life on Easy Street. Please Patrick, don’t goof. This is it! This is so easy. I can already see the water swirling and the dryer spinning.
“I’ll take square number five in the middle with Zsa Zsa Gabor.”
What’s he doing? I nervously thought as I gnawed on my nails. Doesn’t he know how to play tic-tac-toe?
A disappointed hum came over the audience as Paul Lynde said, “That�
�s an interesting strategy, Patrick.” The question was asked. Something about nursery rhymes. Of course it didn’t matter what Ms. Gabor answered or what Patrick said. The game was over, and in a blink of an eye, we were quietly driving home.
“Why didn’t you go to the square on the bottom?” I had to ask, even though it was a daring proposition.
“I know, I know,” he shot back, exasperated. “I was so nervous being on television, and the squares were so close to me that I could hardly figure out which one was which.”
Even back then, I knew it wasn’t worth worrying about things that couldn’t be changed, so I switched gears now that my curiosity was satisfied.
“Guess what, Patrick?” I exclaimed. “They gave us an iron as a consolation prize!”
Patrick tried, and I could certainly relate to being overwhelmed. Deep in my heart, I really wanted him to be my knight in shining armor, but alas, he asked Zsa Zsa Gabor. I knew that I could have nailed it if I’d been the contestant, but as a member of the Screen Actors Guild, I was ineligible.
Despite our brief moments of fame, our family and friends were there to celebrate our iron and ask all about the experience of being on set. I loved the iron-strong bond we shared with our families regardless of our successes and hardships.
The last few years of my father’s life were a complete joy for me. When little Jennifer was about a year and half old, Patrick had a job opportunity with his father in Missouri, so we moved there. “Kathi,” my dad told me, “people don’t move that way; they move this way.” He was astounded that I was moving from California to Missouri. It was only supposed to be a two-year stint, but we ended up staying for nine. I went kicking and screaming, but it enriched my life with lifelong friends, happiness and heartbreak, and a lifestyle few of my friends have experienced.
For the first time in my life, I was making friends outside of my native security of Los Angeles, and as I settled in, I felt like I was in a very special place. For one thing, our first home in comparison to Los Angeles prices was a dream come true. It was a beautiful little English Tudor stone house with a slate roof. My brother Don and I found it by him knocking on the door and asking them if they’d be interested in selling. I was so embarrassed that I hid on the floor of the car. Next thing you knew, Patrick and I owned the house and were moving in.
After we moved, my dad would visit for weeks at a time. He’d take care of little Jennifer while I played tennis with my girlfriends. He had a great rapport with my husband. He was frequently welcomed into my friends’ homes. Life was good. He was my buddy. He was even there for the birth of my son.
Kevin came two years, nine months after little Jennifer. I had just filmed a commercial for a local beauty salon, and it was going to be shown at our favorite movie theater. I was supposed to look sexy, peeking through a chiffon scarf, but I felt like I looked anything but. Patrick and I were at the movies with our friends when the commercial came on—right before The Exorcist. I was so embarrassed. I thought I looked ridiculous in the commercial and hoped no one surrounding us would recognize me, now a pregnant girl, as the same person. I never knew if it was my embarrassment over the commercial or the intensity of the movie, but something sent me into labor, and the four of us left early and hurried to the hospital.
This birth was quicker, albeit so quick the anesthesia didn’t have time to kick in. Once again I was begging the familiar refrain, “Give me drugs! I don’t care what you have, just give me something.” Within a blink of an eye, we had a baby boy.
“My son, I have a son.” Of course, proud Dad was over the moon. I think he was ready to take Kevin fishing that night.
I prepped Little Jennifer about the forthcoming baby, hoping she wouldn’t be jealous with this new little creature taking some of her mommy and daddy’s time from her. “I need your help. You’re going to help me with your baby brother, let’s do it together.” From that day forward, Jennifer got the title “JM” for Junior Mom. She never got jealous because she had a job to do. If I was changing Kevin’s diapers, Jennifer was handing me the Pampers.
She took her role very seriously, but went a little overboard one evening. I was in the kitchen, and Little Jennifer walked in holding three-month-old Kevin under her arm like a football, announcing, “Mommy, the baby is hungry.”
“Jennifer,” I said, practically frozen with concern, “walk slowly and hand Kevin to me.”
She had crawled into his crib, taken him out—I dare not imagine how—walked down a flight of stairs, across the hardwood floor of our living room, and into the kitchen.
Unfortunately, soon after Kevin was born, my dad was diagnosed with throat cancer. He just couldn’t give up those cigarettes. I regularly flew back and forth between California and Missouri to take care of him. Each time, I would pack up the kids and set up the playpen in his apartment. I sat with him day after day, pureeing his food in the blender to make it easier to swallow. I felt guilty leaving my young husband back in Missouri, and each time I left my dad, I felt guilty leaving him alone in California. I was in a constant state of “the guilts,” but I knew where I really needed to be. My dad was ill, and he needed me. It was a precursor to the deep guilt I felt many years later as a caregiver to my husband after his stroke. I wasn’t aware back then, but it’s an incredibly common emotion for caregivers of all ages.
I would bundle my dad up, put the babies in the car, and drive them all around Los Angeles. Past his old school, which had been turned into a factory. Past my godparents’ house at Lake Sherwood, where my parents spent idle days at their best friends’ lake home filled with everyone’s families. Up into the San Bernardino mountains to see the cabin at Lake Arrowhead where he and my mom raised my brothers each summer. On and on and on. Road trips to his past. A history of his life. I felt so lucky to have this time with him.
He was in agony and would drink a swig of codeine when the pain was too much.
“Dad,” I’d say, “you’ve got to quit smoking.”
“Why? I’m dying. Why should I give up my last pleasure in life?”
I guess he had a point.
The doctors felt his cancer was curable and were trying radiation, but he needed surgery to determine if it had spread to his lungs. His heart was in bad shape, however, so there was the fear that even if the cancer could be removed, he might not make it through surgery.
He stood at the end of the driveway waiting to say goodbye to me. I knew I’d never see him again, and I knew he felt the same. I couldn’t see him clearly through the window; it could’ve been from rain or because I was crying so hard. I looked at him in the rearview mirror. He stood all alone, waving as I disappeared down the long driveway, tears rolling down his cheeks.
When I got home, I called and pleaded with him. “Please, Dad, give it a chance. You don’t have much time without the surgery. Why not try?”
“Kathi,” he said, “I’ve had a good life. I don’t want to take the chance of leaving today if the surgery doesn’t work. I miss your mom, and I’m ready to go, but I don’t want to go today.” He chose to not do the surgery.
Wrapping one’s head around a loved one’s choice can feel impossible, and for me, my father’s decision seemed so obviously wrong at first. As the caregivers being left behind, it aches to our very core when a loved one decides it’s their time But their reasoning is right for them, and once I was able to grasp that, I was able to make the most of the time we had left. Living life on our own terms is something we strive for and encourage, but we often overlook the flip side of that idea that our palliative care should be on our own terms as well. My father made the decision that was right for him, and it wouldn’t have improved his quality of life or our last precious opportunities to connect if I’d argued any further. Support and love were the best things I could give him, and I won’t pretend like that made it any easier for me, but I hope it made it easier for him.
One morning in 1974, years after his Air Force career, and now the father of five children, my brother
Dink could barely get out of bed. Normally his health was exceptional; he even won an award in high school for never missing a day of school. My brother Don called and told me Dink was on his way to the hospital in an ambulance. The reality just couldn’t resonate with me.
“It must be a fluke,” I said to my brother on the other end of the phone. “No way can he be ill. He never gets sick.” By this time, I was living in Springfield, Missouri, with my husband and my two children. The distance quickly felt like a million miles. The thought of my brother on his way to the hospital left me with a queasy, frightened feeling in my stomach. I couldn’t help but to think about seeing my mother in the ambulance as we left home for the last time. A few days of waiting for test results stretched out into infinity. At first, doctors thought he had leukemia. We were all devastated by the news. The word chemo was no longer convincing to me. It didn’t work for my mom, so why would I trust it could work for my brother?
“Hello, Kathi. I have some news about Dink that you need to hear.” My brother Don had sat in on the doctor’s meeting with our sister-in-law, Barbara, and Dink and had called to fill me in. I steeled myself. “He doesn’t have leukemia, but he does have what they’re calling aplastic anemia of the bone marrow.”
“What’s that?” I struggled to reconcile the wonderful news that it wasn’t cancer with this new, unfamiliar phrase that left a knot deep in my stomach.
“All I really know is that the doctors said it’s when your bone marrow doesn’t make enough blood cells. They said it was extremely rare and was the result of being poisoned.” A palpable silence weighed down the line and settled between us.
“What could possibly have poisoned him?” I barely breathed.
“No one knows.” I could feel Don gearing up to tell me the hard part. “Right now, all that matters is how serious this is. His only chance of survival is a bone marrow transplant. Our bone marrow produces our blood, so the blood transfusions will keep him alive in the short term until a donor can be found.”