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The Mother I Never Had
I asked Jackie a lot of questions. I asked if she gets attached to her patients.She said, "Some I do, particularly if I've become their confidant and they tell me things they wouldn't tell anyone else. I've found it's harder for the family of the patient to accept what's happening. In most cases -- not all -- the dying person has accepted his fate."
I asked her how she could do this work for so long. She said, "I have taken care of 3,000 people over 37 years -- some for several days, some for weeks, and, as in your case, some for months. I consider dying to be a very important part of life. I feel good in the sense that since these people are in pain, and most of them don't have long to live, I can make their journey easier."
"When you're taking care of people who are dying," I asked her, "does it help to have a belief in God?"
"Yes," she said. "I believe that God is there and wants me to help."
Jackie is the mother I never had. My own mother, Helen, was taken away from me right after I was born. She spent the rest of her life in a mental hospital and died in 1958, at age 65. So I never knew her, not when I was growing up in foster homes and not as an adult. I was too afraid to visit her near the end. I thought she wouldn't know me. She died while I was in Europe.
As for Pop, I had a strange relationship with my father, Joseph. He was a Sunday father. Since my sisters and I lived in foster homes, he came to visit only on Sundays. He died in 1972, at age 79. Now, at the hospice, nurse Jackie gives me hope, love and encouragement. She listens to all my stories, and I listen to all of hers. It's a comfort.
The nurses in the hospice had told my family that death was imminent. (They obviously didn't say it around me.) As time went on, I became the star patient at the hospice, because I didn't go according to plan. Against the odds, my kidneys started working again and could function without dialysis. It was a mystery to my doctors. My friends decided it was a miracle.
The employees showed me off to prospective patients and their families. I became the hospice poster boy, and being the ham I am, I enjoyed it.
Hospices have never gotten much attention because people connect them with death. People are afraid of the mystery of death. Relatives and friends are initially afraid to visit. It's a totally new ball game.
Dr. Matthew Kestenbaum, the medical director, told me, "People don't understand the medical role in hospice. We're not here to pull the plug. We let nature take its course. We give folks what they need to be comfortable."
Of course, people want to talk about death, if you give them permission. I discovered it made others happy to be able to share fears and questions about dying. To quote Hamlet, "To be or not to be." That's a good question.
When people ask me if there's an afterlife, I answer, "If I knew, I would tell you." A friend of mine, Larry Gelbart, said he thinks the end will come when all the phone companies merge and there's only one company left.
One day, my friend Morgan asked me, "When you get to heaven and you're poor, can you work your way up to being rich?"
I said, "Yes. That's known as the Heavenly Dream."
Morgan said, "What about taxes?"
I replied, "As far as I know, there are no taxes in heaven. That's why it's called heaven."
"That means there are no H&R Block stores up there."
"Nope. There isn't even an IRS."
"That's the best thing I've heard about heaven so far."
I said, "Paying taxes is hell."
The important thing about a hospice is that if you can stay long enough, you can say goodbye with dignity. I've heard from everybody in my life -- from my public school days, the University of Southern California, the Marine Corps, my Paris pals, and all the people I knew or who claimed to know me from my days in Washington. I received nearly 3,000 letters.
You can also plan your own funeral. My plan was really quite simple. Joseph Gawler's Sons funeral home was down the street from my hospice, so I didn't have far to go. I chose cremation because it would be easier to transport me to my cemetery plot on Martha's Vineyard, where my wife, Ann, who died in 1994, is buried. I'll stay at Gawler's for one night.
Then Joel, my son, will keep my ashes at his house in Washington until they can be taken to Martha's Vineyard. They'll travel by plane or by car, whichever is cheaper.
As I'm planning my funeral, I keep adding details.
I make sure my obituary appears in The New York Times. No one knows whether you've lived or died unless they read it in the Times. I also make sure no head of state or Nobel Prize winner dies on the same day. I don't want them using up my space. I insist that my obituary not say, "He died after a long illness." Instead, I want it to read, "He died on a private tennis court just after he aced Andre Agassi."
My funeral will be a small private affair on Martha's Vineyard. The Navy's Blue Angels will fly over, members of the Vineyard Haven Yacht Club will drop their sails, and golfers will observe a minute of silence. Friends on the island will gather at my grave site and sing "Danny Boy" -- my favorite song, though I am Jewish. After the service, people will enjoy cocktails.
Wait, there's more. I haven't told you about my memorial service in New York, to be held a week after my burial. The service will take place in Carnegie Hall. During the celebration, my ashes will be sprinkled over every Trump building in New York City. And everyone must leave their watches at the door so they won't be checking the time during the service. Kleenex will be provided.
The rabbi at my service will share a few words to warm up the crowd. I don't know him, so whatever he says has to be taken with a grain of salt. Cardinal Egan will also speak and read a letter from the Pope. Billy Graham will read one from the President. I figure that between the three of them, I'm covering all the bases. One of them is bound to know where I'm going.
Of course, I don't look like a person who is on his way out. I don't look that way at all. In fact, the first thing everyone says to me when they walk into the living room is, "You've never looked better!"
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