My mother passed away in October of 2012 at the age of 91, a sterling example of the old line, "If I'd known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself." The last few years, she could barely walk and barely see, and if she'd lived six months longer, she probably would have not have been able to do either at all. Almost every week those last few years, she wished aloud — with the clear, sane mind she still possessed — that there was a way she and I could have signed some paper or pushed some button and ended her life painlessly, then and there.
But this isn't a piece to debate the merits or morals of that. This is about one of the very few joys she had after around the age of 80. It was her daily phone call with her friend Sarah. She and Sarah were friends from around 1962 onward.
When they met, Sarah was living with her family in a huge mansion in Beverly Hills. I don't know what it was worth then but I just looked it up on Zillow and here is what it said…
…a single family home that contains 12,029 sq ft and was built in 1926. It contains 5 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms. The Zestimate for this house is $25,089,859, which has increased by $456,077 in the last 30 days. The Rent Zestimate for this home is $107,286/mo, which has decreased by $819/mo in the last 30 days. The property tax in 2017 was $147,775. The tax assessment in 2017 was $12,746,579, an increase of 2.0% over the previous year.
So you figure Sarah and her family had a few bucks. My parents and I would go over to that house every few weeks to visit and I would play with Sarah's daughter Lynn, who was roughly my age, my age at the time being around ten. I sensed a vague hope in both families that Lynn and I would become so friendly as to someday marry so we could all be related but that did not happen.
Quick story. One day, a lost dog wandered onto that lovely estate and Lynn and I spent some time playing with the dog. Some grown-up found us doing that and insisted on calling the Animal Shelter or whatever agency one phoned if one found a lost dog. Fifteen minutes later, a black-and-white Beverly Hills Police car roared up to take the dog back to its owner. This is how it worked in this town when Dean Martin reported his kid's dog was missing. Dean lived a few blocks away.
A few years later, Sarah lost the home and fortune — a big Hollywood scandal I may or may not tell you about some day — and thereafter lived a much more modest life in much more modest surroundings. Oddly enough, she was probably happier that way — or at least, that was my mother's opinion based on things Sarah said to her. The two of them stayed in touch. I gather that not all of Sarah's friends stayed in touch once she was no longer in the mansion…but my mother did.
They remained friends into this century, long enough to refer to each as other as "My only friend who hasn't died." By then, Sarah was living with her family in New York and their friendship consisted of a daily phone call. They spoke every single day except sometimes when one of them was in the hospital. During the last decade of my mother's life, she was in the hospital a lot. Whenever Sarah called her home and didn't get an answer, she called me. Sometimes, I was able to phone Sarah first to let her know.
When my mother finally did leave us, one of the toughest things I had to do was to call and tell Sarah. She knew it was coming but I could hear in her voice that it was a jolt. A real jolt. Sarah did not herself live long after that because, with my mother gone, she had one less reason to stick around.
They had not seen each other in at least thirty years. During that time, there was occasional talk of one or both traveling to be together for a while but various issues, most of them health-related, prevented that from happening. I'm sorry we didn't try harder to make that happen.
Last Wednesday afternoon, Lynn and I got together for lunch. I think it was the first time we'd seen each other in well over half a century…maybe close to sixty years. We toasted (with glasses of water) our mothers and their long friendship. We shared memories and caught each other up on our lives…and promised to do this more often than every fifty-five years. I hope if I make 91, I have at least one friend as good as Sarah.