Warren also wanted her to do an interview with public-television talk-show host Charlie Rose. Susie said many sentimental and flattering things about her husband, and explained that she provided Warren with “unconditional love.” She also discussed her move to San Francisco, saying she left, as she told Warren, because “I would like to have a place where I can have a room of my own. It would be nice.” On Astrid, “She took care of your man for you?” asked Rose. “She did, and she takes great care of him, and he appreciates it and I appreciate it…she’s done me a great favor,” Susie said. Perhaps because of the set-up question, this exchange made clear that Susie viewed Astrid as the tool through which she managed Warren—something that Susie may not have intended to reveal quite so bluntly. Afterward, she said to Susie Jr., “Let’s go to Bergdorf’s.”11 There, she sat on a chair and looked at some things but soon said she was tired and went back to the hotel.
A couple of days later, on Mother’s Day, her energy rebounded in time to accept an invitation to meet her daughter’s friend Bono at the Tribeca Film Festival. Bono had been faxing her letters during her recovery, which Susie Jr. would read to her. The letters, according to Susie Jr., “were sort of this giant thing to her.” By May, after going to sleep every night listening to Bono sing, she had grown passionately interested in meeting the messianic singer. The two had a brief encounter, and “I just can’t even explain to you how excited she was,” says Susie Jr.
Susie went to bed and rested for two days. Then Bono, his wife, Ali, their daughters, and Bobby Shriver (the brother of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s wife, Maria Shriver), who had cofounded the African-aid charity DATA with Bono, came over to the Plaza Hotel to meet Susie for lunch in the dining room. For three hours, Susie and Bono sat talking. Then he presented her with a portrait that he had painted from a photograph of her, overwritten with some of the lyrics to the U2 song “One.” Susie was overcome. Bono invited her to visit him in France with Susie Jr., who was coming for a meeting of his foundation board.
When Susie returned to San Francisco, she immediately gave a place of honor to the picture, making room for it among all the other art and masks and decorative items on her walls. Then she made up her mind to go to France. The Africa vacation had been canceled once again, for she was far too weak to make that trip. But she thought she could go to France. She and Susie Jr. started by spending four days at the Ritz in Paris, where Susie recovered from the trip across six time zones by following the get-up-at-one-p.m.-pills-in-ice-cream routine while going out once a day to do something simple. Then they took the TGV bullet train to Nice, to Bono’s salmon-colored stucco mansion in Eze Bord de Mer.
This house, where Gandhi was said to have once prayed, sat on a point overlooking the Mediterranean. Susie’s high-ceilinged bedroom was warmed by a fireplace and lit by expansive windows framed in gauzy white curtains that opened onto the sea. She spent most of her days sleeping, but one afternoon Susie Jr. called her upstairs to a terrace overlooking the water while Bono played music from How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, U2’s unreleased album. He was singing a song he had written for his father’s funeral: “Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own.” That evening they spent four hours talking over dinner, and Bono stood up and toasted her, saying, “I’ve met my soul mate!”
Her reverence for the charismatic rock star had grown so during the course of getting to know him in person that the next day, on the plane home, Susie stayed awake and played U2 music on her iPod the entire way. “I can’t explain the rest I got there,” she would later say about Bono’s house.12
Roughly a week after the two Susies returned from France, most of the family went to Sun Valley, while Peter and Jennifer stayed in Omaha, setting up for the premiere of his show, Spirit—The Seventh Fire. After the long year of pain and isolation, Susie was making up for lost time by trying to see everyone and go everywhere. At Sun Valley she spent time with various people, including Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg, an oral-cancer survivor whose faxes and advice had helped to keep up Susie’s morale over the past months. But the feeling of liberation was not unqualified. She was so tired that she had to skip the first morning lecture. At lunch later that day, when she ventured across the restaurant to get some skim milk, she was suddenly mobbed by people who wanted to wish her well. Susie Jr. sent Howie to rescue their mother, saying, “She can’t do this. She’s going to keep trying, and she can’t. Go make her sit down.”
On the second day, Susie Jr. got a golf cart to take her mother around. When Susie Jr. walked into the condo to pick her mother up, she was shriveled in a little ball on the couch crying, saying, “I can’t do it.”13 Even though she spent much of the trip resting, it drained her tiny store of energy.
When the family returned to Omaha, with everybody on hand for the upcoming premiere of Peter’s show, Susie took the opportunity to visit her daughter’s new knitting shop. Susie Jr. had gotten together with a partner to open String of Purls in a suburban shopping center. Buffett was genuinely excited at his daughter’s entrepreneurialism. He could relate to a knitting shop. He had analyzed its prospects and thought it might gross as much as half a million dollars a year. Once again he could bond with his daughter in a special way. He was as enthused over the knitting business as any other business: It attracted him for the same reason he pored over GEICO’s reports and tracked the growth of their Internet sales week by week; monitored the See’s Candies sales at every single retail store every single day during the holiday season; read the daily sales figures by fax from Shaw Carpets; reviewed the daily reports from Borsheim’s before Christmas; memorized real estate listing statistics from Home Services of America (the real-estate company that MidAmerican Energy owned); recited jet-fuel costs and ownership statistics for NetJets; and knew ad lineage from the Buffalo News by heart.
Peter’s multimedia event was nothing like the knitting shop; it was harder for Buffett to comprehend. Based on the PBS special Peter had done earlier, it had consumed four years of effort, during which he focused on improving the execution and experience of the live performances while refining the music and story line. And all of this work would have no certain result—except the satisfaction of the creative act.
Buffett had seen the earlier live performances and knew the show involved Peter on keyboards with a band; a special theater shaped like a tent; lasers, drums, video, and Native American singers and dancers. Warren always gave students advice to pursue their passion, but the examples of passion he used, like becoming backgammon champion of the world, were competitive at their core. Someone driven by an inner fire of artistry, irrespective of the world’s rewards, was simply off the map of his reality. That was Susie’s territory, the realm of spirit and soul and heart, of the poet in her lonely room, of the painter striving for self-expression on canvas for years with no public recognition of his work. Nonetheless, his own passion and patience and creativity as he worked with capital resembled Peter’s passion and patience and artistic vision with music. Thus, Buffett’s genuine wish for Peter’s success found its expression in the best and only way he knew—in the marriage between art and commerce. The show’s potential for commercial success preoccupied him. “I’ve seen it several times, and I’ve seen different iterations of it almost every time. It gets enthusiastic responses, but what I don’t know is just how big the market is. It’s not like a Broadway musical, in terms of the depth of the market, so we will find out.”
The Buffett name had worked heavily against Peter when it came to raising money, because people assumed that he had easy access to unlimited funds. People did not take him seriously about not having money until he actually mortgaged his house to fund the show. Warren, typically, offered to pay the last ten percent of the cost if Peter could raise the rest. When he had raised two million of the total, his father went ahead and gave him $200,000 of the $300,000 he had promised. Peter then raised the rest of the money himself, much of it through a grant from the Rudolph Steiner Foundation. From start to finish he
struggled against heavy odds to raise funds while trying to stage and produce the show at the same time. His parents, during the same months, waived their “no donations” rule and wrote a $10 million check to Tom Murphy’s Save the Children as a gesture of friendship and support.
It seemed a little chilly—even in the name of cultivating self-reliance—to support their son’s cause with only two percent of what they gave a family friend. With hindsight, however, Peter was grateful that his show did not become a vanity project funded by his father—which no one would have taken seriously. He felt that the way his father handled it was one of his typically brilliant solutions to complex problems. It gave Peter his family’s endorsement, for which he was grateful, while still allowing him the struggle and pride of raising most of the three million needed by himself—although he could have used that last hundred thousand dollars.
Warren did not quite understand his son’s fascination with Native Americans. He (and much of the rest of the family) thought of it as “the Indian show.” Warren had never been self-reflective, and the show’s symbolic exploration of stolen identity, and the triumph of man’s will in reclaiming what was lost, escaped him.
Spirit—The Seventh Fire was a dazzling story acted by a Native American who told the story of his return from the modern world to reclaim his cultural heritage. The self-enclosed stage resembled a tent, spacious and intimate, contemporary yet historic. Peter’s music, exotic yet familiar, flowed and pulsed around the audience while Native American performers in wildly feathered costumes danced and sang against a background of epic film.
Susie had been angry at Peter all spring over his obsession with the show. Peter had a much different personality from his father, but Susie felt that he risked turning into a musical version of Warren, of jeopardizing his marriage to Jennifer. She could take in all of the effects and feelings in the show, however, and let the music intensify her other senses. She appreciated Peter’s artistic accomplishment. Warren loved music and was proud of his son, but, sitting at the premiere, the show’s multilayered kaleidoscope of visual impressions overwhelmed him, leaving him uncertain what to make of it. He looked at others in the audience and saw people clapping and cheering, which told him that the show was good. And when the Omaha World-Herald called it “poignant, sad, uplifting, thrilling, and powerful,” he was delighted. He had been internally holding his breath in anticipation of this moment for more than a year, and his relief that Peter had succeeded on such a large scale was obvious. But he also feared, with reason, a hometown bias and waited to see if the show would be well-received elsewhere.
As Spirit continued to play in Omaha, Susie went to Laguna with a group of her grandchildren. They were used to Susie indulging their wishes and giving herself to their needs, going here and there with them, the perfect grandmother; she didn’t disappoint them now. She took them shopping at the mall, like old times, sitting in a chair and pointing at things around the store, saying, “I’ll take one of those, and two of these, and one of those.”14 After this visit, she was exhausted, but began to prepare herself for the annual trip to Herbert Allen’s post–Sun Valley gathering.
The wisdom of spending another long weekend with a crowd of people at the high altitude of Cody, Wyoming, so soon after Sun Valley, seemed questionable. Some in the family were strongly against her making this trip. But Susie was doing cartwheels at the sheer joy of living, and Warren wanted to feel that everything was back to normal. Thus, the last week of July, Warren and Susie reunited for a long weekend at Herbert Allen’s J—9 ranch.
Susie struck people as exuberant, elated to be there.15 At dinner in the great room, where an oversize fireplace took the chill off the high mountain air, she was chatty and outspoken, proposing that the guests take a straw poll about the upcoming election.16 Afterward, when the table had been cleared and everyone was thinking about dessert and coffee, she stood in the kitchen, telling people how much closer her illness had brought her to her daughter.17 Suddenly, she blinked and said there was something funny going on inside her head.18 For a split second, Herbert Allen thought she was doing a silly dance step. Then he realized she was going down. As her legs buckled, he and Barbara Oehrle caught her before she hit the floor.19
They carried her to a nearby couch, where the yoga teacher Herbert Allen had brought in for the weekend held her. They sent Warren off to their cabin to get her pills. Susie’s health had always been so uncertain, and she had pulled through so many other crises, that nobody thought it was that serious. Still, they put through a call for paramedics. Warren called Susie Jr., who was at the Democratic Convention in Boston with Bobby Shriver and Bill Clinton, watching John Edwards speak. He said something about a headache and asked for Dr. Isley’s phone number. She gave it to him and he hung up. She wondered briefly if something was wrong, then thought, My mother could have broken her toe and he would be calling for Dr. Isley’s number.20
Lying on the sofa, Susie was having trouble lifting her arm. She vomited a couple of times and said she was very cold and her head hurt terribly. They wrapped her in blankets. She began drifting in and out of consciousness, at times struggling to speak. Warren had managed to get the information about her prescriptions that the paramedics would need. As he observed Susie’s condition, he grew more and more distressed; it was becoming apparent that she had probably had a stroke. The other guests waited, helpless, for the ambulance to arrive. The time passed slowly. After a while they all grew more hopeful when Susie commented that her head felt better and started responding when asked to move her arms and feet. Then the paramedics arrived and did a few tests. They placed her onto the ambulance cot and wheeled her outside, as Warren followed. After lifting her into the back of the ambulance, they climbed inside and shut the door. Warren got into the front seat and the driver began the thirty-four-mile journey through the winding mountain roads to West Park Hospital in Cody.21
As soon as they were in the ambulance, Warren called Susie Jr. “You need to come here,” he said. “Something has happened to Mom. I think she’s had a stroke.” A few minutes later he called again and said, “You need to find your brothers and bring them with you.”
Susie Jr. reached Peter in Omaha, where he was in his hotel room preparing for the show. She found Devon in a Wal-Mart in Indiana. “Where’s Howie?” she asked. “In Africa,” said Devon. “He’s landing in about half an hour.” Susie Jr. tried to hurry the NetJets plane that was coming first to Boston to pick her up and then to collect Peter in Omaha before continuing on to Cody.22 By then, Howie had landed in Africa and gotten word to call his sister right away. His first thought was, Something’s happened to my dad. His second thought was, Something’s happened to Peter. “I absolutely did not think it was my mom,” he says. He was horrified to be stranded with no way to get a return flight until the next day.23
While Susie Jr. worked on logistics, Herbert Allen and a friend, Western sculptor T. D. Kelsey, followed the ambulance in Allen’s car. They grew frustrated at how slowly the ambulance was proceeding; it upset them that Buffett was trapped inside and subjected to the interminable ride. At one point they pulled up alongside the ambulance and Allen shouted at the driver, asking what on earth was going on, but no one answered.
When they finally reached the hospital, the CAT scan revealed that Susie had had a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Warren paced back and forth in the emergency room, and eventually the doctor came out and told him that Susie had little chance of lasting through the night. Tearful and distraught, he went out to the lobby and told this to Kelsey and Allen.24 Then he walked back upstairs and sat in the room with Susie, waiting. They were alone.
At around four-thirty a.m., the plane carrying Susie Jr. and Peter arrived. After their car pulled into the hospital parking lot, its mountain backdrop much like that at Sun Valley, the first person they saw inside the lobby was Herbert Allen. Susie Jr.’s first thought was “Oh, my God, this feels just like Mrs. Graham.”
Upstairs, they found their father sitt
ing next to their mother, holding her hand. A Cherry Coke sat untouched on the table nearby. “I’ve been here for five hours,” he said. Susie was so quiet, you couldn’t see her breathing underneath the little oxygen mask.
Warren went to lie down on the bed in the adjoining room. Peter lay down on the floor, and both fell asleep. Susie Jr. sat down in a chair next to her mother on the bed, touching her.
A little while later, she realized that Susie wasn’t breathing. She went and found a nurse. Then she braced herself and woke her father up to tell him.25
Warren wept while his children spent the next few hours doing what had to be done. They worked with Herbert Allen to draft a press release, signed off on the papers required for the release of the body and the organ-donation procedures, took care of the arrangements for their arrival in Omaha, and made calls to Astrid, Kathleen, and others who were close to Susie and Warren so they wouldn’t get the news on the CNN crawl. By noon all of them were on the G-IV for the worst flight any of them had ever taken.
After some time in the air, Warren took a deep breath and asked, “Is there a bathroom in the front?” There wasn’t. “Walk with your back to the couch,” Susie Jr. told him. He inched his way to the back of the plane, his eyes averted from the plane’s sofa, where the zippered bag that contained Susie’s body lay.26
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