Finding Magic

by Sally Quinn

  Quinn rode in the ambulance to George Washington Hospital with my mother, which totally traumatized him. This had been my worst nightmare. I had been begging her to quit smoking and eating fried foods and encouraging her to exercise.

  She went to Pritikin, the rigorous health spa in California and kept the diet for a year or so until she had a bacon relapse. The only residual was that she got a cat and named it Pritikin. She joined an exercise class at the Watergate with friends, which lasted for a few short months until she got bored. I tried to suggest that if she didn’t mend her ways she would have another stroke and either die or be permanently impaired.

  Mother seemed terribly weak that whole holiday season, though she did make it through her fifty-third anniversary in mid-December. I knew then the big one was about to hit and it did, a month later, at the end of January, shortly before her seventy-fifth birthday. This time she ended up at Walter Reed Army Hospital and couldn’t speak or walk for days.

  After a few months of rehab, she seemed to be recovering. Daddy spent most of his time at Walter Reed. Ward 72, where Mother was and which no longer exists, was for military VIPs—three and four stars—a kind of palace, very opulent. Daddy actually loved being there, most of all when he wasn’t sick. Orderlies served him dinner on a tray when he was in Mother’s enormous suite with spectacular views of the city and saluted him and smartly responded to his every command with “Yes, sir, General, sir.” He was back in the army.

  The day Mother got out in early April, Daddy and I had arranged a dinner to welcome her home at their apartment with all their good friends. Mother was the belle of the ball, a glass of champagne in her hand, ready to party again.

  That happy interlude was short-lived. She had another stroke just before Easter, from which she never fully recovered. After a few months of Daddy trying to take care of her at home with the help of a nurse, my sister, Donna, and I moved them both into a Marriott-run retirement community, the Jefferson, in Arlington.

  Daddy called it the “land of the living dead.” It was pretty grim compared with their former residences. They had a beautiful two-bedroom suite, which we decorated with Mother’s best things, but it was never home. She slept in one room with her full-time round-the-clock nurse, and Daddy slept in the other bedroom on the opposite side of the apartment.

  My mother had always been my best friend, especially since she was a more constant companion than anyone I grew up with. Now I was her caretaker. My priorities changed. None of what I had cared about so much—writing books and stories in the Post, being on TV and radio—seemed as important to me as it once had. I didn’t get upset about little things anymore. It used to drive me crazy when I would worry about something Ben thought insignificant and he would say “when the history of the world is written, this will not be in it.” Now I could see what he was talking about.

  Another change was in how I viewed people. Abraham Heschel put into words one of the advantages of growing older: “When I was young I used to admire intelligent people. As I grow older I admire kind people.” I admire people who care about others, who care about their community and their world.

  Mother gradually lost her executive function and her sense of inhibition, which, though tragic, was sometimes hilarious. Her mischievous sense of humor would emerge, always at an inappropriate time. We always celebrated Christmas dinner at our house with friends. I would put Mother between Bob Woodward and me because he was so fabulous with her and always made her feel beautiful and charming. One year, when Bob was walking her to the door after dinner, she turned to him in front of everyone, and with innocent big brown eyes, asked, “Bob, did I ever fuck you?” Bob, as usual, handled it perfectly, replying, “No, Bette, unfortunately, you did not.” She beamed.

  She would visit my brother in Arizona with her nurse once a year. Bill would always take them out to dinner. One night Mother kept staring at the man sitting at the next table with his female companion. He was clearly getting uncomfortable as Mother wouldn’t even look at Bill or her food. About halfway through dinner she leaned over to the guy and asked, in a loud voice, “How big is your penis?” My brother said the man turned bright red and practically fell out of his chair, as nearby diners broke up with laughter. That was the last time Bill took her out to dinner.

  My father was seeing other women. We knew that he really loved Mother and was grieving himself, but he was lonely and deserved companionship and a sex life. The problem was that whenever one of her nurses found out about his affairs, he would fire them, making the turnover traumatic for all of us, especially Mother. There was a succession of terrible nurses Daddy found in the want ads, one of whom was a self-described Holy Roller who made Mother pray before meals or she would refuse to feed her. Another was a floozy with dyed hair who we suspected had been a hooker. One day I went over and the nurse was gone. Mother was lying in a wet Depends and Daddy was too ill to get out of his bed. I asked Mother where her nurse was. “She told me she was going down to the dining room to find herself a rich Jew,” said Mother with no sense of irony. I was constantly having to let some of these women go and find somebody else. This was exhausting and expensive. We were all grieving.

  Daddy became so sick with pneumonia that I had to call an ambulance to get him to Walter Reed. He never really recovered and was in and out of the hospital after that. At one point they rushed him to the Arlington hospital and put him on a respirator, which the doctors said he couldn’t live without. He had signed a living will. We were talking about unplugging the respirator when he suddenly began thrashing around and making noises. We looked over and he was trying to sit up and kept shaking his head to signify no. Buffalo Bill was not ready to go.

  A few months later, after being released from Walter Reed, he was in a terrible black mood. I was worried. It was the worst I’d ever seen him. One afternoon Bernie, the wonderful Filipino nurse who would stay with my mother until the end, called, hysterical, to say that my father had shot himself and had been taken to the hospital by ambulance. They had transferred him to Walter Reed. She thought he was dying and my mother was distraught.

  I met them at the hospital. Luckily, he had only grazed his jaw. He claimed he had slipped on a bar of soap while cleaning his gun and had no intention of killing himself. I think he had slipped on the soap and misfired while trying to kill himself. Or maybe he didn’t slip on a bar of soap. Maybe he wanted us to think he had tried to commit suicide to get attention and have us feel sorry for him. We’ll never know.

  Daddy died first. Several months after the shooting incident, he ended up in Ward 72 just a few months short of age ninety-three. He had pneumonia but he was recovering. I knew he was going to die. He wanted to die. Bernie would take my mother to visit him every day. He was listless and had no spark at all. The wonderful Dr. Jones, who had taken care of both of my parents over the years, came in. He talked to Ben and me and to Daddy. “General Quinn,” he said, “you’re getting better. The medicines are working. The question is, do you want to live? If you do, you can. It’s up to you.” Daddy listened but didn’t respond. I knew the answer. He was done.

  I sent Mother home with Bernie that Sunday afternoon. Ben was with me at the hospital, and he and Daddy were watching the football game. At this point my father was somewhat delirious. The (New York) Buffalo Bills were playing, but he thought the commentators were talking about him, and he was so excited and pleased that he kept sitting up in bed and looking at the TV every time they mentioned the name. By the time the game was over he wasn’t making any sense at all. Though Ben offered to stay I sent him home. I wanted to be alone with my father when he died.

  All at once, extremely agitated, Daddy sat up in bed and began barking orders, clearly thinking he was in battle. He was telling his troops what to do. He told me to call headquarters and give them a briefing about what was going on and order his division commanders to come right away. I picked up the phone and began talking to the imaginary fighters at the other end. “This is General Quinn’s
daughter,” I told them in a very authoritative tone. “General Quinn wants all of his division commanders to report to him immediately. The battle is about to take a turn. That’s an order.”

  Daddy leaned back on his pillow, satisfied, at least for the moment. He began drifting in and out. Dr. Jones and I had agreed it was time to start the morphine. I sat by the side of his bed, held his hand, stroked his head, and told him I loved him. He couldn’t bring himself to tell me he loved me, but I knew he did. Then, with pleading eyes, he begged me, “Please don’t be an atheist.”

  “I’m not, Daddy,” I said.

  He then sighed peacefully. A few minutes later he whispered, “God, Sally, I’m so scared.”

  Those were the last words of Buffalo Bill, the warrior, who had risked his life in so many battles, who had never shown fear before. This was his last fight. I held his hand until they came to take him away in a body bag.

  I didn’t cry then. It was around three A.M. on September 11, 2000. I went home, told Ben, and fell into a deep sleep. When I woke, I called Bernie. I told her Daddy had died that night.

  “I know,” she said.

  “How? How could you know?” I asked.

  “Because I heard a noise last night and woke up. Your mother was talking to someone. I asked her who she was talking to. She said, ‘I’m talking to Bill. Can’t you see him? He’s sitting right here on the edge of the bed. He’s come to say good-bye.’”

  “What time was it?” I asked.

  “Three o’clock.”

  Daddy was buried at Arlington Cemetery with full military honors. The horse-drawn caissons carrying his flag-draped casket, the beautiful plot high up on the hill, the gun salute, the Scotsman playing “Taps.” He was buried with his ribbons. Inside his pocket I had slipped the fluorescent cross that I had bought at the hospital in Tokyo when I was so sick and had sent to him in Korea. I found it in his desk after he died.

  At St. Alban’s Church on the grounds of the National Cathedral earlier that day Ben had given a eulogy. He began by saying, “When I was first brought home for inspection by Sally, the vibes at Connecticut Avenue were not all that favorable. The General was looking for anything but a navy man, certainly not a registered Democrat, and never, never, please the Lord, a newspaperman.” (Ben forgot to mention Yankee.) He went on to list my father’s citations for the Silver and Bronze Stars and his valor in battle. He ended with, “What a life! Rest in peace, old buddy.”

  Too afraid I would fall apart, I had to have Ben read my eulogy, part of which was a story that tells a lot about how I felt about my father:

  “When I was little I used to have a recurring dream. There was a terrible earthquake and the ground was splitting open, leaving deep crevasses. Everywhere I stepped huge cracks would appear and I was deathly afraid I would fall in. Suddenly this giant horse with wings and my father’s head would swoop down, and I would climb on his back just in time to avoid being swallowed up by the darkness.”

  I ended the eulogy by saying (through Ben): “I know you’re looking down at us, Daddy, and I only hope we pass muster.”

  * * *

  The weekend after Daddy’s funeral, I took my mother and Bernie down to Porto Bello, our country house in southern Maryland. A group of us had helped to build a natural labyrinth on the river in front of the house of a friend in her nineties. We put down plastic, then wood chips on top and delineated the pattern with stones. It was beautiful. I would go there most weekends to walk it.

  This weekend was no exception. It was early September, hot and still. I began to walk the labyrinth and as I did I concentrated on my father, speaking to him as I followed the path. I was trying to communicate with him, and I asked him to send me a sign that he heard me.

  I arrived at the center of the labyrinth and sat down to meditate, sending my father telepathic messages. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a huge gust of cold wind blew up, almost howling, shaking the trees in front of me, sending waves up on the shore, tousling my hair and rippling the water on the beach.

  “Hi, Daddy,” I said. “You heard me!”

  Just as quickly as the wind had come up it stopped, followed by dead calm. He was there. I had chills.

  That evening, as Ben and I were getting ready for bed, I opened the windows in the bedroom on both sides of the house so we could get a cross breeze. It was stifling hot on the second floor and the air was completely still. For some reason the air-conditioning wasn’t working properly. I decided to tell Ben, the skeptic, about my experience, hesitating a bit, as I was afraid of his reaction. I was right. He just laughed and told me I was being ridiculous.

  As soon as he said that, an enormous gust of unseasonably cold wind blew right through the room, practically forcing us against the wall. The noise was deafening. We could hear the branches of the trees outside knocking ferociously against the roof and the curtains were flapping up to the ceiling. Ben tried to close one set of dormer windows but the wind was too strong, and he was pushed back.

  “Holy shit!” he said. “What is that?”

  “Daddy,” I smiled in reply. He just looked at me and said nothing.

  * * *

  My mother lived for another four years. She developed Parkinson’s disease, which made it harder and harder for her to swallow and eat, one thing she always loved doing. She obviously missed my father terribly. At her last Christmas, when she was sitting between the ever-patient and gallant Bob Woodward and me, she didn’t say a word. The next day I asked her if she had had a good time and she said no. When I asked why, she replied wistfully, “Because I couldn’t hold my own.” For a party girl, a hostess, and a sexy woman who was full of life, what could be worse?

  That spring she had another stroke, this time a massive one. She was taken again to Walter Reed. It was a weekend and she needed more critical care than she could get in Ward 72. She couldn’t move her limbs or speak. Two cocky young residents came in to examine her and clearly decided she was not worth their time. I was infuriated when they walked into her room, looked at her, and announced in loud voices (she was fully conscious) that she would probably never be able to walk again and definitely never be able to speak. The following day they came back and, in a condescending tone, asked, “How are we feeling today, Mrs. Quinn?,” thinking she wouldn’t respond.

  “Like shit,” my mother replied, a big wicked grin on her face.

  Out of the hospital again, Mother came up to Long Island in August to visit us. It was a painful time, with her sleeping most days. At some point, she must have decided to die, because when we got back to Washington in early September, she announced that she was going to stop eating. I talked this over with Donna and Bill, as well as her doctor and Bernie. We all agreed we should let her do what she wanted. I was the only one of the three of us with her. I held her hand and told her that I loved her and we all loved her and gave her permission to go. Donna and Bill did the same thing over the phone. She didn’t want to do it gradually. She wanted to go cold turkey. Bernie offered her food every day. She refused. She took only a bit of water. I wanted to bring her home to my house, but Bernie didn’t think that was a good idea. She felt Mother was more comfortable in her own surroundings so I went there.

  About two weeks into her fast, I walked into her apartment to see her eating a pulled pork barbecue sandwich.

  “Mother!” I exclaimed. “Why are you eating?”

  “Because,” she answered simply, in her slow Southern drawl, “I was hungry.”

  She was clearly fading a week later. I had the hospice kit with the morphine. Except for the pork sandwich she hadn’t eaten anything or drunk anything but sips of water in close to a week. Bernie and I were brushing her lips with a wet sponge.

  The day before she died I decided to come over and stay to the end. I brought a bottle of Perrier-Jouët champagne, her favorite, and put it on ice. She was still alert but uncomfortable. I started the morphine, giving her little syringes by mouth every few hours, which seemed to relax her. She wasn’t ta
lking but I got into the hospital bed with her and lay there telling her how much I loved her and stroking her hair.

  I got out the champagne and two flutes, poured them for us, and held a glass to her lips. We toasted each other. I told her she was the greatest mother in the world and that I loved her to pieces. She told me she loved me. I told her Daddy was waiting for her. I told her that we admired and understood her decision to leave. I told her I would be fine, Ben and Quinn were fine, and that though we would all miss her terribly, she needed to rest.

  She drank almost half a glass. I’m surprised I didn’t finish the whole bottle. She seemed really happy and at peace.

  Donna caught the red-eye from California as soon as I told her Mother wouldn’t last long. I slept in the bed with Mother on and off all night, weeping and clinging to her with all my might. I didn’t know how long this would go on but by dawn it was clear she was going.

  Donna’s plane landed around six A.M. When she called, I told her Mother was barely alive and to get the driver to go as fast as he could. I told Mother that Donna was on her way and she had to hang on until Donna got there. She nodded and smiled. Donna made it. Mother died about fifteen minutes after she got there. Donna was able to hold her and tell her she loved her.

  After she died, we decided to bathe and change her and make her up. We were both amazed at her body. She didn’t have a line on her face, her skin was soft and supple, and her breasts were round and firm. Her legs, of course, were fabulous. She had never looked more beautiful. She looked like the Bette Quinn we knew and loved before she began to have the strokes. She looked like my mama again. I’m so lucky to have been able to see her then so I can always remember her that way.

  Her funeral was different from my father’s. For one thing, she wanted to be cremated. She also wanted her ashes to be put in a magnum of Perrier-Jouët, which she had given me, empty unfortunately, about fifteen years earlier just for that purpose.