I had a summer job in Calgary working for my father in the oil business, and from there happily flew over to Vancouver to join Trish and Pat for a weekend. Her father’s vast house occupied an entire city block, but did not dampen our spirits. On the contrary, the tempo of our congeniality heightened, and on the third day I asked if she would marry me. She rushed upstairs to tell her mother, and I waited at the bottom of the huge staircase hoping to get the temper of her proud mother’s reaction (her father was out of town), and soon I heard peals of laughter. I waited apprehensively for Pat to advise me what that was all about. The laughter, she revealed, was generated by her mother’s taking the occasion to recall that eight times in the past, Pat had reported her betrothal.
One year later, in the company of about a thousand guests, we exchanged vows. Two months after that, we rented a modest house in the neighborhood of New Haven. Pat resolved to learn how to cook. Her taste was advanced and her ambitions exigent, so she commuted to New York City and learned cooking from experts, becoming one herself. Meanwhile, I taught a class in Spanish to undergraduates and wrote God and Man at Yale.
Primarily to avoid exposure to further duty as an infantry officer, I joined the CIA and we went to live in Mexico City, buying and decorating a lovely house at San Angel Inn. Pat was radiant and hyperactive in maintaining the house and its little garden. She resolutely failed to learn the language, even though, until the end, the staff was Spanish-speaking, but intercommunication was electrically effective.
Her solicitude was such that she opposed any venture by me which she thought might adversely affect me. She opposed the founding of National Review, my signing up with a lecture agency, my non-fiction books and then my fiction books, my contract to write a weekly column, the projected winter in Switzerland, my decision to run for mayor of New York. Yet once these enterprises were undertaken, she participated enthusiastically. It was she who located the exquisite house, every inch of which she decorated, that we shared for 55 years. We had only one child, Christopher, of whom she was understandably proud. And it was she—all but uniquely she—who brought here the legion of guests, of all ages, professions, and interests, whose company made up her lively life.
Her infirmities dated back to a skiing accident in 1965. She went through four hip replacements over the years. She went into the hospital a fortnight ago, but there was no thought of any terminal problem. Yet following an infection, on the seventh day, she died, in the arms of her son.
Friends from everywhere were quick to record their grief. One of them * was especially expressive. “Allow a mere acquaintance of your wife to sense the magnitude of your loss. As surely as she physically towered over her surroundings, she must have mentally, spiritually, and luminously surpassed ordinary mortals. She certainly was in every sense of the term une grande dame, a distinction she wore as lightly as a T-shirt—not that one can imagine her in anything so plebeian. The only consolation one may offer is that the greatness of a loss is the measure of its antecedent gain. And perhaps also that Pat’s memory will be second only to her presence. For as long as you live, people will share with you happy reminiscences that, in their profusion, you may have forgotten or not even known.
“I am a confirmed nonbeliever, but for once I would like to be mistaken, and hope that, for you, this is not good-bye, but hasta luego.”
No alternative thought would make continuing in life, for me, tolerable.
—WFB
CHAPTER 7
You Need to Get Here as Quickly as You Can
By the end of May, I was in ragged shape. Mum’s death had come after long months of her final illness, which takes a toll on those attending the sick-bed. She died as I was two weeks into a busy book launch tour that itself had come on the heels of a busy lecture tour. I had my day job as editor of ForbesLife magazine in New York and had begun work on a new novel. Meanwhile Pup, his health increasingly fragile, required more of my attention. At such times, the only child begins to yearn for an older sister to whom he can say, I’m outta here. You deal with it.
Whatever. I was tired, terribly out of shape physically and emotionally, so I went off by myself to Zermatt, Switzerland, for a week of hiking, sensible eating, book work, and general resetting of the old circuit breakers. I took along a promising new book by Alexander Waugh, grandson of Evelyn and son of Auberon, called Fathers and Sons. In the mornings I worked on my novel in bed while looking out the window at the Matterhorn, quite the most amazing vista in the world; afternoons I hauled my adipose carcass up and down various mountainsides, then swam in the hotel pool, took a steam, had a cocktail in my room as I did e-mail, ate an early scrumptious Swiss dinner, got into bed with Mr. Waugh’s superb book about being the grandson and son of famous writers, and was asleep by nine to the sound of the river rushing past outside. Just what the doctor ordered.
Upon arriving at the little hotel the first day, jetlagged and grimy, I checked my e-mail and found this: Dear Christo, Jane died. Say a prayer. xxp *
Jane was my aunt, Pup’s slightly older sister. She’d been ill for many years with emphysema. Buckleys appear to have a genetic predisposition to this condition: Pup, Jane, and my uncle Reid all got it. Jane in her prime smoked maybe three packs a day. For nearly ten years, she had waged a valiant and uncomplaining battle against the gradual suffocation; by the time she died, she was down to something like 4 percent of lung capacity. My uncle Reid, in his nicotinic heyday, had consumed four packs of Kools—Kools! As for Pup, he had sworn off cigarettes at age twenty-seven after one lulu of an Easter Sunday hangover, but he smoked cigars, which—unlike President Clinton—he inhaled, with the dreadful consequence that he now struggled for breath. I have had asthma all my life, which every now and then lands me in the hospital, so I know something of the cold, sweaty, 3 a.m. panic of reaching for a lungful of air that isn’t there.
Pup had been in denial about his emphysema for years. Seeing him huff and puff after just a short walk or climbing the stairs, I would say, Pup, do you think you might have…? He would wave off the e-word. No, no. Just a cold. But it was increasingly obvious, and doubly cruel on top of the sleep apnea he suffered from. Mum, who herself had smoked for sixty-five years—sixty-five!—never pestered him on the subject, I suspect out of superstitition, not wanting to tempt her own fate. Finally Pup hauled himself off to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, where he got the official news; yet even then he refused to use the word emphysema, at least for a time. He’d say, There’s apparently some scar tissue down there from the cigars, and change the subject.
There was a gloomy irony to his emphysema. In 1967, when I was fifteen and at boarding school, he had sent me a letter. He’d just visited with a cousin of his in Texas who had emphysema. Pup reported its effects in lurid detail: By the time he has finished going to the bathroom, he no longer has the strength to wipe himself. As I read, horrified, I recall thinking, Gee, Pup, thanks for sharing all this. The letter went on and on; then he got to the point: It had come to his attention that I was smoking cigarettes. Damn—who told him? My sixteenth birthday was coming up, and his signature was required to get my driver’s license. Uhoh…. Said signature would not be forthcoming unless I agreed to give them up. In return, he would give me “anything you ask for.” He was always so generous that way. If you met him halfway, he’d meet you all the way. Unless, of course, it was a debate. (Old story.)
I went into a prolonged, furious, impotent, adolescent sulk. Pup’s diktaks tended to have that effect on me. Perhaps it was a consequence of our essentially epistolary relationship. But being a devious little shit, I came up with a devilishly clever way of punishing him. Okay, I said, I’ll give up smoking. But in return, I want to attend summer school here at Portsmouth so I can take Greek. Take that! I would deprive him of my company over the summer! Brilliant!
Once the initial thrill of my clever stratagem had worn off, I began to consider the essentially Pyrrhic aspect of my ploy. The idea of staying at boarding school over the summer to stud
y—what was I thinking?—ancient Greek was about as appealing as, I don’t know, being handcuffed to a radiator in Beirut by Hezbollah; but my twisted little brain was intent on revenge, and I really had him over a barrel. He’d promised!
There followed a fevered volley of transatlantic letters (he was in winter quarters near Gstaad, Switzerland, writing another book). I clung to my position like a limpet. In the end, facing the actual prospect of summer at Portsmouth declining ho potomo, hou potamou, I relented. A cautious peace was established. Nothing more was said on the subject of smoking.
Then, years later, poking through his desk drawers in his study in Stamford—don’t ask; I’ve always been a sneaky little bastard—I found a copy of a letter he had written to Father Leo, my headmaster at Portsmouth, inquiring if my inexplicable insistence on attending summer school to learn Greek was due to—as he put it—“an amorous dalliance” (translation: homosexual) with another boy. I was dumbstruck reading this. God only knows what poor old Father Leo must have thought. Had he instigated discreet inquiries among the other monks? Is young Buckley, um, doing anything… out of the normal these days? I draw from this pathetic tale two lessons: Leave revenge to the professionals, and don’t go poking about in other people’s correspondence—you might not like what you find.
I continued my idiotic, willful juvenile delinquency and smoked on and off until September 14, 1988, when, after three days at the bedside of a friend dying of lung cancer (“He has twelve tumors in his lungs the size of golf balls,” the doctor told us), I simply stopped. It was as if a toggle switch had forever clicked to the off position. Now Pup was writing to tell me that his beloved sister Jane had finally been killed by the cigarettes she’d smoked. As I stared blearily at the e-mail, the awful thought went through my mind that something like this lay in wait for Pup, too.
I loved Jane—everyone did. But I didn’t have it in me—this crowded, deathful spring—to turn around and get back on a plane and fly three thousand miles to another funeral. I just didn’t. So I e-mailed my love and condolences to Pup and his brothers and sisters—there were ten of them, originally; now six remained—and to my cousins, Jane’s six wonderful children. And then unpacked.
A day or so later, there was another e-mail from Pup—they were getting increasingly indecipherable—referring casually (I felt) to the fact that he would miss Jane’s funeral because he had to go to Washington, D.C., to accept an award. I thought, Huh? It wasn’t the Nobel Peace Prize, but some lifetime anticommunism award. (I don’t mean any disrespect.) I mused on this as I dragged myself up steep alpine slopes, avoiding sheep dip. I kept thinking, Pup… skipping your sister’s funeral? To pick up another award?
By now, Pup had more awards than have been given out in the entire history of the Olympics; more honorary degrees than Erasmus; more medallions than the entire New York City taxi fleet; more… well, you get the point. He’d received about every honor there is, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and—finally—an honorary degree from Mother Yale. But not to attend Jane’s funeral… for this? I tried to put it out of my mind. I’d come to the lush Valais and its loamy, ovine pastures to rejuvenate, not recriminate; and I chided myself that, having myself declined the bother of getting on a plane to fly back for the funeral, I was hardly in a position to tsk-tsk. Still. A voice within me kept noodging, Dude—it’s your sister’s funeral! I e-mailed him to the effect, Pup, are you sure about this? He e-mailed back that he was attending the dinner in Sharon the night before the funeral with all the Buckleys and it was fine that he wouldn’t be at the actual funeral. It was a “non-issue.” This was one of Pup’s favorite practical formulations: It’s a non-issue.
I shrugged, there being nothing much further to say, and wheezed myself up the next mountainside. On these climbs, I was an object of curiosity to the marmots, who would pop up out of holes and make high-pitched noises at me and then disappear. The sun shone, the sky was cerulean, the air like Perrier. It was glorious.
Pup’s e-mails over the following days became increasingly incoherent, eventually to the point of near complete inscrutability. I e-mailed Danny, who replied that he had returned from Washington “in kind of bad shape” but was “doing better now.” I’d be home in three days. Pup and I had dinner planned for the night I got back.
JUST AS I WAS PULLING OFF the Stamford exit on I-95, my cell phone trilled. I was jet-lagged and a bit sticky from the flight. I didn’t recognize the number, a 203 area code.
Chris?
Yes?
It’s Gavin McLeod, your dad’s doctor.
Gavin had never called. No, not a good sign.
Your dad is at the hospital here. He came here by ambulance. We’re doing tests. We’re not sure what it is, but he really needs to stay here. But he keeps insisting to leave. He says he’s having dinner with you tonight.
So it was back to Stamford Hospital. The scene, on my arrival on the fourth floor, was—looking back on it—mildly comical. Gavin had called me again, this time his normally equable voice pitched to a higher octave of urgency: He’s insisting on trying to leave, and… you need to get here as quickly as you can. I reported that I was driving through downtown Stamford as fast as the law would permit. But I did feel Gavin’s pain, for when William F. Buckley Jr. “was insisting” on something, attention must be paid.
I arrived on Four South. There, at the end of the hallway, he was: wearing a green-and-white-striped polo shirt and his blue Greek yachting cap, holding a cane and—weirdly—the Alexander Waugh book Fathers and Sons that I’d sent him for Father’s Day. He was in a wheelchair and being gently restrained from rotating himself down the hall by 1) Gavin, 2) two nurses, 3) the unit head, 4) the deputy administrator of Stamford Hospital, and 5) a large black orderly named Maurice.
Gavin, seeing me scurry toward this mobile levee, looked vastly relieved. He leaned over and said to Pup in the singsong child tone that suggests the listener isn’t working off a full mental deck, Bill—here’s Christopher. It’s Christopher. Christopher is here. Isn’t that wonderful?
CHAPTER 8
We’re Terribly Late as It Is
Pup was smiling. He was pleased to see me, and though his love for me was deep and abiding, I knew very well that his maniacal grin might be more eloquent of my utility to him as an escape vehicle than of paternal affection.
I was entirely sympathetic—who wants to stay in the hospital?—but the situation was plain: He was in seriously awful shape. Maurice—sweet, kind Maurice—kept saying, Mr. Buckley, we’re gonna take you back to your room now, okay? But the Lion of the Right was having none of that. No, no. Pup merely smiled and shook his head at Maurice, declaring firmly, No! I’m going to have dinner with my son. He’s right here. Christo is taking me home. Let’s go, Christo.
Christo looked at Gavin. Gavin looked at Christo. Good, earnest Gavin tried gamely, in his best Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood voice, to explain to his (im)patient that leaving the hospital was not a viable option. Bill, we need to monitor your kidneys. Your kidneys.
Pup grinned his mad grin at him and gently shook his head, as if Gavin were trying to pull a fast one.
Gavin tried again. There’s something going on with your KIDNEYS.
I didn’t like the sound of this. It’s one thing when doctors talk about the heart. We all know about the heart. It’s a pump, basically, and it needs to keep pumping and doing its other hearty-pumpy things. But when doctors start muttering about your kidneys—organs—it has an unsettling sound.
Pup waved away the kidney talk. No, no, I’m going home. He grinned triumphantly. Christo and I have a dinner date! Don’t we, Christo?
Christo had no thought other than to make his beloved Pup happy. At the same time, Christo sensed that wheeling beloved Pup out of the hospital, with half a dozen pairs of hands clinging to the wheelchair, heels making skidmarks in the hall… would not an elegant exit make. And what then? Was I to stop at Barnes & Noble on the way home and pick up a copy of Kidney Failure for
Dummies so I could fix the problem myself?
Pup, I said, tell you what. Let’s get you back into bed, JUST FOR A LITTLE BIT, OKAY? That way Gavin here can sort out what’s going on with your riñones * —
No, no, no! He shook his head, giving the armrest of the wheelchair an emphatic whack with his palm. His grin was now gone, replaced with a look of something like fear. We’re having dinner. A lovely dinner. I’ve arranged it all….
He was clutching my arm. It wrenched my heart. This was terra nova to me: the delusional parent who must be denied for his own good. Every fiber of one’s being reflexively inclines to accede to the wishes of a parent. It is contra naturam (to use a WFB term) to say no to someone who has raised you, clothed you, fed you from day one—well, even if, in Pup’s case, these actual duties were elaborately subcontracted; still, it feels as though you’re disobeying and in contravention of the Fourth Commandment. This is the crushing, awful daily lot of the children of Alzheimer’s patients. No, Mom, let’s not put our fingers in the blender, okay?
There wasn’t anything else to do but give Maurice, our situational Luca Brasi, the go-ahead to get Pup back into bed. It wasn’t altogether an easy operation. Pup, superbly slender figured all his life, had in recent years added some avoirdupois—as indeed had I—along with the accompanying complication of diabetes.
Losing Mum and Pup Page 6
