The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [488]
At around four-thirty a.m., the plane carrying Susie Jr. and Peter arrived. After their car pulled into the hospital parking lot, its mountain backdrop much like that at Sun Valley, the first person they saw inside the lobby was Herbert Allen. Susie Jr.’s first thought was “Oh, my God, this feels just like Mrs. Graham.”
Upstairs, they found their father sitting next to their mother, holding her hand. A Cherry Coke sat untouched on the table nearby. “I’ve been here for five hours,” he said. Susie was so quiet, you couldn’t see her breathing underneath the little oxygen mask.
Warren went to lie down on the bed in the adjoining room. Peter lay down on the floor, and both fell asleep. Susie Jr. sat down in a chair next to her mother on the bed, touching her.
A little while later, she realized that Susie wasn’t breathing. She went and found a nurse. Then she braced herself and woke her father up to tell him.25
Warren wept while his children spent the next few hours doing what had to be done. They worked with Herbert Allen to draft a press release, signed off on the papers required for the release of the body and the organ-donation procedures, took care of the arrangements for their arrival in Omaha, and made calls to Astrid, Kathleen, and others who were close to Susie and Warren so they wouldn’t get the news on the CNN crawl. By noon all of them were on the G-IV for the worst flight any of them had ever taken.
After some time in the air, Warren took a deep breath and asked, “Is there a bathroom in the front?” There wasn’t. “Walk with your back to the couch,” Susie Jr. told him. He inched his way to the back of the plane, his eyes averted from the plane’s sofa, where the zippered bag that contained Susie’s body lay.26
When they landed in Omaha, the family had another surreal experience as the plane taxied straight into the hangar, where a hearse was waiting, rather than stopping on the tarmac, so that they could deboard without having their grief invaded by a band of paparazzi. Warren went straight home, walked upstairs into his bedroom, shut the door, turned off the lights, and got under the covers.
Astrid knew what to do, which was nothing. She made sure he had his sleeping pills and left him alone. Now and then she went over to Susie Jr.’s and cried herself. The rest of the time she stayed at home to take care of Warren.
The next day, Friday, he was still under the covers. Ron Olson, who had some legal obligations under Susie’s will and was a close friend and strong influence within the family, particularly with the children, arrived from Los Angeles with his wife, Jane. Warren came downstairs, and the Olsons sat with him for a while. Within an hour, the phone rang. It was Don Graham. “Where are you?” asked Susie Jr. “At the Hilton downtown,” he said. He had known to come without being told. Then Susie Jr. drafted a couple of her own friends to join them at the house. Over the next several days, they all sat in the living room to help distract Warren and make sure that he was never alone. At nine-thirty each night, he went up to bed and took his sleeping pill.
A day or two later Warren tried to call a couple of people. When they answered, no words came out; his throat had closed. He gave up trying to talk and heaved with sobs for a few minutes. Then, when the storm of tears passed, he choked out, “I’m sorry,” and hung up the phone. They would never have known who it was, except that the sound of Warren sending out an SOS was so unmistakable.
Susie Jr. had already sent for the people who were needed. The following week, Bill Ruane and Carol Loomis arrived to visit for a few hours. Sharon Osberg came. Bill Gates arrived. Kathleen Cole flew in. And Howie