Misty

by Misty May-Treanor

  On Thursday, October 18, the tournament would begin, but that Wednesday night, after Opening Ceremonies, would be just as memorable for me. Although Barb and I went to bed early, we didn’t get much sleep; she struggled all night with medication, pains, worry, and so much more that I’ll never understand. At 4:00 A.M., she was up, and wanted to go out to the pool and sit in the spa so she could warm her body; she wasn’t feeling well, and I was beginning to panic. The pool and spa were closed, but I was able to get management to allow us to be there if we were quiet. For about an hour, she sat there thinking about everything, then she became too hot and wanted to go in the pool. My life experiences hadn’t prepared me for this situation. I could tell she was suffering with her illness, but I was afraid to say or recommend anything to her because I had no idea if this was normal, based on her condition. Over the next few nights, I realized it was normal for her to be uncomfortable most of the time. Sleep was hard, but so was just living. After a spa and a swim at 4:00 A.M., who can think about playing a volleyball match in four hours? I was exhausted, and I was the healthy one. …

  Over the next two days, our Mavericks team played well enough to continue winning; eventually, we ended up among the final teams and would get a chance to play for the gold medal. Barbara was tired, but so were the rest of us; exhaustion was normal, but we all worried about how this was affecting her. Nobody would say anything to her because we truly didn’t know what she was feeling, and we didn’t want her to think we expected more of her, because we didn’t expect this much. Her play was better than that of most of her peers.

  Finally, we were going for the gold in the final match. Barb was out there playing hard like she always did. The rest of us were out there pushing ourselves not to lose. We all knew that this would probably be her last tournament and her last match. Everybody wanted to win it with her.

  After winning the first set, we only had to win one more to win the match. Time between sets centers on coaching strategy, resting, getting water in our empty bottles, and using restrooms. People often disappeared for a few minutes. When the set was about to start, Barbara was nowhere near the court; after a quick search of the building, we still couldn’t find her. Just as the referees called us to the court to start, a team member located Barb outside the gym crying. The magnitude of the tournament and this being the last match she might ever play had pushed her to her limits. She apologized to her teammates about not playing hard enough to contribute as she expected. She cried, wanting to play more and not to have the experience end. Her whole life was coming to an end, piece by piece, she later told me in our hotel room. She knew it was her last match, and she didn’t want it to start or end.

  After tremendous patience shown by the referees and the other team, she once again entered the gym and walked onto the court to a tremendous ovation from everyone in the arena who knew her situation. We went on to win the match, and Barbara won our hearts. All of us who played that day will remember her tears, her spirit, and her drive to keep pushing on, in spite of her situation. She became everyone’s hero that week and epitomized the motto of the Games to “Reach Higher.”

  The drive home was not as emotional as the drive to the tournament. I think Barb came to realize that she had accomplished what she came to do; winning this event closed another chapter in her life. We didn’t talk volleyball on the way home; we talked about her love for her family and her dogs. The more she spoke about them, the greater her enthusiasm rose; it was a beautiful trip.

  After she won her gold medal, Mom’s health gradually deteriorated. On January 31, 2002, her friends had a birthday party for her, and she was doing fairly well. Toni Bowermaster remembers Mom and her girlfriends watching the sunset together that evening. However, February wasn’t so great. Mom wasn’t responding well to her cancer treatment, and now the doctors were worried about a brain tumor, the newest progression of the disease. At the end of February or the beginning of March, she stopped playing volleyball altogether because she started having trouble with her legs. They just gave out on her.

  Mom insisted Dad and I maintain a sense of normalcy. So Dad kept working at MGM, and I kept training for the 2002 season. As we’d done the season before, Kerri and I decided to forgo the AVP tour. Our first scheduled FIVB event wasn’t until June, in Madrid, Spain, which allowed me to spend time with Mom. In addition to getting ready for our FIVB season, I was the assistant women’s volleyball coach at Irvine (California) Valley College.

  Truthfully, I didn’t want to play volleyball. I just didn’t have it in my heart. After seeing Mom struggling to sleep, tossing and turning in pain, her face burned from radiation treatments, I felt I couldn’t leave her alone. She was getting worn out and delirious from the treatments. She’d forget to turn off the burners on the stove, and she’d leave the heater on in the bathroom. I wanted to do everything possible to make her comfortable. I also wanted to support Dad, who was working plus trying to take care of her. I couldn’t let him worry so much.

  Knowing how important it was to Mom that it be “business as usual” around our house, three of her best girlfriends—Toni, Mary Zant, and Sandy Weaver—and a few of my parents’ longtime friends volunteered to help out, so that Dad and I could maintain our daily lives and not be overcome by her cancer. That gave Mom a great sense of relief. Although I protested, saying I’d prefer taking off time from volleyball to pitch in, Dad and Mom both said, no, “Life goes on.”

  A family friend, Ed (E.T.) Thompson, also lent a hand, planting gardens for Mom, as well as sprucing up the yard. That meant a lot to all of us, because Mom had always loved being surrounded by nature. My parents had met E.T. decades earlier at Muscle Beach, when he’d borrowed a volleyball from Dad, then sold it for a quart of beer. In the mid-1990s, while house-sitting for my parents when they were playing in the U.S. Senior Nationals, E.T. sold Dad’s truck for crack cocaine. My parents returned from the tournament, realized the truck was gone, threw E.T. out of the house, and called the police.

  Finally, in 1999 or 2000, E.T. sobered up. When Mom was diagnosed with cancer, she decided to reconcile with him. In fact, Mom compiled a list of people who’d affected her negatively or had done her and Dad wrong over the years.

  “We’ve got to forgive them,” she told Dad.

  So almost a decade after banishing E.T. from our house, Dad and Mom welcomed him back, with open arms.

  Despite all of this loving support, it still was an extremely tumultuous time for us. In early February, Dad was hospitalized for a week with an infection. He’d been badly bitten, trying to break up a fight between a couple of their dogs. Before he checked into the hospital, though, he made 1:00 A.M. calls to Mom’s girlfriends, scheduling round-the-clock shifts of caretakers to look after her. I don’t know how Dad did it. His days seemed a lot longer than twenty-four hours. He loved Mom very much, and he didn’t want to see her suffer.

  When Dad was discharged, he took over the reins again. He drove Mom to the hospital for more chemotherapy treatments. One day, he says, she walked into the lobby, stopped, turned to him, and said, “No more.” Dad obliged, taking her home and trying to make her as comfortable as possible.

  But less than a week later, Mom felt so crummy she had to be admitted to the hospital. One evening, she called Dad and said, “I’m still on the toilet. They forgot about me.” She’d gone into her bathroom, sat down on the toilet, and was too weak to get up. She’d also summoned the nurses to bring her more pain medicine. Dad assured her the nurses would be in soon to help her. Forty-five minutes later, though, she called Dad again. “I’m still on the toilet,” she said. Dad was irate. He phoned and raised a stink with the nursing staff. He says he was told they were overworked and understaffed. He shared the incident with a friend, a nurse at the same hospital, and she asked what floor Mom was on. When Dad told her, she said, “Butch, they’ve put Barbara on the floor where people go to die.” Dad’s response? “Those SOBs!”

  The next day, Dad retrieved Mom from the hospital
and brought her home for good. He and I were very grateful for the peaceful sanctuary her friends had created in her bedroom. The walls were painted a soft coral. Her bed was positioned in a corner, where she could look out a window and see the entire backyard. E.T.’s garden always seemed to be buzzing with activity, thanks to flowers that attracted butterflies and feeders that lured birds. Along the same wall as her window, Mom had placed a beautiful piece of driftwood that had washed up on Muscle Beach. Her girlfriends put little icons and other doodads Mom found inspiring on it, including prayer beads, seashells, and dream catchers.

  I learned an extremely important life lesson from Mom: Even with death staring her right in the face, she lived in the moment, and she stayed in the moment, believing that she was going to get better. She kept doing her exercises, even when she couldn’t walk, thinking that any day she would beat the disease.

  Sometimes, she’d look her best friend Toni in the eye and ask, “Am I going to die?”

  “You know what, Barb, not today,” Toni would tell her. “You’re alive, and you’re here, and not today.”

  Every once in a while, she’d go to the dark side. But not very often. She had her menagerie of rescued dogs and cats around her, and she did a lot of busy work to keep them healthy and fed, cooking for them a couple of times each day. Toni recalls that Mom spent a lot of time when she was at her sickest talking about how “very, very, very, very, very sad” she was for all the years she’d been drinking. Toni says Mom had a lot of regret about her “embarrassing behavior” in my younger years. She was mortified about all of those times I saw her drunk, remarking, “Gosh, I wish I wouldn’t have done that.” Toni describes their intimate discussions of Mom’s alcoholism as being “truly bittersweet.” On one hand, Mom was happy she’d gotten sober; on the other hand, she felt guilty about having lost quality time with me.

  Mom never discussed any of her regret or guilt with me. If she had, I would’ve told her she was the most wonderful mother in the world to me. I remember the good times; I don’t dwell on the bad. Growing up had its ups and downs. Though some times were worse than others, especially when my parents were drinking, I learned to look past their alcoholism, because both Mom and Dad were loving, giving people. If I could change anything about my life, it would be that Mom never would’ve gotten sick and died, and that I would’ve shown her more appreciation.

  Today, the Mom I remember is the woman who was my compass, the woman who taught me all those valuable life lessons. Off the court . . . Be true to yourself. Don’t listen to what other people are saying because you’re the one who has to live with yourself. You have to do what’s right for you. On the court . . . Give your all. Give your best, so you don’t have any regrets. Leave it all on the court. Today, I live my life as Mom taught me. I set my goals and stay focused on them.

  I bet it was difficult for Mom to be part of the Three Musketeers, sandwiched between Dad and me. Now, I realize she often was pushed to the outside of our spotlights. Eileen Clancy McClintock, Dad’s longtime mixed doubles partner, says that, for years and years, Mom had labeled herself in one of two ways—“Butch’s wife” or “Misty’s mom.” When Mom was diagnosed with cancer, and she was showered with an enormous outpouring of love and friendship, it moved her so much that she admitted to Eileen, “Now I realize that people like me for being Barbara, not because I’m ‘Butch’s wife’ or ‘Misty’s mom.’” The cancer forced Mom to look at herself differently. If there was anything good that came out of her having that horrible disease, it was the knowledge that she was well loved, and especially that she was well loved for being herself.

  Sadly, by late April, Mom had reached a point of no return. Everybody told me she was getting close to seeing her final resting place. I kept wishing they were wrong. I hadn’t cried in front of her—I’d always kept a stiff upper lip—but one night, I just couldn’t control myself. She broke down when I was helping her go to the bathroom. Mom cried so hard she started hyperventilating. Nothing they teach you in college can prepare you for something like that. I didn’t want to let Mom go, but I also didn’t want to see her suffer. The look in her eyes at that moment absolutely broke my heart. She was scared, she wanted help, but I was powerless.

  And still, she soldiered on.

  My mother taught me so much about never giving up, about never wanting to lose.

  In Mom’s final weeks, many people came to see her, to pay their respects. It was a major outpouring of love, which is exactly what Mom had attracted throughout her lifetime. Love. To help ease the pain, stop the nausea, and lessen the anxiety, Mom smoked marijuana. Smoking marijuana would calm her down, because at the end, she was extremely nervous, jittery, and agitated. E.T., who had the toughest job of all, night duty, says she was afraid to go to sleep at night because she was petrified she might not wake up. She wasn’t ready to let go yet. Then, when the sun came up, she’d give herself permission to go to sleep. I tried very hard to comfort her. I’d crawl into bed and hold her. When she was on the morphine drip, if I heard her moan, I’d press the button to shoot the morphine into her system.

  However, I never could make her feel completely comfortable. I’d add a pillow here or there. I’d sit her up or lay her down, then I’d help her up and situate her in a chair in the bedroom. Still, she’d be in excruciating pain. She’d say, “Turn me this way, Misty.” Then, a few minutes later, she’d say, “No, Misty, turn me that way.” It was up, down, up, down. It was especially difficult to satisfy Mom in the days before her death. It was frustrating to me because, deep down, I knew there really was no solution.

  At one point, near the end, I lost all my patience.

  “Mom, you’ve got to make up your mind,” I snapped.

  I wasn’t mad at her; I was pissed off at the disease. I wanted to take away the sickness and the pain. It didn’t occur to me then that the pain was making her irrational. Mom burst into tears. I turned to Dad and E.T., and I said, “I can’t take it! I don’t know what to do! I’m leaving!” With that, I stormed out my parents’ front door and drove off to a volleyball camp in San Luis Obispo. As a world-class athlete, I’d been taught not to have emotional meltdowns in the heat of battle, but this situation had become much too trying for me. I’d let my feelings of helplessness get the best of me. More than that, I’d realized this was not how I wanted to see, or remember, my mother.

  Late Friday evening, after I’d reached San Luis Obispo, Dad and I spoke on the phone. I still was upset about Mom and my behavior toward her. He had to work extra hard on the phone that night to get me calmed down. Then Dad broke the news that Mom was turning, that the hospice nurse had taken her off all drugs except morphine, and that she’d soon die.

  Now, I felt even more helpless. Soon, Mom likely would be in a comatose state. How was I ever going to apologize for my outburst and tell her how much she meant to me? I’ve never been the best communicator, so Dad suggested I write my feelings in a letter. He understood that, at that point, I was incapable of telling Mom how I felt without breaking down. The letter, he said, would allow me to get everything out.

  Fortunately, when I got home from San Luis Obispo, I was able to read it to her. I got into bed with Mom, and I wrapped my arms around her. Although she was in and out of a coma, I’m sure she heard my words, and I’d like to believe that she felt me lying beside her. I’ve been told that people can hear what you’re saying, all the way until they take their last breath.

  On the day Mom died, Thursday, May 9, 2002, I’d been scheduled to play in a fun little indoor tournament, a Long Beach State fund-raiser. I’d told Dad, “I want to go see Mom.” But he’d said, “No, Mom and I want you to play.” After the event, I’d just walked in the front door of my Long Beach house when Dad called and said, “You’d better come. Mom’s not going to last very long.”

  I jumped into my car, still wearing my knee pads, and I sped off. I got pulled over by a cop, just down the street from my house. I was crying, pleading, “Please, my mom is dying,
please let me go, I need to get to her.” The cop didn’t believe me; I guess he’d heard that excuse before. I kept saying, “No, really, my mom’s dying.” I tried calling several people to corroborate my story, but none of them answered their cell phones. I called our family friend Jim Steele, then I handed the phone to the cop, and Jim explained the situation. Finally, the cop let me go, saying, “Be careful.”

  Because of that traffic stop, I missed Mom’s dying by five minutes.

  I blamed myself for that.

  I blamed myself for a lot of things.

  Dad tried comforting me by saying Mom had died peacefully, surrounded by him, E.T., and her girlfriends, Toni, Mary, and Sandy. He told me Mom’s journey was complete, that in the end, she’d finally resolved in her head that I was going to be okay, so she felt she could let go. When she passed away, he said, she looked pretty, all dressed in pink and wearing little earrings. Dad and Mom’s girlfriends had stood in a circle beside her bed, holding hands and saying prayers as she was transcending.

  “We all touched her and assured her she would be okay,” Dad said. “We told her it was okay to let go.”

  Mom’s dog Chewy had sensed she’d passed away and jumped up on the bed and lay across her stomach. At one time, Mom had eight mutts and five cats, all of them rescued. She felt love from the animals. But Chewy was Mom’s least favorite because he always was trying to attack her cats and even might have killed a couple of them. Soon after, Mom’s other four dogs followed Chewy’s lead, hopping up on her bed and laying their heads on her body.