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It was so typical of Michelle. She collected stories the same way she collected friends. She had tons of both. And once touched by her sense of humor and enormous heart, few let go, including her ex, Skip Ward. Later, at the end of his life, he was down on his luck and we supported him. But when I took an interest in Michelle, she was a demi-celebrity on the front pages and in the gossip columns for the drama she was going through in the courts.

At the time, Michelle was suing actor Lee Marvin, with whom she had a six-year relationship between 1964 and 1970. They had met on the movie Ship of Fools and begun living together shortly after. She gave up her singing and acting career to be with him, and in turn he promised to support her for the rest of her life. It was as if they were married.

But then he dumped her, leaving Michelle with nothing, and she sued for the same rights a wife would have under California law. Hers was a groundbreaking case that received attention nationwide from all sorts of special-interest groups and individuals. Her attorney, Marvin Mitchelson, who coined the term palimony, vowed to take her case to the Supreme Court if necessary, which seemed likely that summer after it was rejected first by California’s Superior Court and then by the Second District Court of Appeals.

I provided a friendly ear. When I was in town, I would call the office and end up chatting with her. On occasion, we talked at night or arranged to meet for dinner. Then, when I needed support, I found myself turning to her.

It was that summer, around the time the courts were deciding against Michelle, when Jerry called one day and said our father had turned gravely ill and I needed to get on a plane. This was a day I knew was going to come but wanted desperately to avoid.

My parents had been living with Jerry in Las Vegas for about ten years, ever since my father, at sixty, lost his job at a packing and moving company to a younger man. He was unable to find another one. For the past few months, he had been battling emphysema, the result most likely of forty-plus years of smoking cigarettes. When I arrived at the hospital in Las Vegas, I found both my father and mother sitting in the lobby, crying.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, alarmed.

My father could not answer.

“We just saw the doctor,” my mother replied between deep breaths. “He said, ‘Look, you’re an old man. You’ve got emphysema. You’re going to die.’ ”

“He’s going to die?”

She nodded.

I looked over at my father. He was shaking from nerves. Tears were streaming down the sides of his face. Bad news is one thing, but to break it to a person that bluntly and that insensitively was unconscionable.

I flew into a rage and ran around the hospital screaming for the doctor who had examined my father. I was going to beat the shit out of him. I had never been this upset in my entire life. I covered as much of that hospital as I could and never found the doctor. He was either hiding or he had left.

We decided to move my father to a hospital in Phoenix where they specialized in treating emphysema. He was cognizant of everything that was happening, and although he was dying, he was still himself, a charmer and a jokester. As he was carried on a stretcher onboard the chartered plane taking us to Phoenix, he turned to the pilot and flight attendant and in a suave British accent said, “Hello, I’m David Niven.”

On the night he died, I was with my mother in a motel near the hospital. Apparently my father’s heart began to race and he asked the nurse if she could get it down. She said, “We’re working on it, Mr. Van Dyke.” He passed away a few hours later. We took his body back to Danville for burial. We started out flying on a commercial airline, but on a layover in Dallas I thought, What the heck am I doing? I was distraught and so was my family. So I chartered a plane to take us the rest of the way.

We deplaned at the tiny airport in Danville and stood on the tarmac,