I told her I didn’t put much stock in karma. I said she should just focus on doing the best show possible and hope that the new fans were not all that interested in “A New Woodstock.” I told her that while I didn’t have any clients in the genre anymore, I would give her a list of my clients that would be available on the night of the concert. She could pick any of them that she wanted and I would let them appear on Buddy’s big gig at no charge. As I said, I didn’t like the agent that they were up against. I’d had more than one run-in with him.
I heard tears in her voice as she thanked me for the offer. Having said that, she never responded when I sent her the list. She went it alone.
It turned out that there were many more people interested in “A New Woodstock” than in a “Buddy Black Comeback.” Buddy’s TV show ratings were dismal, but even worse, the comeback tour had to be canceled halfway through the schedule. Ticket sales had been extremely disappointing. Tammy had included many of her other clients in the comeback effort. They began leaving her agency. I grieved at her failure and felt no elation when Buddy announced that he was retiring to California. After all, I was not completely heartless. I remembered good times with both of them.
As the agreement gradually became our lives, we slowly drifted apart. I wasn’t very happy with the drift, but as they say: it is what it is. Everything was going as well as could be expected until the day that Tammy was terminated by her agency. She tried all of the other agencies in the area, but her name was mud because of the comeback fiasco.
She had depleted her assets funding the comeback tour and now, she had no salary. She was no longer able to pay her share of the mortgage or utilities. Out of necessity, we agreed to violate our interim agreement slightly. I was able to sublet my apartment at a slight profit and move into the basement recreation room at what now, per the agreement, was Tammy’s house. I slept on the somewhat-lumpy sofa.
Almost every night when I headed to the basement, Tammy told me that I was welcome to share her bed. After many nights of this harassment, I reluctantly relented. Just like that, we were violating another clause of our agreement! I, being a rather fitful sleeper (throwing my arms and hands around a lot), accidentally touched or grabbed some forbidden areas of Tammy’s anatomy quite regularly. That sometimes triggered an autogenerated response by her body. You would be surprised at how often those accidents resulted in some unintentional orgasms!
I was eating my meals with the family, taking everyone out to restaurants, watching tv movies with Tammy, playing games with the kids, and attending sporting events. It was just like we did back before Buddy came on the scene. Page by page, we were shredding our agreement. One cold night, Tammy asked me to build a fire in the fireplace. She handed me a stack of paper saying, “why don’t you use these to start it?” You guessed right; it was the pages of our interim agreement.
Things were returning to normal until Tammy started complaining of headaches. If they had only happened when we were in bed, I would have been suspicious. That wasn’t the case. She seemed to be having a constant headache. I had been on her case to see a doctor for weeks. She finally did. They ran every test in the book and then some. The news was not good. She was diagnosed with inoperable cancer of the brain. My world was shattered.
I had a long discussion with her doctor. He said that her cancer had probably been there for at least a year or two before the headaches began. He asked me if I had noticed her forgetting things or making bad decisions. Bad decisions? My god! I certainly had! Did that explain everything?
Tammy kept saying that it was her karma, but I knew better. Knowing that she had cancer shouldn’t have made me feel better, but it kind of did. I finally understood everything. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t her. It wasn’t Buddy. It was cancer!
They said we probably had one good year left. After that, not so good. The headaches would get worse. She would begin having seizures. There could be incontinence, blackouts, nausea, and vomiting. Near the end, she would lose her eyesight and possibly her hearing too. Soon after that, she would lose her life.
Armed with medication to ease her pain, we began to do the things we had always planned to do as a family, plus some things we hadn’t even dreamed of doing. I let my understudy take over my day-to-day tasks. I remained available by phone to handle things that demanded my personal attention. Otherwise, all of our time was spent on family adventures.
We visited national and regional parks. We took in concerts. We visited the Grand Ole Opry, Disneyland, Disney-world, and the Smithsonian, to name a few. We flew to Alaska and Hawaii. We packed everything possible into one very good year.
Tammy had a prescription for some strong pain medication which she took only when the headaches got unbearable. I noticed that she was squirreling away some of her medication every day. She placed it in a bottle that she kept in her bottom dresser drawer. She thought it was a secret. She didn’t know that I had installed multiple cameras in the house so I could observe her condition 24/7. I could see the output from the cameras on my phone.
I finally told her that I knew what she was doing and I understood why she was doing it Many times she had said that she didn’t want to be a burden on me and she didn’t want her children to see her suffering near the end. “Can you imagine what seeing me like that would do to them, Allen? To see me having seizures, blackouts, and going blind? They would have nightmares for the rest of their lives!”
She was right, of course, but I told her that I wanted her with me as long as possible. I said, “When it gets really bad, we can take you someplace where they can make you as comfortable as possible. I will help you through it. I will stay by your side and hold your hand.”
She said, “I’ve done my research, Allen, and I know how many pills I have to take. Please don’t interfere. Don’t deny me this chance to retain my dignity. I have always hated the dark. I can’t imagine being in constant darkness in a hospital or nursing home. It would be worse than dying. Please let me do what I have to do. Please grant me this. Let me leave while I still know what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. I will wait as long as possible, but don’t make me wait until I don’t have the physical or mental strength to do it.”
It was the following week that I told Tammy about my promise to make a basketball goal for Dave. I was heading to a big-box store to get some parts. She said, “You’re such a wonderful dad. Our kids are so lucky to have you. You’re also the world’s best husband. So much more than I deserve. ”
After a little more conversation, she said, “Sorry, honey. I took a pain pill and I can’t keep my eyes open. Come see me when you get back.” With that, she closed her eyes. We kissed before I left to do my shopping. Little did I know that we’d just had our last conversation and our last kiss–ever.