Worth Fighting For: Love, Loss, and Moving Forward - Brossura

Lisa Niemi Swayze is the coauthor of The Time of My Life, which she wrote with her late husband, Patrick Swayze. She wrote, directed, and produced the film One Last Dance and has held many film, television, and Broadway roles, including starring in the play Without a Word with her husband, garnering six Drama Critics Awards.

Worth Fighting For Chapter 1

FAIRY TALE

THE MOMENT I reached for my notebook to start working on this book, I was flooded with an emotion that I’ve tried to keep at bay for some time now. It’s a wave of feeling composed of endless tears, reminding me that I haven’t remotely cried enough.

The emotion that washes over me brings the distant past to an instant present. And the details scream out in my mind and heart: every time I pushed down my feelings, every time I smiled when my world was tumbling down around me, and every time I heard a piece of bad news and reacted positively, laughing with mock bravery when I should have been dissolved in tears.

There is a high price to be paid for the privilege of caring for your loved one when he’s dying, but it’s one I wouldn’t have traded for anything. I always said that I’d have plenty of time to cry later. When Patrick first got his diagnosis it looked like he might have only weeks to live. Then it was months. And then, luckily, we passed a year. And we kept going. . . . Twenty-one months is a long time to battle for your loved one against a foe like cancer. It’s a long time to “hold up.” And now, I’ve been spit out on the other side of the fight, alone, trying to figure out how I’m going to go on with my life.

Hot and cold.

Right now I’m running hot and cold.

As I write this in May of 2010, it’s been over six months since I lost Patrick, and right now, at this particular moment, I either despise the bad times he and I had together, or worship the good we had. No in-between.

So, at this particular moment, I worry how can I talk about us, him, in an objective way. One that gives an accurate, albeit can’t-help-but-be-emotional-here-and-there idea of what really happened, who he really was, who I have been, and who I am now. ’Cause I tell you, I am a different person now. One who has been thrown into the fire and forged. One who got stripped of all the nice things that sheltered me from the world, and from myself.

It’s been hard living out here in the cold. I look for a life raft anywhere, and there’s none to be found. No usual anchors to ground me. No more comfortable illusions. But this person I am is real, painful in its growing spurt, the growing spurt that’s happened without my husband . . . but real. And because I am real there are possibilities.

Now, this isn’t the way to start a book, but . . . I guess I’m having an angry day, one of those days that happens sometimes since the loss of my Buddy (“Buddy” was his lifelong nickname). And, yes . . . I guess I am sad.

I think I was hoping to wrap my experience with him up with a nice little bow. And remember it that way. At arm’s length. So, if I seem a little caustic right now, it’s just my attempt to have an arm’s-length view of the story I’m telling. And unfortunately, I know that my being snarky is an attempt to not feel the loss. Because . . . when I talk about him (as I’m doing here) . . . I miss him so much. So terribly. So completely that I worry how I’m going to get to the next moment.

Wait a minute . . .

. . . there.

I made it to the next moment.

And that’s how you get through the bad moments of grief. You do it one at a time.

And now I want to talk about him. About who he was when he was here on this earth. My beautiful man. I want to tell this story before I get too far away from it and forget what the journey of the last couple years was really like. ’Cause we do forget. It’s only real when you experience it. After that, as time goes on, it becomes merely the recounting of a story.

—

YOU KNOW, it’s funny because there’s always so much talk about divorce statistics. When you get married you can’t help but be aware that there is an approximately 50 percent chance it will end in divorce. There are data about how many couples divorce in their twenties, their thirties, and so on, how many heterosexual couples, how many homosexual. There are television series starring divorced men and women, books written about divorce and by the divorced, major movies made, let alone all the divorced people you run into in everyday life, right? And then there are the children of divorced parents, the books the children write when they grow up, the movies subsequently made, the kids that are carted off to one parent or another, or even kidnapped. There is so much information out there about what happens when marriages don’t work out.

But no one ever talks about what happens when marriages do work out.

What happens when you stay together? If this is something that’s been the source of great discussions, it’s not really been on my radar. The short answer to what happens when marriages work out is that the lucky couple lives happily ever after. That’s the fairy tale. But we’re not living in a fairy tale, are we?

No one talks about the “till death do us part” that comes at the end of the traditional wedding vows. What it means, what it really means. I think it’s funny now how many people have changed that line to “as long as we both shall live” or “for all the days of our lives.” While I agree that the “death” word is a little gruesome-sounding, the two alternatives are full of loopholes. I mean, one can cherish someone’s memory—after one kicks him out of the house. I knew without a doubt, when things were so terrible between Patrick and me in 2003 that I moved out for a year, that I would unequivocally love him always and to the end of time, but I was still going to divorce his ass if things didn’t change in our relationship. (Luckily they did.) The other wedding vow alternatives also give me a laugh: “for all eternity” (really, you can really promise that?), and one with an even more obvious escape loophole, “through whatever life may bring us.” But hey, it’s honest. No one wants to be stuck in a bad marriage.

—

“TILL DEATH do us part.” That’s what Patrick and I said in our vows when we got married. I had already made sure “to honor and obey” was stricken from the record. Somehow I missed “till death do us part.” I was eighteen years old, I knew death existed, but it was still a concept, something far, far in the future. So far that I didn’t have to worry about it.

We had the greatest priest marry us, Father Welch. Father Welch was a friend of the Swayze family. Patrick’s mom, Patsy, had actually done some musical theater with him back in the day and said that he had a crazy sense of humor. She told us how one day the Father came up to her, “Hey Patsy, I have a great idea for the show,” he enthused, “Let’s have a really elegant lady in a fancy ball gown come on the stage, then when she gets to the chair, she hikes up her dress, sits down like a farmhand, and starts plucking a chicken! Isn’t that great?” I looked at Patrick and deadpanned, “He sounds great.”

And Father Welch was great. During my interview with him, which I found out was required for a Catholic wedding, I balked at saying yes to the questions about converting to the Catholic religion, raising children, and birth control. He’d wave a hand and write in, “yes,” “yes,” “yes,” saying that all these questions were going to change in a few years anyway so it didn’t matter. I find it hilarious that I was so honest and sincere that it was difficult for me to let him put in the “yes” answers, and yet, I didn’t once mention that I didn’t really believe in the institution of marriage, and furthermore, fully expected this one to end up as one of the divorce statistics. And that I was okay with that.

The whole idea of marriage had come about in an abrupt way. It wasn’t like Patrick and I had talked about marriage. We had talked about the future, though mostly in terms of what we wanted to do as dancers, where we wanted to dance, and with whom. I just wanted to dance. Patrick wanted to dance with me. And it made me nervous.

We had been living together in our tiny, one-bedroom brownstone apartment with dark yellow-gold walls in New York City for about nine months. I had just returned from doing a dance performance and visiting my family in Houston for a few days, where I had a conversation with my very liberal, open-minded mother in which she raised a surprisingly conservative point, and said, “You know . . . without the commitment of marriage, all you and Buddy are doing is ‘playing house.’” Yeah, and . . . ? Back in New York, I made the mistake of relaying this exchange to Patrick. He just kind of . . . stopped for a moment. Three days later, we were in the middle of a tickling fight on our futon couch when he paused, his arms around me.

“What?” I asked curiously.

His face flushed. “Why don’t we do it? Why don’t we get married?”

I froze. And tried to buy time, clumsily attempting to negotiate a lengthy engagement, “Yeeahh, we could do that . . . we could get married . . .”

I had left home only nine months before. I wasn’t ready to move straight from there into another home. I had places to go, people to see, things to do! I wanted to dance! I didn’t even believe in marriage to begin with, although I planned to revisit my stance on that subject in another twelve years or so when I reached thirty.

“When?” he was warming up to the idea, “When do you think we should do it?” He was not only warming up to the idea, he wanted to close the deal right then and there.

“Uhm, how about . . . in the fall of next year?” That was a year and a half away. I figured I’d have plenty of time to figure a way out by then.

His face fell. And he began to look mortally wounded.

“Don’t you think that would work?” I defended. “Why? Why . . .” I softened, “What were you thinking?” Never dreaming that he would say . . .

“I think if we’re going to do it, we should just do it right away. Like next month,” he said with conviction. “What do you think?” And he nervously looked me straight in the eye while he waited for my reaction.

Guess who won?

—

WE WERE so different from each other, and yet, so much alike. I was fourteen years old when I first laid eyes on him at Houston Music Theater when his mom’s dance school and company merged with the theater group I was working with. How could you not notice him? He was tan, buff, and had a dazzling smile. And his reputation for being a Casanova and having a big ego had preceded him. This wasn’t helped by the fact that my first contact with him came when we passed each other coming in and out of the theater, and he reached over and pinched me on the butt. “Hey there, cutie!” he said in a both friendly and mischievous tone. “Oh, brother.” I rolled my eyes as he passed me.

Although I had a rich and deep internal life, on the outside I was painfully shy and had excruciating difficulty being around people. I just didn’t know how to talk to them, not the slightest idea. I hate using that word “shy,” because it indicates that I was always that way. I wasn’t when I was in a situation I was familiar with. I always marveled how I could bust it up plenty loud and good with my brothers at home, but at school, never utter a word or raise my head or hand. I was so socially withdrawn that I would plot and plan how I was going to walk from point A to point B across a room in public long before I actually did so. Honestly, I wouldn’t make a move until I’d figured out how to do it and be as invisible as possible lest I draw attention and have someone look at me, or say something. I wasn’t just a wallflower; I was an expert, practiced wallflower. Not such an easy thing to master when you’re skinny and strikingly fair, with a shock of unusually white blonde hair. And yet, this shy girl is the same girl who opened up on stage like gangbusters, who felt she could reach out and touch the deepest parts of people.

Buddy, on the other hand, was gregarious. He carried himself shoulders back, head high, with the confidence of the popular guy, and one who was very comfortable with that position. Me, I was hanging with the longhaired, misfit, doper crowd. It was natural that any friends I did have were people who also didn’t fit in. And we hid behind our cigarettes, pot, and differentness. I wasn’t so noticed with them and it was okay to be weird. In contrast, Buddy looked like a cliché of the All-American, clean-cut, clean-living star athlete of school and home. He was almost . . . too perfect. And it wasn’t that I hated that about him, I was never quick to judge people. If anything, I gave them too much latitude. It’s just what I observed. If anything, I felt a little sorry for him. For all his being so perfect looking, and perhaps because of it, he didn’t fit in either.

One thing about being so quiet is that while everyone else is busy doing something or talking—you are watching. Really watching (beware the ones who are quiet!). You can see things that might not be apparent to others. Being painfully shy, I was always quick to see others’ pain, although I never let on that’s what I saw. Behind Buddy’s quick grin, I saw nervousness. Behind his bravado, I saw a pain I thought that even he didn’t really know about (that’s my fourteen-year-old self speaking). Behind his awkward teasing and small talk, I sensed a deep insecurity and need. One thing I knew for certain . . .

This guy wasn’t my type.

And later, when I shifted to dancing full-time with his mom, he asked me out.

Of course I accepted.

—

OUR FIRST dates were not very successful . . . to put it mildly. They consisted mostly of him chatting on to fill every possible silence and me barely talking at all as we cruised along in his bright yellow Opel GT. He loved that car!

A sample of our conversation:

Patrick: “My first car, I built from the ground up, I got most of the parts from my uncle’s automotive shop, he had gotten this big shipment of used Dune Buggies for old-folks homes and took them apart for parts, so I got to get whatever I needed from him, of course my Dad came in and helped me with some things. And then there was football practice, which was taking most of my time after school, and then I had to hustle to dance class so there wasn’t a lot of time to make extra money, and then there was a paper route I threw from three to four o’clock in the morning. But I manage to get to dance class every chance I get. So, you are looking to go to New York and dance?

(pause)

“Yes.”

(pause)

(pause)

Patrick: “That’s good ’cause you really have the talent. No, really, I wouldn’t just say that. You know Bob Joffrey, who I’ve known all my life, says that if I really work on my feet, you know how you can get that little arch just above the metatarsal. It’s the hardest thing, and then getting the foot to do that little wing. . . . It’s not so easy for a guy to get, but my feet are looking pretty good . . .”

And on and on. It was strange because the dates were so uncomfortable and yet . . . not uncomfortable at all. Of course I’d been told that all the girls wanted him and he could have his pick (so they said, and it was probably true). But he didn’t intimidate me, mostly because 1) I was not looking to lay any claim to him, 2) I had his number. I knew he appeared to be a flirt and to have a big ego. But I knew what he felt like inside. And though our first few dates were pretty terrible, there was a powerful attraction between us, and we kept coming back, even though we still didn’t trust each other. I was still wary of his self-centered, Casanova reputation, and he...