Five minutes later, she asked me again, “Will you turn me?”
A few minutes later she asked me to turn her again and then asked me what my name was. Then she told me to leave her alone.
It broke my heart.
I knew she wasn’t in her right mind, but it still tore me apart to have this woman who had meant everything to me acting like I was a total stranger. I sat by her bed for hours and I’m not sure she even knew I was there.
I asked the doctor for his opinion on her condition. He looked at me gravely and said, “You should say your goodbyes and go. You could be here for a month and she’s just going to keep deteriorating. I don’t know if you want to put yourself through that.”
I didn’t know if I wanted to either. I knew my mom needed me, but I’d been there for her constantly for fifteen years and didn’t think I could handle her asking me what my name was or telling me to leave her alone anymore.
We had a string of Fozzy shows scheduled in Florida and I thought it might be best to just do them and come back to Winnipeg after. It was almost Christmas and I prayed she would make it long enough for us to spend one more holiday together.
I asked my dad for his advice and he thought it was a good idea to get away, clear my head, and come back. I’d been talking to Benoit daily about the situation also and he had the same suggestion. So I made up my mind to do the gigs, and when I went to see her before I left, her condition had worsened. She asked me if I was the repairman and then told me to leave again. My mom was definitely gone and so was I.
Before I left, I touched her hand and asked her to make her peace with God. I told her she was going to a place where she was finally going to be free to walk again. I prayed with her, asking God to forgive her for her sins and to accept her soul into his kingdom.
When I was done, she smiled and whispered, “Go.” Then she closed her eyes.
My mom had always been a proud woman, a beautiful woman, and I’m sure she didn’t want me to see her in this state any longer. She didn’t want me to see her die. She had always been fiercely protective of me and this was the last way she could shelter me from the rain and keep me safe.
I knew that she loved me, but the lady lying there now wasn’t really her. I walked to the door and saw her sleeping peacefully. I took a mental snapshot because deep down inside I knew I would never see her again.
“I love you, Mommy,” I said with tears streaming down my face as I turned and ran through the hall, and out the front door of the hospital as fast as I could until I couldn’t run anymore. It was minus-30 outside but the weather didn’t feel as cold as my heart. I felt like a coward for running away and I was ashamed for leaving my mom before she died.
But I also felt a strange peace, because in some weird way, I was fulfilling my mom’s last wish.
Two nights later, on December 4, 2005, I was driving home from a Fozzy gig in Jacksonville and got the call that Loretta Vivian Irvine had passed away peacefully in Connie’s arms.
She was sixty-two years old.
Next up was the lovely task of making the arrangements for my mom’s funeral. I’m sure I speak on behalf of everybody who’s ever had to deal with this when I say it’s a horrible experience. Jess and I met with the funeral director and faced a rash of irrelevant questions about my mom’s burial that I had never even thought of before. What kind of headstone? What kind of inscription? What kind of flowers? What kind of plot? What kind of receptacle?
Receptacle? It could’ve been a coffee can from Ralph’s at that point. I wasn’t ready for all of this, I was still reeling over the death of my mother! Then, after an hour of having my nose rubbed in her passing, the son of a bitch funeral director asked me how I was going to pay for everything! Geez man, can you at least give me a few fucking days to grieve before you present me with a bill?
Two days before the funeral I tracked down the phone number for my mom’s ex-boyfriend Danny, the man responsible for her injury. I had been harboring a deep desire to murder him for fifteen years, and I might’ve actually done it on the day of her accident if it wasn’t for the attentive cop who saw the killer in my eyes and warned me not to. But now that she was gone I wanted Danny to know and invite him to the funeral.
I called him and left a message: “My mom died last week and her last few years were a nightmare. I hope you feel good about yourself. If you have any balls at all and want to face me, you’ll come to her funeral.”
He never showed.
The service was a beautiful send-off for a beautiful woman.
I arranged for her favorite songs to be played, including “Amazing Grace” by Elvis and “Let it Be” by the Beatles, which I chose because my mom had always supported my obsession with the band and had bought me all of their albums by the time I was ten. I still think of her whenever Sir Paul sings in “Get Back,” “Sweet Loretta Modern* thought she was a woman …” For her eulogy I just wanted to tell some funny stories about the woman who raised me.
I talked about the time when I was seven and Star Wars had just been released. My friend Scott Shippam took a bunch of kids to see it for his birthday party but didn’t invite me. When my mom found out and saw how upset I was, she took me to the same theater to see it and bought me a Luke Skywalker and a Chewbacca action figure to boot.
I told a story about how my mom went away for the weekend when I was in high school and I decided to have a party. It started with a few friends, but in true high school tradition it got out of control quickly. There ended up being 212 people in my house (I know this because I kept a list); all I needed was Wyatt and Gary and it would’ve been Weird Science.
The bash started at noon and ended at midnight when I called the cops on my own party, after I saw a guy I’d never met before eating ice cream in my mom’s bed.
“Wanna bite, dude?” he said with a toothy grin.
I shoved the scoop up his chute and chased everyone else out instantly, but the house was a disaster and Kelly LeBrock wasn’t there to clean it up. I passed out with my house a DMZ and my mom due home at 6 p.m. sharp the next day, and when I awoke at 2 p.m., my work was cut out for me. Luckily, a few of my girlfriends (as in chums of the female persuasion—let the record show I had never even seen a booby at that point) spent the night and offered to help me with the cleanup operation.
The girls and I rubbed and polished for hours (stop it—remember, they were just friends, for gosh sake!), picked up the cigarette butts, the beer bottles, and the assorted trash. We sprayed three cans of Lysol in every nook and cranny to try to mask the smell of smoke and beer. We loaded twelve bags of garbage in the back of one chick’s Tercel and off they went. All of our hard work had paid off. The house was immaculate—maybe even cleaner than when my mom had left.
I sat down on the living room sofa with a relieved sigh at 5:55, and at 6 p.m. sharp in walked my mom. She took one look around the living room and said, “Why is that vase moved? Did you have a party?”
My mother was a witch.
“No way, Mom. I just had some people over.”
“How many?”
“Maybe ten or twelve?”
“Ten or twelve? That’s a party!”
She eventually calmed down, but ten years later when I showed her the list and told her there were actually 212 people there, she blew a gasket and grounded me.
I was twenty-seven years old.
I finished up with a story about the time I was sixteen years old and bought beer with my homemade fake ID. I was walking out of the vendor carrying a two-four just as someone was walking in. Out in the parking lot, I triumphantly raised the case of beer above my head like a trophy, grinning at my friends in the awaiting car. But instead of smiling back, they were frantically motioning for me to get back in the vehicle.
“What’s the problem,” I solicited to Speewee as I slid into the side seat of his Sirocco.
“Your mom just went into the vendor and your dad is in the car right next to us !”
Stealing a glance to the right, I s
aw my dad calmly reading the paper, completely oblivious to the fact that his sixteen-year-old son (who had just bought a case of beer) was looking right at him.
I felt like Ferris Bueller in the traffic jam and crouched down into the backseat whispering frantically, “Drive … drive !!”
Speewee pulled away and ten minutes later we were back at his house drinking a nice cold brown and laughing how we’d pulled off the perfect crime. Suddenly the phone rang.
It was my mom.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. I knew from the sound of her voice that I was busted.
“Just watching movies at Speewee’s house.”
“You’ve been there all night?”
Nervously I said, “Yeah.”
She clearly wasn’t buying it and dropped the bomb. “Then why did I just see you at the vendor?”
“Vendor? Why would I be at the vendor? I’m only sixteen years old, Mom!” I laughed nervously as Speewee reveled in my misery by chugging a beerski right in front of my face.
She knew I was lying. “We were just at the beer store and I’m convinced I saw you. Come home right now.”
Get back, Loretta.
As I rushed out of the door I heard Speewee say, “Don’t tell her about the beer!”
No shit, Speewee—and what kind of a name was that anyway? Swedish?
As I ran home to face the Dragon Lady, I desperately stuffed a couple pieces of Bubblicious in my mouth to mask the smell of the beer. I got back to my house and walked downstairs, dreading the soon-to-be-coming interrogation.
“So you weren’t at the vendor?” my mom said incredulously.
“No.”
“Your breath smells like gum. Why is that?”
“Because I was chewing gum.”
“You sure you weren’t at the vendor?”
My mom was slowly breaking me down with her examination. She was better than the FBI. She was the MBI.
“No! I wasn’t at the stupid vendor! Enough already, okay, Mom? Give it up.”
“Okay, I believe you. I’ll give it up,” she said.
What? She believed me? Just like that? I backed up slowly, certain that the hammer was still gonna fall, but it didn’t.
She looked at me nonchalantly and motioned for me to leave. “Go back to Speewee’s and watch the rest of the movie with your friends. I’m sure they’re still there.”
Well, well, well. I guess she wasn’t a witch after all. The MBI wasn’t as clever as she thought.
“All right, Mom.” I nodded with great aplomb and began to leave. “I’ll see you later,” I said with a swagger, pleased that I’d pulled one over on her.
“Yup, see you later. Oh, and by the way, don’t forget your fake ID.”
My heart dropped into my ballbag as she waved my bogus birth certificate around in her hand.
“You left this on the counter at the vendor. When I told the guy you were my son, he gave it to me to give to you,” she said indifferently. “You shouldn’t be so forgetful, Chris. Oh, and by the way, you’re grounded.”
I eventually tunneled my way out of my room six months later.
When I left Winnipeg in 1990 my mom meant everything to me, and that’s why I felt a lot of bitterness about her accident and still do. I was forced into a world of total responsibility at nineteen years old, and I wasn’t ready for it.
I was just a teenager and still needed my mommy, dammit!
Having to be so strong for her sake hardened me as a person and shaped how I am to this day. I feel like some of my innocence was taken from me, as I couldn’t lean on my mother the same way after her injury. I felt that it wasn’t fair to burden her with my minor problems when she was fighting for her life almost every day.
I also feel like I was robbed of sharing the joy and excitement that comes with growing up and becoming a man. She was never able to see my first apartment or help me decorate my first house. She wasn’t able to cook me spaghetti or carrot muffins or pizza or any of my other favorites (she was an awesome cook) that were her specialty. She was never able to come watch me wrestle in the U.S., or see my band play. But worst of all, she was never able to hold her grandchildren in her arms. That makes me the saddest of all. Ash hardly remembers his granny, and she passed away long before my daughters were born, and that tortures me still.
But she was the bravest, most courageous lady that I have ever met, and for good or for bad I’m just like her. I never would have made it as far as I have in my career or in my life if it hadn’t been for my mom. She was the best mother a little guy could ask for, always encouraging me in everything I tried and pushing me to follow my dreams, making me feel good about myself.
She was also a fighter, and I’m exactly the same; her Iron Will lives on in me forever.
Thank you, Mommy, for helping me become the person that I am.
I love you and I miss you every day.
A week after the funeral, I got an email from Danny.
He’d gotten my message about her service and apologized for not having the courage to attend. Then he went on and explained everything that happened on the night of my mom’s accident. I’d never heard the real story before, because I’d never had the guts to ask. I was always a little afraid to learn the details of my mom’s injury, and instead of inquiring, I chose to let my rage toward Danny fester and poison me for over a decade.
But after reading his letter, he suddenly became human again.
I turned his email around in my mind for a few days, then wrote him back demanding he answer a list of questions about their relationship, before and after that fateful night. He wrote detailed answers to every single one of them and made it very clear that my mom’s accident tortured him every day and essentially ruined his life.
That’s when I realized he wasn’t a demon from hell who had meticulously planned out the crippling of my poor mother. He was just a guy who got into an unfortunate argument with his girlfriend and ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time.
When I wrote him back, I still couldn’t bring myself to tell him he was forgiven, but said, “After all these years, I think you owe it to yourself to live your life and not let what happened to my mom torture you anymore.” It was time for both of us to let go of the anguish and resentment about what happened and move on with our lives.
When I pressed send and the email disappeared off my computer screen a ten-ton weight disappeared along with it. I was released from the chains that had bound me for so long, and was finally free. I hoped that Danny could feel the same way, but I’ve always feared he might not feel completely liberated because I never completely absolved him for what happened.
If that’s true, I’m gonna do that now.
Danny, I totally and unconditionally forgive you for everything that happened with my mother and I sincerely want you to live the rest of your life in peace. God bless you.
CHAPTER 39
CSI: Sheboygan
One of the reasons I decided to walk away from the WWE was that there were other things I wanted to accomplish in my life. I wanted to spend more time with my family, tour the world with Fozzy, and truly study the art of acting.
I was curious as to what I could do in Hollywood, and while I had no great expectations of becoming the next Rock, I still wanted to learn the intricate details of the craft—how an actor studied, how he performed, how he worked, and how he became great.
I found it interesting that whenever I had meetings with directors or producers in Hollywood, they seemed to view wrestling as the redheaded stepchild of the entertainment world. (PC Author’s Note: I personally love all redheaded stepchildren.) It was almost as if they thought wrestlers were bumbling Neanderthals who couldn’t string two sentences together.
They usually asked me if I had ever done any acting before, and I would think, “Shit, hambone, I’ve been playing the part of Chris Jericho for years!”
Working in the WWE was akin to show business boot camp. During the six years I was there, I�
��d learned a little about every aspect of the entertainment world. I’d done action, comedy, drama, worked backstage and in front of a live audience, hit my marks, took my cues, did my own stunts, danced, sang, juggled, and threw my voice. Hell, I could even be a key grip or best boy if I had to.
I did some research and eventually hooked up with an acting teacher in Los Angeles named Kirk Baltz. Kirk was an accomplished actor who had worked with Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves, Oliver Stone in Natural Born Killers, and Quentin Tarantino in Reservoir Dogs, a movie where he played his most famous role as Marvin Nash, the cop who gets his ear hacked off by Michael Madsen. There’s even a Marvin Nash action figure—complete with removable ear.
Kirk was the real deal, a true Method actor who was very serious about the art of the theater, and he was exactly what I was looking for in a coach.
But when I went to his studio for our first class, I had no idea what I was getting into. I thought we were just going to go over a bunch of lines and do a few scenes together. I was pretty good at playing a character and fully expected to take Kirk by storm with my master thespian abilities.
But instead he sat me on a bench in a darkened room and told me to rotate my shoulders while holding them out beside me in the classic Jericho pose. Then he told me to close my eyes and hum underneath my breath—ummmmmmmmm — then insisted I bellow out a deep-throated guttural grunt—Hah!
I couldn’t figure what this witchy hybrid of yoga and therapy had to do with acting. When I posed the question to Kirk, he explained that it was all part of the “dropping in” process, the crux of Method acting. Dropping in helped you to achieve complete clarity, which in turn helped you delve deep inside yourself to pull out emotions from the experiences of your life.
If your character was supposed to cry, you would drop in and bring back memories of when your dog Joe ran away as a child: the emptiness you felt, the tears that streamed down your face, how you felt your world caving in. Then with those feelings still brewing, you would transpose them into your performance onstage or onscreen. It was a technique that the best actors of all time from De Niro to Pacino to Streep studied and utilized, and even though I felt like I was in a cult at first, the more I practiced the better I got.
Undisputed: How to Become World Champion in 1,372 Easy Steps Page 32
