My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business_ A Memoir - Dick Van Dyke [98]
Sadly, though, Michelle did not respond to treatment. Several months before the end, her doctor gave me the news that we had tried our damnedest to avoid, and then deny: My beloved companion of nearly thirty-five years was not going to make it. As full of hope and fight as she was, Michelle was also scared. Every so often she broke down and asked me if she was going to die. I said that nobody knew but the doctors were doing their best—and they would not tell me if they did know. It was the hardest acting I have ever done.
As she neared the end, though, Michelle knew. It was October 2009, and she spent that time at home talking to her friends. She spent the last week of the month in a coma. Her doctor told me that she could still hear, so I sang and talked to her until the hospice nurses who were helping in the final days told me that she was gone.
I believe the last words she heard were “I love you.”
I was completely unprepared for life without Michelle. I had read statistics showing that husbands rarely outlive their wives and I was prepared to leave her with a long to-do list, not the other way around. I mean Michelle was a world-class procrastinator. She postponed everything, including marrying me. You would think that the woman whose palimony suit made headlines for years would have insisted on cementing her future.
But no, not Michelle.
When she died, she left me a long list of unfinished projects. Like a bookshelf she wanted installed in the bedroom (it was three-quarters finished), a gazebo she planned to put on the hill in our backyard, and the wedding we had talked about for more than thirty years.
I’d wanted to get married at home, but when that seemed impossible to plan, I’d suggested a simple civil ceremony. I could still hear myself saying, “We don’t have to tell anyone,” and Michelle nodding, “Yes, that’s a good idea, let’s do it,” and yet I could never get her to put a date on the calendar. The only thing she did not put off was her garden. She worked in the flower beds every day, and they were gorgeous all year round.
After she passed, I told the gardeners to keep them up the way she had, and they have been in constant bloom. Right now, on this warm day in mid-July, I am looking outside from the dining-room table and I see Michelle’s garden full of vibrant color, full of life—just the way I remember her.
In the months that followed, I realized that I have not ever been without a companion looking out for me. There was my mother, then the Air Force, then Margie, and then Michelle. I found myself fumbling through the responsibilities of daily life, the little stuff they tell you not to worry about, which, I can tell you, is much easier to do when the closet is stocked with paper goods. On the bright side, only one of my credit cards was canceled before I got a system down for paying the bills.
Gradually, I found my footing. I turned into a hot commodity among the widows on the town’s party circuit who needed a designated driver. In lieu of pot roast, I received invitations to all the charity events. But old age, as my friends will attest, is not a role I am ready to assume. I recently had dinner with Don Rickles and his wife and Mike Connors and his wife, all great friends who have evolved into a kind of super senior citizenship with good humor and all their marbles. If only the same could be said of their knees. When Don and Mike walked into the restaurant using canes, I cracked, “I have to hang out with a younger crowd!”
I was only half joking. Fortunately, though, the younger crowds still want to hang out with me. ABC’s hit show Dancing with the Stars came calling, but I turned them down. As I told them, I can learn one dance, but a new one every week, and often two new dances, would be too strenuous. I sang and hoofed my way through a couple numbers with the L.A. cast of the Mary Poppins stage show. And I began work on a one-man show that is actually four men since it includes the three guys with whom I still harmonize