by Jenner, Kris
I spent several pages thanking him for everything, reliving the memories we shared, thanking him for the incredible gift of the four children we had together, and thanking him for being the greatest father and friend, ending with my sorrow over his illness.
I am very sad about the recent news that you have cancer. I know you must feel scared and anxious and mad and confused, all at the same time. My heart aches for you. I just wish there was something I could do for you. I really believe that you are so strong. Your faith is strong and your body is strong and your mind is strong. I just wish you didn’t have to face this challenge. You don’t deserve it. I just want you to know that I am always here for you no matter what. It must feel really good to know that you have been blessed with wonderful children who love you unconditionally and would do anything for you. They are a gift from God and I know they will comfort you.
You have been a huge and tremendous blessing in my life. You are one of the greatest loves of my life. And finally, you are and always will be one of my most treasured friends. I love you and am thankful God put you in my life. Not knowing the path it would take me along or where it would end up . . . I am eternally grateful and will cherish each and every memory for as long as I live.
With all my love, Kris
After I wrote the letter I drove over to my daughter Kim’s house and said, “I have to go back to San Diego, but please give this to Daddy.” By this time Robert had told the kids about his cancer. They were devastated and needed me, too, and I was feeling badly because I couldn’t be there for them. I had to go back to San Diego.
The next day, Robert called me at Mom’s store, sobbing.
“That was the most beautiful letter I’ve ever read,” he said. “It was an amazing letter, and I’ll never forget your writing it to me.”
After I closed the store in La Jolla each day, I went to the hospital, saw my dad, and then my mom and I would have dinner. Mom and I would go back to her house after dinner and watch American Idol. We especially loved to watch the auditions. It was watching those silly auditions and laughing at all those bad voices that helped get us through that joyless time. That laughter helped get us through all of it as Dad continued his rapid decline in the hospital.
We knew he didn’t have much time left.
One day toward the end, I remembered something someone told me: people need to tell their loved ones good-bye and hear that it’s okay for them to go, because once they hear that, they can pass on in peace. My mom, my sister, Karen, and I took turns at my dad’s bedside, and we filled his room with love. One day, I walked in and leaned down close to his face.
“Dad, I love you so much,” I said, and I spent the next half hour thanking him for everything he had done for me and telling him how much he meant to me. I told him how everything that he had done in my life added up to make me the person that I had become. I thanked him for embracing my sister and me as if we were his own daughters. I thanked him for driving hours to be with me at every holiday, for attending the births of each of my children, and for watching them grow up. I thanked him for getting on the floor and playing Barbies with the girls and for endless games of catch with Rob, for helping me move from house to house, and for attending every single grandparents’ day at each of my kids’ schools.
I promised him I would take care of my mom and that we were all going to take care of one another. I knew that was important to him. I told him everything that was on my mind and in my heart and, most of all, I told him how much I loved him. I don’t know if he heard me or not, but I believe he did. I left the room and changed places with my mom, and he passed away as she stepped out of the room for a second.
Dad died sixteen weeks after he first went into the hospital. He was seventy-eight.
I watched my mom die a little inside at the same time. She had been married to this good, kind, and decent man for thirty-five years. Her whole world was wrapped around him. To this day, I think about him for one reason or another at least six times a day. He gave me a little birdhouse when we lived in Sherwood because he thought it would make me feel at home, like I was back in Hidden Hills. I’ve hung it in the tree outside my window in my backyard, and I look at it every day and think of him.
Both Bruce and Robert Kardashian came to the funeral, along with all my kids, of course, and many of my friends. We had the gathering after the funeral at the La Valencia Hotel because Dad loved La Valencia. He and my mom had spent a lot of happy times there for birthday dinners and celebrations. La Valencia has a beautiful room overlooking the sea. At the gathering, Robert came up to me. “I love you, but I have to go,” he said. He told me our son, Rob, was going to drive back up with him so he didn’t have to be alone. “This has been a lot for me,” he told me. “I’m feeling really tired and really weak.”
Oh, God, I thought. Not good. Robert was only fifty-nine. He shouldn’t be feeling weak. He wasn’t really getting aggressive treatment for his cancer, and I could see the disease taking its toll on him.
A couple of days after we buried Dad, I went home to my family. Robert was going downhill fast. Soon, he was bedridden. Kimberly and Kourtney spent practically every waking moment being there for him, taking care of him and feeding him. It was a huge life lesson for them for sure. It’s terrible to watch the person who brought you into this world waste away. I felt so bad for my kids, and I knew exactly what they were going through at that exact moment because I had just suffered through the death of my dad. It still broke my heart.
The girls were there for him, just as I had been for my dad. Kourtney read to Robert, and Kim would make him Cream of Wheat, oatmeal, or a cup of tea. They called me regularly to give updates and reports. Khloé, however, emotionally shut down. She just couldn’t handle the sadness. She had already lost her beloved grandfather, and now she was losing her father. She couldn’t eat, sleep, or talk about it. She began losing weight, then gaining weight. She started going out and partying, which just wasn’t her. Khloé just couldn’t handle seeing someone she loved so much sick and dying.
At one point Robert’s sister, Barbara, called me. “Why don’t you come over? I’m going to be over there. Why don’t you come see Robert?” So I went over to see Robert, and he and I sat outside talking for a while. He was really frail, but he was still coherent.
Soon after that, we all knew: it was time to say good-bye. Priscilla Presley had been a big part of Robert’s life, and I called her and told her he didn’t have much time left and asked her to call him. We facilitated a call between the two of them, and Priscilla was able to say good-bye.
Four weeks before Robert died, a woman he had only been dating a short time married him. She made it very difficult for us to get in to see him, and she made my children feel like they could not have easy access to their dad. I know that O.J. called the house to talk to Robert, and she wouldn’t let him talk to him. No matter what you think about O.J., if Robert wanted to speak to him, he should have had the right to do so. When Robert’s two best friends, Larry Kraines and Randy Kolker, tried to visit him, she denied them access.
Finally, Larry just said, “I’m coming over.” A second time, the woman denied Larry access to Robert. As he was driving away with his wife, Joyce, Larry turned around and decided nobody was going to keep him away from his friend. He finally got in to see Robert and say good-bye. It was weird and certainly uncomfortable, but at least they got to see him. I will always admire and respect Larry for his perseverance. It showed me he had great love for his friend.
The only moment of levity in the days before Robert died came when I told Kimberly, “We will probably never have the chance to go in his house again. Is there anything we can do to maybe get the things that I loaned to Daddy or any of the things that you want?”
There were things that held memories for both of us at Robert’s house. But knowing that we had such limited access, Kim and I were afraid that we would lose those memories forever. Robert and I had lent each other things ever since I could remember,
and when I moved from the big Hidden Hills house to the town house in Sherwood, Robert stored a lot of my stuff for me. After all, these were my belongings, and I just wanted them back.
“Pull up your car, and when she’s not looking, I will run things out to your car!” Kim told me.
I pulled my Range Rover up to the front yard and driveway of Robert’s house in Encino and left it running. We were like Bonnie and Clyde: Kim would come running out to my car with something, and I would wrap it up in a blanket and stash it in the back. Then she’d run back in and come out with something new, over and over again. We recovered the statues that Robert and I had bought from Angelo Donghia back in the 1970s, and we also retrieved my gorgeous Lalique vase that Robert and I bought when we were on a vacation in Paris the year we went to the Louvre. Sadly, we never found the many pieces of art I had lent Robert when I moved from Hidden Hills or the big, beautiful Dutch antique cabinet that Robert had given me for our tenth wedding anniversary. I’m sure that ended up in his Palm Springs house.
These things didn’t hold a great deal of monetary value, but they were part of my memories with Robert. They also meant something to my kids. Later, Khloé was able to finally get Robert’s childhood monkey, “Jocko.” All Khloé wanted was that monkey. My kids just wanted the sentimental things that had belonged to their father, and let’s just say they became increasingly hard to come by.
The day Robert passed away, September 30, I went into his room. It looked exactly the same as it always had. On this visit, my heart sank. He wasn’t in his big, beautiful bed; he was just lying on this little gurney the nurse had set up for him. He couldn’t have weighed more than eighty pounds, and it was horrible to see him suffering. He wasn’t conscious, but I felt like he knew I was there. As I had done when I said my good-byes to my dad, I just talked to Robert, feeling that he heard me through the haze. I told him that our kids would be okay, that we were all going to be okay, and that he needed to know that before he left this earth. I told him how much I loved him and how much his kids adored him and I thanked him for being such a huge part of my life. I was able to tell him how much he meant to me. A moment or two passed after I finished speaking, I felt like he just wasn’t there anymore. I could see his chest moving up and down and I could see that he was breathing, but I felt that he was already gone.
We had all had more than our shares of horror and grief for one month. On the day Robert died, just eight weeks after his diagnosis, part of me died with him. All of the kids were devastated. Poor Khloé, though, had the worst time of all. She couldn’t bring herself to see her father before he died, and now she couldn’t go back and change that. She was so grief-stricken that she lost all her hair. It fell out in big clumps until she had no hair at all. She started wearing hats. She just couldn’t get over the fact that her dad was gone, and her body was reacting to her tremendous stress and grief. She didn’t know how to process it herself, so her body processed it for her. It took a lot of TLC to bring Khloé back to life.
On the day of Robert’s funeral, Bruce and I drove up to Inglewood Park Cemetery, where Robert’s entire family is buried, to find a capacity crowd. Hundreds of mourners packed the church. It was literally standing room only. People were pouring out the front door and onto the streets. I just looked up at the heavens and smiled, because I knew Robert would have appreciated a packed house. Robert’s friends just loved him so much.
The whole Kardashian family was there, of course, and my kids were sitting with Robert’s family in the front row. Bruce and I sat down next to our dear friends Shelli and Irving Azoff. Shelli is my best friend, and Irving had an amazing loyalty to Robert and he was one of Robert’s best friends.
When I sat down next to Irving and Shelli, Irving turned to me. “What are you doing sitting here?” he asked. “You need to be sitting in the front with your children.”
“Oh, no, no,” I said. “That’s not my place.”
“No, actually, it is,” Irving replied.
He rose from his seat and took a chair from the end of an aisle, and he put it beside the front row next to my kids. He directed me to sit in it. It was a powerful moment. I was, by then, Kris Jenner, but in some ways I would also always be a Kardashian, thankful for everything that Robert Kardashian had done for me through his incredible generosity and his love. He will forever be the father of the four wonderful children we had together; he will forever be in my heart. Irving somehow knew I would always love Robert. I will never forget that gesture on that day and it will always mean the world to me.
After the funeral, there was a gathering at the Bel-Air Country Club. Robert’s family, along with A. C. Cowlings and every other familiar face from my past with Robert, was there—everyone but O.J.
Standing in the middle of that room with all of the friends and family that Robert and I had shared together, I realized that this was the same room where Robert and I had had our wedding reception. Almost all of the same people who were here now for Robert’s funeral had been at the reception so many years before. Life is so short, I thought as I stood there, realizing that we really do have to make the best of every single second that we are given. I knew then that I had to be even stronger now for my kids.
Because now it was just me.
It’s a profound moment when your children lose a parent and you are the only parent left. It was up to me then to help them make something of their lives. I had realized my lifelong dream of having six kids, and now I was done with the birthing and ready for the work. It was time to stop screwing around. It was time to get off my ass and get to work.
Shortly after my dad and Robert died, I realized that I really missed going to work at my mother’s children’s clothing store. The routine of the store centered me, and the hard work was an outlet for what I was going through. I had spent those months making sales, changing out display windows, selling T-shirts, and reordering stock, and I had a ball doing it. It freed my mother to take care of Dad and it took my mind off what they were going through.
Coming home after Dad’s funeral and then coming home again after Robert’s funeral was a tough transition for me and my family. We couldn’t “go back to normal” just like that. I was worried about my mom and my kids. Back in my house, with no job to go to, I felt useless. I couldn’t figure out what to do with myself. But I knew I had to do something. I couldn’t let grief get the best of me. I had to get moving, and I needed a new direction—fast. I realized that I was the only one who was responsible for ME. I couldn’t change everything, but I could change ME. Life was going to pass me by if I didn’t snap out of this funk.
Finally, I decided that I needed to open a store of my own. I had always wanted to do that, and I missed working in my mom’s store. So, what better time was there? I have always tried to see the glass as half full. I had to find a way to bring my family together again for something joyful instead of something heartbreaking. Something fun, instead of funerals. Nothing could erase what we had been through, but creating a new direction for our family with something like a store could help us get back to the good in our lives.
“Just go out there, Kris, and do it,” Mom told me when I mentioned my store idea to her.
I got out of bed the next morning and started scouting store locations. I didn’t have a business plan. I didn’t even know how I was going to pay the rent. I did have a vision of what the store would be. I’ve always loved fashion, and I obviously love kids, so the perfect match for me was to open a children’s clothing store.
I was going to take out of storage Kendall and Kylie’s gorgeous baby furniture that I had used when I decorated our house in Hidden Hills. Now they had big-girl rooms and didn’t use it anymore. I was going to decorate the store with their baby furniture, just like a store I had always admired in Beverly Hills called Auntie Barbara’s Kids, and make it look adorable and cute and sassy. I found the perfect location for the store, in Plaza Calabasas, the very first day.
I had grown up in a family business, so
I instinctively turned to my family for help. First call: my eldest daughter, Kourtney. “I’m going to open a children’s store,” I told her. “Do you want to be my partner?”
Kourtney had just graduated from the University of Arizona, where she had studied fashion. She is great at design and has an eye for fashion, and I knew that she could open a store of her own someday. That was her dream. After all, she had gone to college for this very reason. She had always wanted to be a clothing designer, and she was already designing a line of her own T-shirts and selling them to different stores around town. I knew that she had fashion in her blood, but I don’t think she had ever thought about designing or opening a store for children.
I convinced her that we were going to have the time of our lives. I knew I could sell ice to an Eskimo, so I knew I could talk Kourtney into joining me. She could be my partner, and it might help take both of our minds off my dad and Robert.
Everyone needs direction and motivation, and I felt that if I could motivate my kids, one by one, to find their dreams, I would be doing my job as their suddenly sole parent. The kids were coming to that point in their lives where it was time to say, “You’re an adult. You’re at the starting line. It’s time to pull the trigger and go out there and do something with your skills.”
I figured the store could be a starting point.
Kourtney said, “YES!”
As I had with my mother’s store, Shannon & Co., I would use the new store as an outlet for my emotions. When I was feeling really sad, I started to imagine just how my beautiful children’s store could look. I thought about all that fabulous furniture I had in storage and how perfect it would be in the store. I thought about how Bruce could help paint and build cabinets and do all of the things we loved doing together. Most businesses are all about the money, but this one was all about passion and dreams, recovery and renewal, and, most of all, bringing our family together in something good. I knew if we did all of that, the money would eventually come.
