“Fame is a vapor. Popularity is an accident. Riches takes wings. And only one thing remains . . . CHARACTER.”
—HORACE GREELEY
I moved to LA a few weeks after I prayed. And three weeks after I moved, I met Julius on the set of City of Angels. Julius Tennon was playing the anesthesiologist Dr. Holly. I was Nurse Lynette Peeler. We were working together in a scene, passing the blood. He was really nice, but he was messing up, playing with the little needle thing during the scene. He punctured his finger, but it wasn’t a big deal. When the scene was over, I was at craft services eating a bagel. I had already said “Bye” to him, “It was nice meeting you,” but he came back to set, to craft services, and said to me, “I overheard you say you don’t know anyone in LA.”
“No, I don’t know anyone in LA,” I said. “I do not like this city. I’m so nervous here and . . .”
“I understand. Have you ever been to Santa Monica Pier? I’ll take you to Santa Monica Pier!”
“No, I’ve never been to Santa Monica Pier.”
“I’ll take you. Here’s my card. You call me. I don’t want you to be alone here.”
I was thinking, Oh my God, he’s giving me his card. I hoped it was not a card that’s a headshot and he has no shirt on. That was so prevalent in LA. Every time a man would pass me a card, saying, “I’m an actor. Maybe we can do something together after work,” these dudes’ cards had them pictured showing their six-pack abs and chests. I would always toss those
cards in the garbage. Julius gave me his card and he was pictured in a shirt. That was good.
We talked. Looking at him, he was big. Beautiful. I thought Julius was beautiful. He told me he was from Texas, used to play football, and “I have two kids, and a grandbaby.” He gave me his card and I thought, Oh, he’s so nice. I need to have my stuff together. I have bad credit. I can’t stand driving. I’m nervous. How am I going to drive to him and then go places? I can’t do that.
I was struggling to survive, struggling to figure out how to live in LA, struggling to rent a car to figure out how get groceries or get to the set on time. I didn’t know how to navigate the city. I had a lot on my plate. I was a mess, in my opinion. I didn’t have my life together. I couldn’t think about anything other than sitting in my room in that apartment in Marina Del Ray and stressing. I couldn’t think about no Santa Monica Pier.
I finally called him six weeks later after I went to my therapist. That was one place I knew how to drive to without ever getting on the freeway. My therapist asked, “What’s new in your life?”
“I met someone really nice on set.” She was so excited. “Oh, who?”
“He’s really, really nice. Really cute, too. But,” I said, “I don’t know, there’s gotta be something wrong with him.” I was so jaded. My relationship of seven years was over and I’d forgotten about that prayer, which seemed like wishing on a star.
“Call him.”
“No, I’m not going to call him because he’s probably no good.”
“Viola, call the man. Call him. You don’t know whether he’s nice or not. You don’t know who he is, but he’s someone who extended himself. He saw that you were lonely. He sounds nice to me.”
I didn’t admit to her that I hadn’t called him because of me, because I didn’t have my shit together. I went back to my apartment and it took me the longest time to find his card. I called him. Oh my God. I expected him not to remember me because it’d been so long. “Hi, Julius.”
“Heeey, Viola! How you doing?” “You remember me?”
“Yeah, I remember you. How you doing? It’s so nice to hear your voice.”
After that phone call, my life just got better. For our first date we went to Santa Monica Pier to a restaurant called Crocodile. Everything that I had prayed for, the whole list, all of it, was checked off. Julius was an ex- football player from Austin, Texas. His manner was what I call “country.” He had two kids, and he invited me to church.
When he said, “How are you doing?” I told him how I was struggling, and I felt he listened to me. He immediately invited me into his life, saying, “I want you to come and see where I work in Santa Monica.” No man I ever dated invited me into his life. The men I had dated wanted to come over to my apartment to do the Boom Ghazi. He said, “It’s a nice place to work. You should see the antique reproductions. It’s in a beautiful area. And then, maybe we could sit down, get something to eat at my favorite restaurant.” He seemed so excited about the high-end furniture store in Santa Monica called Prince of Wales that sold beautiful antique reproduction furniture. Celebrities would visit that store. He loved where he worked. He was so proud of it.
City of Angels was gearing up for publicity and I needed to attend a photo op event. I’m still shy but at least I can handle PR now. Back then I couldn’t handle it at all. I knew it would help to have someone beside me and I had a plus-one. I knew no one else to take, so I called Julius. He sounded thrilled that I called him. Nervously, I said, “Well, okay. Well, I’m really calling because I need someone to come with me to a photo op for City of Angels, this publicity thing. I mean, I’m wondering if you would like to come with—”
“Yeah, I want to come with you to a photo op!” “Oh my God.”
“When you want me to come pick you up?”
“Oh no, no, I don’t want you to come pick me up.” “I’ll pick you up,” he responded.
“I don’t need you to pick me up. I can get there myself. I’ll take a cab.” “You don’t have to take a cab. I’ll come pick you up.”
“No, I don’t want you to come pick me up. I’m telling you, I do not.”
After a long pause, he said, “Okay. Well, all right.” But I could tell the conversation was unsettling to him. We made the date, I hung up, and right then Phylicia Rashad called me. I had done Everybody’s Ruby with her at the Public Theater in New York and she was in town staying in a great hotel. She wanted to see me the same night as the City of Angels photo op.
“Oh, Phylicia. I want to see you, too,” I said, genuinely eager to reconnect. We agreed to meet at her hotel for appetizers. Then I remembered the photo op and that Julius would be with me. Oh shit, I thought, It will sound pretentious to call him back and say, Phylicia Rashad—I just worked with her in New York—and she would like to get together . . . but I called and asked him if he wanted to also come with me to meet Phylicia Rashad.
“Phylicia Rashad! Yeah. I want to go.” Not only did he not make me feel I was being pretentious, Julius said something that reminded me why I so love folk who are country. “You know, I’m gonna wear my white jacket. I’m wearing my white jacket with black pants. It’s a real nice white jacket.” The date was perfection. We went to the photo op and stopped by to visit with Phylicia. After the visit he said, “I’m driving you home, To. Your.
Front. Door.” At my front door, he shook my hand and said, “You are a beautiful woman. I had such a nice time with you. You are so sweet.”
“I had a nice time with you, too,” I said. “You get some rest.”
I went into my apartment. He left.
Twenty minutes later, my phone rang. I pick it up and it’s Julius. “I just wanted to say again that I had such a nice time with you. You are a sweet woman.”
“You’re home already?” I asked.
“No, I’m at the Ralph’s down the street. I had a very nice time.” Another twenty minutes and the phone rings again. I pick it up and it’s
Julius. “I just wanted to let you know I got home. I’m home now. You are such a sweet woman. I had such a good time.”
“I had a good time with you, too, Julius.” “Well, get some rest.”
That was the night that there was an earthquake at four o’clock in the morning. Right after the earthquake, my phone rings again. It’s Julius: “I just wanted to call to see if you are okay.” I thought, One thing I will not have to worry about is this man calling me. I do not have to wonder where this man is.
It is true, my life just got better once I met Julius. He just helped in every single way. If I asked, How do I lease a car? How do I navigate this? Where is this place and that place? he had an answer. It could be anything. He was a helpmate. We clicked. It was love in the best sense of the word.
We were with each other every single day. He invited me to church again, and when I went it did not blow up.
Every day was a party. When Julius and I celebrated our first Thanksgiving together, we cooked, ate so much food—a whole pot of dressing—and drank, I don’t know how many bottles of wine. We got in the Jacuzzi at the apartment every night except when we were working or when it rained.
We laughed and played tickle monster every night. Don’t ask. I prefer to think that we were just ecstatically happy and that happiness brought out the child in both of us. We did Tae Bo together and played on the couch and watched hours of TV. We didn’t spend one day apart. Then City of Angels got picked up for the second season, and he said, “Vee. You should come live with me. That way we could split the rent. I got a two-bedroom, two- bathroom apartment that only costs $850 a month. We can just split it right in half. It’ll be a lot less expensive.”
I was paying $1,500 for rent, so aside from love, I thought, This is a good deal. I moved in and my rent went down to $425. Everything got better. My life opened up. I was being catapulted into adulthood. Coming from a childhood of trauma I needed a radical transformation. I hadn’t been taught how to navigate the world. I hadn’t been taught what could help me grow or live better. I’d been taught how to run from the world. I’d been taught how to hide and fight. I hadn’t been taught how to love and be still.
As soon as he came into my life, my life got better because I created a family with him, with someone who loved me. I was no longer solely defined by the family that raised me and my childhood memories. Julius and I created this new chapter in my life, starting from a blank slate. I could create my own family and I could create it intentionally with what I had learned.
What I earned from City of Angels went much further because I was living with Julius. And while I was living with Julius, I also got a movie. The movie was Amy and Isabelle starring Elisabeth Shue, Conchata Ferrell, Ann Dowd. It was an Oprah Winfrey Presents movie that she produced. I also got a play that would be very fateful because it would lead to my first Tony Award.
It’s like Oprah said, “I know for sure what we dwell on is what we become.” With this chapter in my life, I didn’t want to dwell on little Viola
running away anymore. I wanted to run toward joy, hand in hand with Julius. I wanted to feel alive. I wanted to become . . . me.
Julius is and was a protector and an awesome life partner. He is motivated by his love for me and his fierce protectiveness of our life. I see that in him even now, after twenty-one years. With both of us, like any human being, the nicks, obstacles, and scrapes still threaten. Little crumbs from the past come, memories that still carry some weight and power. They show up in anxiety-filled dreams. They show up at Thanksgiving when I cook too much food and he cleans within an inch of his life. But it’s a matter of recognizing what stems from my childhood, being aware and not letting that control us. Toni Morrison in The Bluest Eye says that “a person’s love is only as good as the person; a stupid person loves stupidly, a violent man loves violently.” The love of a man who puts you first, who is evolved and who always wants to be better for you, is Julius’s love capacity.
Coming home late one night after a late-night shoot on City of Angels, I was exhausted, driving to stay awake and get home quicker. I had bought my first car from a friend of Julius, a gold ’86 Volvo for $2,500. It was a tank. I was driving so fast getting off the 101 to get to Van Nuys, the police stopped me. I had never in my life been stopped by the police. My ass was tight! Translation: I was scared to death. The police officer shone his flashlight and said, “What’s going on?”
“Well, Officer. I’m exhausted. I just did an eighteen-hour day on a set.” I then proceed to show him my script. “I’m on this show City of Angels, Steven Bochco. I know I was driving fast—”
“You weren’t just driving fast,” he interrupted, “you went through a red light!”
I was shocked. I did not know I had sped through a red light. I had no argument. I began begging and apologizing: “Oh, man! I’m so sorry. I’m here from New York. I’m overwhelmed here. You wanna see my license?”
He nodded his head. “Yeah, let me see it.” At that point, he let me go. It took me less than five minutes to get home. As I was walking toward our apartment, Julius was coming out the door. He was half asleep. One eye was open. One arm was in his coat, which he was attempting to put on, and in his other hand was his baseball bat. I jumped. “Julius! Where’re you going?”
“I was going to find you! It’s late. Hell, you called from the set but that was a while ago. I thought something happened to you. I was going to put
this bat on somebody’s ass.”
Julius had a whole system involving safety when we moved on to our condo. When I drove into the gated community, I had to keep the car door locked and the engine running until the gate closed behind me and then drive into our garage. If I was being attacked or followed, I should lay on the horn and he would be out with his baseball bat to lay it on someone’s ass. That was the plan. I made the unfortunate mistake of coming home late one night and accidentally laying on the horn. I caught it fast but I literally counted to three and Julius had come out of the house like a grizzly bear. No shirt and in his pajama pants, with that baseball bat securely in hand ready to fight. He was audibly growling!
“Julius!! No!! It was an accident! I accidentally pressed the horn.” “I was gonna split somebody’s ASS!!!!” he said.
Julius and I had not been together long when King Hedley II came along. I was not going to do the play. I said to Julius, “It’s not a lead character. She’s not onstage a lot, even though she has that big monologue. It may be beneath me.” Julius said nothing, but he stared at me. “What do you think, Julius?” He stared at me some more. City of Angels had come to an end after two seasons of thirteen episodes each. When we stopped shooting the first season, I went back to New York to do Vagina Monologues. Then City of Angels was canceled after its second season and I had only done ten episodes in the new season.
Julius kept staring at me. Finally, he said, “This is what I think. Yo’ ass ain’t got a job. You need to go on and do that job. That’s what you need to do.” I laughed my ass off and went on to do the job.
So I was Tonya in August Wilson’s King Hedley II.
We performed at the Kennedy Center before opening on Broadway. I remember in Washington, DC, at the Kennedy Center opening, Julius said, “You’re gonna win the Tony.” It was prophetic because I did. Joan Allen presented the award to me and I cried uncontrollably. The experience was perfect, first in the Virginia Theater at the Kennedy Center and then we took it to Broadway. Working with Brian Stokes Mitchell, Leslie Uggams, Charlie Brown, Monté Russell, and Stephen McKinley Henderson.
At any rate, I define this part of my life, moving in with Julius, as growing up. I started saving money, took my landlord to court to fix the apartment in Harlem and then sublet it so I didn’t have two rent payments— LA and New York. And slowly but surely paid off my student loans. Within
three years we had worked and saved enough to buy our first condo. It was
$299,000. We had an excellent safety net in our account, so we said, “Let’s go for it” and we moved in. We married in that condo a year later in 2003.
My biggest discovery was that you can literally re-create your life. You can redefine it. You don’t have to live in the past. I found that not only did I have fight in me, I had love. By the time we clicked, I had had enough therapy and enough friendship and enough beautiful moments in my life to know what love is and what I wanted my life to feel and look like. When I got on my knees and I prayed to God for Julius, I wasn’t just praying for a man. I was praying for a life that I was not taught to live, but for something that I had to learn. That’s what Julius represented.
I was also waking up to the hard-core reality that life unexpectedly throws curveballs in your life. The one-two punch was the bombing of the Twin Towers and a week later, the death of my friend Tommy Hollis. I was speechless. Somehow the story I was telling myself was that I could actually do something that would make my life go exactly as I planned. I did. It’s like Hedley says in Seven Guitars, “Man got plan but God? He got plan too.” Well, I believed God loved me enough to cradle me and protect me from pain. THAT was the agreement. Man . . . but I had no idea that the pain can just keep coming.
Julius pointed out to me when we first met that I had never experienced the loss of a close loved one. He said, “Vee, you still have both parents. When that happens, it’s brutal. Especially your mom.” He had lost both of his. When his mom died, he sat with her body at the mortuary for six hours. I asked him, “What did you do that whole time?” He said that he cried and talked to her. He laughed and recounted certain memories and he slept some. That image was tattooed in my head. When I told him about my life and what was on my parents’ plate as far as raising grandkids, he said, “That’s just like my people. It’s brutal. It wears down your health. My mom went from pretty good health to debilitating health in a short time taking care of her dad.”
He advised me to get insurance on them, because when it happens, no one is going to know what to do or have the money to bury them. I was silent, knowing life happens, there’s no pause button, no editor to change an outcome to something that fits the limitation of your heart. I got the insurance.
During this time, what healed completely from my childhood was my relationship with my father. I came to understand him with compassion, as a person, as I beheld Daddy’s turnaround, becoming patriarch to his grandchildren. He’d begun to change, almost imperceptibly, when I was in college as my nieces and nephews were born. He began to be the one who kept it together, even a little bit together, in the house and the family. My father was radically transformed—docile, loving. Every time I talked to him, he’d say, “I love you so much, daughter. I love you so much.” He turned the corner when he had to take custody of my nieces and nephews in the early ’90s. Somewhere in there was a heart, a very fragile heart. I began to glimpse it in those moments when he wasn’t drinking. Somewhere, inside, he was really trying to make amends. I think my dad just got tired of the anger, the rage, as an answer to his inner pain. Either you give yourself over to it in a sort of emotional suicide or you simply just get it. What do I think he got? That he was loved. That he was needed. That he mattered. I believe he changed as a way of asking for our forgiveness.
My parents took in my sister Danielle’s three children at that time, one after another. She would later have three more. The last three, my parents couldn’t take on. Some of my other nieces were in and out of their house. At least five of my siblings’ children lived with my parents because my siblings Anita, John, and Danielle couldn’t take care of them because of addiction and/or money issues. MaMama and Daddy raised them as their own. Those five were permanently there. Another three would come in and out at various times. The daily task of now parenting young children, keeping them alive and happy, was bigger than any demons. The fighting just got less and less until it was nonexistent. It was replaced by a bigger task that took every fiber of their being. Daddy was now there with my mom all the time. He went from abusing to living for this woman. She had hip issues and sciatica nerve pain.
He would massage her legs and her feet. He would cook for her. He would take care of the grandkids. MaMama loved to go to Atlantic City. Whenever she wanted to go, she would call me to pay for the trip and he would go with her. One time, she got sick while they were there. I got a cryptic phone call: “Grandma’s sick. They’re on their way home,” and I found out later Daddy was right there with her, terrified of losing her, holding her the whole time as they rode home on the bus.
When I began to witness his transformation, I started having conversations with him to encapsulate every single moment. His first changes were evident when I was a student with no money, but when I gradually started making money, I began to do things for and with my parents, as much as my money would allow. I didn’t have to make a lot of money for us to do things together. I would bring them to New York to stay with me and they loved it.
I sprung for August Wilson’s favorite hotel in New York. They were so happy. They stayed with me in my one-bedroom apartment when I did Intimate Apparel by Lynn Nottage in New York at the Roundabout Theatre Company. I flew in from California for the months Intimate Apparel ran and I invited them to come at various times to stay with me. Their visits were simple togetherness times. I liked to take them out to eat. When I would do Law and Order I would invite them to come and stay with me in the hotel I was provided. They loved it.
When I would go to either the train or the bus station to pick them up, they would be waiting for me, sitting side by side. As soon as they saw me, it was as if they hadn’t seen me for fifteen years. So happy. They would make me laugh. We would have the best time. I would always tell them before they left home, “Daddy, Mom, when you get off the bus, stay exactly in that spot. I will be there. I will be waiting for you or I will be right there two minutes after the bus arrives. Do not roam around looking for me. Don’t do that because you’re going to get lost.” Then I would have them repeat it.
“When the bus get there, get off and stay exactly in that spot where the bus let off. If you not there waiting don’t go looking for you,” they repeated. Most times, they would be sitting there, staying in one spot, as instructed. I could tell it took an incredible effort for them to sit still.
Other times I’d find my father walking around. “Daddy, I told you not to walk around.”
“I know, daughter. I know. But I’m so excited. I love New York.” And he’d begin a story, like, “Do you know where Lenny is? I was in New York back in the day when I was at the racetrack, and Lenny lived right here on Forty-Second Street.”
“Daddy, how long ago was that?” “Fortysome years ago.”
“Okay, Daddy, I don’t know who Lenny is. I don’t know if Lenny is still alive.”
My mom always complained, like clockwork, “Oh, Viola, my stomach is upset. My stomach is upset ’cause of that bus ride.”
“I tried to give your mama some food to settle her stomach—” MaDaddy would say, treating her like a princess.
“Okay,” I would reply, “well, maybe we should get some soup.”
“I don’t want no damn soup,” MaMama would shoot back. “I want some chicken wings. I want some hot chicken wings.” I would just laugh and shake my head. A part of me began to understand the importance of time. I was trying to freeze it. It was especially driven home by how much time my career was taking up. It made me appreciate and value it as a life goal. I wanted to take in every part of their faces, hands, laughs, stories.
We’d do whatever they wanted to do. It was great experiencing my parents at this age. I was working steadily and, at the same time, saving money. Although I experienced my parents on a whole different level, the family situation was still constant drama—fifteen people living in my parents’ apartment sometimes. My family issues were ever present and had metastasized into the children who were living with my parents to avoid ending up in the child welfare system.
My parents were older and their needs greater. I sent $300 to $400 home every week for my parents to get food or whatever. I didn’t have it to send, but I was sending it anyway. I got a phone call about a $3,000 gas bill. This had never happened before. I only had $600 left in my account. A friend said, “If you’re in a hole, who’s going to help you, Viola?” I thought I could save them. I thought my money and success could save all of them. I learned the hard way that when there are underlying issues, money does nothing. In fact, money exacerbates the problem because it takes away the individual’s ability to be held accountable.
A part of me felt that my mom had already been made to feel accountable for every burden that wasn’t hers. I wanted to calm that internal storm of guilt and anger inside of her.
Daddy turned from our terror to our hero. Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a different past. They tell you successful therapy is when you have the big discovery that your parents did the best they could with what they were given. Even without knowing this at the time, I didn’t just see the man
who was violent, abusive. I saw the man my niece Tiana saw, my sister Danielle’s daughter.
“Grandpa went with me to my first day of school, Auntie,” she told me. “I was crying. I kept crying and crying and he said, ‘It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.’ We went inside the school and I was still crying softly. Before all the parents had to leave, he whispered, ‘You gotta be brave.’ I nodded and said, ‘Yeah.’ I was about to cry again after he left. I couldn’t hold back the tears. Then I looked out the window and saw him standing there. He was there looking up at the window. He stayed there for the longest time looking in the window, waving at me until I was okay.”
At this point in my life, everything shot out like a rocket ship. I was getting more and more work. They all mesh together in my brain now. I had a few unsuccessful pilots. I had a few TV shows, Century City, Laws of Chance, Fort Pitt, and The Traveler, that made it on the air for two or three episodes and got canceled. I did a number of guest star roles on Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Law and Order: SVU, Judging Amy, the Jesse Stone series, Without a Trace, The Practice. They just kept coming, and it was enough to make a life change.
The biggest life change during that time was getting married. Julius asked me to marry him but it’s not a great story. My ten-year-old daughter says, “Mommy, you messed up a really awesome proposal.” Julius wanted to take me to Santa Monica to this beautiful restaurant. I didn’t know that he planned to propose. I thought he wanted to go to Santa Monica to eat and I did not feel like going. I was still in my I-hate-LA mode and to get to Santa Monica we had to drive an hour and a half down the 405 Freeway. He kept saying, “Vee, it’ll be great. Once we get there, it’s going to be wonderful and beautiful. We can just love each other . . .”
“I don’t wanna go!”
So he proposed in our living room. I could tell he was very nervous about something. Then he got down on one knee and said, “Will you, will you become engaged to me?” He had bought the ring. He was so nervous because he had been married before. He had raised his children on his own. To me, we might as well have been on the Eiffel Tower. It was absolutely perfect.
We decided to choose a date to get married. He said, “Vee, it can’t be anybody’s birthday, a holiday, nothing. It needs to be a date that we celebrate. It’s only our anniversary.”
“Oh, okay, let me focus.” I paused a long time. “What about June twenty-third?” he asked.
“June twenty-third, June twenty-third, June twenty-third. Wait a minute. I don’t know.” I kept racking my brain calendar, then I finally said, “I think that’s clear. Maybe, I don’t know. I don’t think that’s anyone’s birthday.”
We got married June 23 . . . my niece Annabella’s birthday.
I chose the wrong day. Damn! Every June 23 we’re calling her saying happy birthday and she’s calling us saying happy anniversary. I have so many nieces and nephews, and I was really good at keeping their birthdays in my head, but I messed up with that one.
A year later, we decided to get married in our first condo, in front of fifteen people. The pastor from our church married us. My family wasn’t there because they were working or didn’t have money to fly out, and at that time I didn’t have the money to fly them all out. Plus, we decided at the last minute to just go for it. Close friends, Julius’s daughter, and his two grandkids stood with us. We had a Sweet Lady Jane’s triple berry cake. A beautiful concoction of white cake, whipped cream frosting, and filling with fresh berries. I had no anxiety, only pure joy. I was filled with certainty. I had done the work on myself after being in therapy for seven years. I was thirty-eight. I was ready. We went to the mall the day before, holding hands, going to the Express store to find pink linen shirts. I went to bed that night and had a nightmare.
In my nightmare, I was waiting for an elevator, a glass elevator. There were other people around. The elevator door opened and we all got in. I pressed the thirty-eighth floor. And the elevator looked like a subway car but it was going up. I sat down, looked across, and saw this woman holding the subway strap standing up. She was holding on but looked asleep or dead. She had long braids and was dark-skinned but ashen. It was me! It was me the way I looked at twenty-eight!! I got up and tried to shake her awake but she wouldn’t wake up. She was alive but . . . dead. I woke up.
I called my therapist the next day to ask about the dream. She said, “Getting married is like a dying of one’s self. It is a big deal.” It felt like the easiest decision in my life. At twenty-eight, I was trying to wake up. That year I graduated from Juilliard and started my career. Now, I was starting a new life. My conscious mind was taking it in, but not my subconscious. I always seemed to be carrying either the eight-year-old or the twenty-eight- year-old with me, as if I was calling on them to help me. The eight-year-old
was mad for not being acknowledged and the twenty-eight-year-old was dead.
Julius and I had been together for four years. The wedding went beautifully. We had a spectacular time. I looked at Julius afterward and said, “Doesn’t feel any different.”
We had another wedding ceremony in October in Rhode Island that was fantastic! Rhode Island Casino, which is not a casino, but a beautiful house built in the Gay Nineties (the 1890s), had wide, wraparound porches, huge windows, a gazebo in the back. We had a ceremony there with my entire family. The wedding guest list was supposed to be eighty-five people, but Mae Alice Davis decided to invite everyone that she saw at bus stops. She invited everybody that she thought I might have gone to school with, everybody she knew who knew me. Forty extra people, on top of the eighty-five. Laurie Rickell, my best friend in third grade, was at the wedding.
My family had never had a celebration together, a meaningful, joyous ceremony. My sisters Deloris and Dianne were married and neither had a ceremony. Deloris went to Vegas. Dianne said her vows in the courthouse. No one in the family had ever had a wedding, and most had never been to one. I wanted to gift the experience to my family. That’s why I did it. I didn’t have to wear a wedding dress. It was just a party, but I bought the wedding dress because I knew MaMama and Daddy would love it. It was the most unbelievable party celebration any of my family members had ever been to. A college professor of mine was an ordained minister and did the ceremony. One of my nieces said, “Auntie, I wrote a poem for you and Uncle Julius,” so I said, “You can recite the poem.”
My sister Deloris had a student who was an excellent singer who wanted to sing. The flowers were beautiful. We had lots of hors d’oeuvres, then an enormous, sit-down dinner, the best food you could possibly imagine, with different buffet stations, pasta station, salad station, chicken station. We had an open bar—dangerous because we’ve got a lot of addicts in the family. A great DJ played. The only thing we messed up with was the photographer. We (Julius) didn’t want to spend money on the photographer. Someone gave us this idea that we should have disposable cameras on the tables and let our guests provide the pictures. Well, we ended up with a hodgepodge of well-intended, out-of-focus pictures of the floor, ceiling, feet, backs of heads, et cetera. We chalked this up to being a reflection of
too much alcohol combined with dancing and having a good time as the focus of the evening, not picture taking.
Although I didn’t have a maid of honor or bridesmaids, we had a wedding rehearsal. A few of my family walked down the aisle: my niece Annabella whose birthday is June 23, my niece Tiana, my sisters Anita, Deloris, and Dianne. My sister Danielle decided that she didn’t want to walk down the aisle. Then my mom and dad, of course. Daddy walked me down the aisle. He was so happy. MaMama looked beautiful at the wedding in a suit with a skirt made of lace. When I asked at the rehearsal what she planned to wear, she said, “Viola, I got a suit from Salvation [Army]. I spent ten dollars on it.”
“Oh my God, but MaMama, is it nice?” “Real nice. Wait till you see it?”
I was crossing my fingers, thinking Jesus, please. Jesus answered my prayers.
At the rehearsal all MaMama had to do was walk down the aisle. Deloris was organizing it, directing: “Okay, Tiana, it’s your turn. It’s your turn now, Annabella,” and so on. Each one walked down the aisle to “Ribbon in the Sky.” When it was my mom’s turn to walk down, Deloris called her and after the longest time, my mom had not reached the altar. I’m thinking, What’s going on? She’s still walking? She’s still walking! How could she still be walking? It’s not a long aisle. I had never seen anything like it in my life. It was as if she was walking a tight rope, real, real slow, one foot in front of the other, like she was going to topple over. That’s how slowly she was walking, probably taking one step every ten seconds. Finally, I said, “Mom, what are you doing?”
“Viola, I’m trying to walk down the damn aisle.”
“Mom, you’re walking too slow. The song is going to be over. You got to walk.”
“Okay,” she said and we paced it with her.
Deloris cued her again, and this time she ran down the aisle! Ran!
I said, “Okay, this is really easy, Mom. It’s not difficult.” She eventually got the right stride and the ceremony went off without a hitch. Julius and I gave this wedding as a gift to my family. It was a gift to me, too, because I love weddings. It looked like a $50,000 event, but did not cost us even
$9,000. It was in Rhode Island, which has restaurants with some of the best food imaginable.
There was a huge parallel between settling into this beautiful life with Julius and stepping into another world—on another level—that wasn’t manifesting itself yet, but I knew God was preparing me for.
So much that Julius and I did made us want more. Edwina Findley, an actress friend of a friend from New York, got a play in California and stayed with us because she was trying to save her money and do all that. By then, we were living in a new house—after the condo—a bigger house with five bedrooms and five bathrooms. It was just Julius and me. My friend called and said, “She is awesome. If you guys help her, you’ll be so blessed.” While she was living at our house, she planted a seed in us. We already wanted to start a production company, but it was a scary proposition, but she helped us look over the edge, inspired and encouraged us to start an LLC—JuVee Productions.
Maybe the dream I had the night before my first wedding ceremony was preparing me for the stratospheric catapulting that was about to happen to my career and our life. One job after another came and I just went with it because that’s what journeyman actors do. I was the actor who got five days of work here or a guest star role there or the lead in a play. I wasn’t the household name but enough of one to be considered for the roles where I could make a living.
I was in NYC doing King Hedley II when I auditioned for a movie called Antwone Fisher directed by Denzel Washington. The shooting of the movie took place right after 9/11. Literally, the week after the attack I had to fly to Cleveland. The airports were empty; it felt like death. Everyone was so scared that security would take your ID, hold it to their chest as if to hide it, and try to ask you trick questions. It was a learning curve. I got to freezing cold Cleveland and shot the role of Eva Mae in a scene with Derek Luke. It ended up being two days of work because someone stole the car we were using in the scene and Denzel demanded that the set designer redress the house/apartment we were using. It looked too dirty.
I was playing a pretty severe crack addict, but in life, there’s always a balance. In the movie, I play the long-lost mother of Antwone Fisher. He spends a good part of his life trying to find her to make sense out of the holes in his life. Finally, someone tells him that he knows where she is and he comes to meet her in this climactic scene. In the script she didn’t have many lines, and frankly the few she did have seemed disingenuous. By the time we got ready to shoot, I cut it down to maybe two lines.
I didn’t know Eva Mae personally, but I knew people like Eva Mae. She was very real to me because my sister Danielle had fallen into addiction. I saw the human being. I saw the woman who had been beaten down by life and the pain becomes so great, the only choice becomes numbing. My sister Danielle was the most loving woman, mother, sister in the world but the one person she couldn’t bring herself to love was her. But like most of my career, I had a lot to convey but very little material to do it with. That one scene literally shifted my career in a big way. I received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for that role.
Soon, I was packing my bags and going to Toronto to shoot Get Rich or Die Tryin’ with 50 Cent, Curtis Jackson. Once again, it was cold and once again, I was trying to make the most out of material that simply wasn’t developed. I had no idea how to find the material that was developed. None! There’re always those one or two movies that Hollywood churns out every year that are great. If you didn’t get those, you got what was left. There are not enough pages to describe the potency of good source material. It’s about 80 percent of the work.
Acting is a collaborative art form. The actor needs the director, writer, makeup artist, hairstylist, cinematographer, and finally the audience. You can’t act in your bedroom. Most people don’t understand what it is we do. That’s not being condescending, it’s true. Even other actors don’t get it. So they watch a movie and if they like it or don’t, they really don’t have the aesthetic to articulate why. Therefore, everything becomes the actors’ fault. If the role was smaller than they anticipated or not fully written, it becomes the actors’ fault. If the direction wasn’t good in a scene, it becomes the actors’ fault. There’s no real cognitive approach to directing the work of an artistic piece. If you are that character actor out there getting the leftovers, it’s very hard to compete with the actor who’s getting the filet mignon of roles. It just is.
Once again, it’s a profession that is a tangled web of artists getting jobs based on bankability, clout, and not ability. There’s no rhyme or reason. In Black projects, a lot of the “stars” are musicians and comedians. They’re the ones in the public eye. They sell records internationally as musicians so they have crossover appeal. Or they’re comedians. No shade there. I’m being honest. The African American actors out there don’t or at least didn’t have the quantity of material to give them clout. They’re either in NYC doing theater or are nameless, faceless, trying to break in.
Then if you have a plethora of roles that are gang members, drug- addicted urban mothers, then it filters a lot of actors out. Not a lot of filmmakers are looking for trained Black actors to play drug addicts. Those actors are told that they’re not Black enough. You’re already dealing with a business where talent takes a back seat. But at least with white actors, talent has been able to seep through because of the sheer amount and quality of material. Martin Scorsese is not going to cast Eminem over De Niro.
I did a huge slate of what I call “best friends to white women” roles. Hollywood has a love affair with those, but they’re in Black rom-coms, too. And if you’re a dark-skinned actress, you’ll probably be the best friend over the desired one in Black movies . . . with all the qualities of the best friend in the white movies. Once again, no shade. I worked with fabulous actresses like Diane Lane in Nights in Rodanthe. Julia Roberts in Eat, Pray, Love. Every role was a chance to problem-solve. Now, I can pick up a script and figure out a way to make it work, even if it’s not fully realized. I can articulate what’s wrong and articulate how to fix it and that’s if they want to fix it. Or maybe they don’t see a problem with it. But I force my hand with every job I get to make the role better.
I got the Jesse Stone movies with Tom Selleck. Any job for an actor is a good job, really, but some are really good and that was a good gig. We shot in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and it was cold. One of the marks of a good gig is when it runs like a well-oiled machine.
Tom Selleck and the rest of the producers just had it down. Plus, they paid well and that part of the world is just beautiful. It’s like God just took a bunch of paintbrushes and splattered yellows, blues, oranges all over the trees. There were both ocean and mountain views surrounding the city. Ironically, I loved it because it reminded me of Rhode Island. Whenever a place reminded me of home, I felt safe and at ease. When it didn’t, anxiety would rear its ugly head. Halifax is small and there’s a lot of seafood.
Tom himself is a great man. I just felt like he respected me. I never felt overworked or confused by the schedule. There was always a lot of laughter on the set and great craft services. Honestly, the food was good. I did a few of the Jesse Stone series of movies and people loved them. One of the last ones I did, I was flying from Vancouver where I was shooting The Andromeda Strain. I was on set one day when my sister called. She asked, “Viola, are you sitting down?” Oh my God!
“Did someone die, Dee.”
“Yes,” she said gravely. “Oh my God! Who?”
“Dwight.”
Dwight Palmisciano was the father of my sister Danielle’s three children, Derek, Daryn, and Tiana. He was twenty-eight. Dwight, my sister Danielle, and Tiana were asleep at my parents’ apartment. It was about one o’clock in the afternoon. Dwight was snoring really loudly and erratically. He was snoring so loud Danielle tried to wake him up to stop but he wouldn’t wake up. Tiana, who was three years old at the time, woke up and started shaking him. Danielle told Tiana to go wake up Grandma and Grandpa. Tiana ran in their room and said, “Grandma, Grandpa, my daddy’s neck is purple!” Then hell broke loose.
My parents ran into the room and tried to revive him. Danielle called 911 and my parents picked him up and laid him on the floor. My sister Anita lived upstairs with her girls and they came down. My dad kept saying, “Please, son, wake up! Please wake up!” Tiana just stood there petrified and wet her pants. My niece Breanna who lived upstairs was screaming. The paramedics came and tried again. He was already gone. It was an aneurysm. Everyone was catatonic. Danielle had the mammoth task of calling Dwight’s mom. What made it worse is that she had lost another son just a few weeks before.
Dwight was a little bit of a wayward soul. He and Danielle loved each other very much. They actually had issues with some drugs and keeping an apartment but still he gave Danielle some grounding and protection. When he died, a part of her went right with him. The thought that stays with me, other than my niece wetting her pants, was something Danielle told me. She said she saw his body at the mortuary. She got up on the gurney and just lay with him, holding him for hours. She couldn’t let him go.
A whole other layer of pain settled on our family. It just came like bullets. One more tragedy to overcome. And once again, life continues. It keeps moving. It moves through deaths, tragedies. It doesn’t wait for you to recover or heal before hitting again. No one had money to bury him, except me and Julius. Literally, the priest refused to give the eulogy until he was paid. Julius was in LA at the time and I was in Nova Scotia.
My sister Deloris told me later that she was with Tiana one day and she bought her a honey bun, which is a sugary Danish, and Tiana said to her, “That’s what my daddy called me, Honey Bunny.”
Meanwhile, life pushes ahead bringing back an old problem. Even though I had my fibroid surgery a few years ago, they were growing back. I was forced to use a low-dosage birth control eventually to control the bleeding. At one point, I was wearing two superplus tampons and two pads and was changing them constantly. I was performing Intimate Apparel around this time and at one point I was walking off the stage at intermission. Out of nowhere, I left a stream of blood on the path from the stage to my dressing room and it wasn’t even my time of month.
In the mist of my fibroids wreaking havoc and my career taking off, the pangs of wanting a child permeated every part of my life. Every child I saw evoked it. Every announcement about a pregnancy or an adoption fueled this growing need. Living for my career just didn’t fly with me because I was slowly seeing the limitations of it. You get to a city to do a job and . . . nothing. There’s loneliness, isolation, having to bond with people you normally wouldn’t but you do because they’re there.
I was very involved in church at this time. I was serving as an usher and going twice a week. Oasis Christian Church. It was a church that Julius had gone to years before he invited me when we started to date. He served in security. We loved it for its vibrancy and authenticity. I always felt the sermons were accessible. I got baptized in that church. On the night of my baptismal, Julius sat in the back because he was rushing from work and had just made it in. I had asked him a few days before, “Uhh . . . Julius? What am I going to do about my hair? I’m going to mess my weave up.”
“Vee! Don’t worry about that shit. Just put a Speedo on your head.”
“Julius . . . really? A Speedo? You want me to be baptized in a Speedo?”
“Vee. God ain’t looking at your Speedo! He just wants your heart.”
That was it. I got baptized in a Speedo . . . in front of a lot of people. And yes, there were some loving laughs, but it was an unforgettable experience. Julius clapped and shouted and then we went out to eat. I felt born again, renewed in the same body but a shifted spirit. I was officially different. I had changed. Everyone who knew me and spent time with me would stare and exclaim, “Man, Vee! You look great and seem so happy. You have changed!” “Wow, Vee . . . Julius has changed your life.” Yeah, he did, but I changed my life and Julius was the reward, my peace was the reward.
It was the sort of change that you don’t notice until someone says it. It’s like Rudolph running away from home because he felt unwanted and along the way he grows up. He’s got antlers. That one character trait that got him ostracized, his shiny red nose, now saves Christmas and becomes his sword. Well, I had grown my antlers. I had created a life, a home. I was standing on my own two feet and could take care of myself.
Right around this time, when Julius and I were just about to get married, I got two big jobs back-to-back. I booked Far from Heaven directed by Todd Haynes and Solaris directed by Steven Soderbergh. I shot Far from Heaven in NYC and Solaris in Los Angeles. The great part of Far from Heaven was working with Julianne Moore and Patricia Clarkson. I love broads. I love authentic, ballsy women who are unapologetic about who they are.
Solaris, just fun. We were a very small cast that clicked: George Clooney, Natascha McElhone, and Jeremy Davies. Soderbergh is probably the most relaxed director I’ve ever worked with. I mean it was as if we were just meeting at a restaurant by the ocean for a sandwich and a beer. Relaxed. Because he’s relaxed, you relax.
George was and is the nicest human being. At the premiere of Far from Heaven, Julius and I saw him and we told him that we were married. He was so happy for us and he said, “Listen, when you guys are ready, come to my villa in Italy. You can stay for free and I’ll send someone to pick you up from the airport.” What?
“I’m serious. I know a lot of people make promises out here but this is real. The villa is beautiful. It’ll be my honeymoon gift to you.” Julius and I were speechless.
We didn’t know how to call him and ask. This was before me and Julius were savvy in that area. He had even told our agent to contact his assistant. When we finally called, I had done Syriana with him and asked between scenes about that promise of his villa. He made me choose a date and called his assistant.
Well, when Julius and I arrived in Milan, flying over the Swiss Alps, we couldn’t speak. A car picked us up and when we got to the villa, I felt like I was in The Great Gatsby. The tall iron gates. The cobblestone pathway leading to the front door where we were greeted by his staff with umbrellas because it was raining. We tried to get our bags but they told us they would get them. We stood in the entryway of the twenty-two-room, eighteenth-
century villa that had frescoes on the ceiling, marble stairs, big overstuffed chairs. We stood in front of the staff, which was a family—husband, wife, and their eleven-year-old son. They asked us what we like to eat. Me and Julius? Eating? Julius said, “That’s so nice! We like fish and chicken.”
I said, “I love pasta! I love ice cream and pizza . . . and eggplant!” Their response was just “Okay.”
I mean . . . really. This woman was going to cook for us. “Uhh . . . so where do you want us to sleep?” Julius asked. “You can choose any room in the house.”
What?!
“Any room?” we asked.
They said we were the only guests.
Julius and I proceeded to look at every room in the house and settled on the biggest one with the canopy bed and fireplace. It overlooked Lake Como, the church, and the Alps. The bathroom was fully stocked. There was a toilet and a bidet. The staff told us that breakfast was casual but for the rest of the meals, they would ring the bell. Well . . . me and Julius would get dressed early every morning and sit on the edge of the bed, silent, waiting for that bell to ring like Pavlov’s dog and trying to look dignified running for that food.
Because let me tell you, the first meal was in a room that was built with big stones from floor to ceiling. There was an enormous wine cooler with hundreds of bottles of wine on the side. They had set the table with candlelight and bread. Then they proceeded to come in with a four-course meal that was beyond anything we could imagine. Every course was followed by a different bottle of wine that was presented for us to approve before they poured. The food was artistry. Julius and I teared up. We did. Julius kept saying, “Vee . . . how do you repay this? This is so nice. Can you believe he gave us this trip? George is . . . he’s something else.” I couldn’t speak.
We worked out in the part of the villa called the Factory. It was a separate house that had five more bedrooms and a garage with lots of motorcycles and cars. There was a lounge area bar and a state-of-the-art gym. There was great music George left. Every day and night was a different meal experience. One night the wife made pizza in a built-in pizza oven. I lost count of how many we consumed. Not one second of any day did we feel anything less than at home. We found out that George had the
smallest room in the house. We peeked in and it cemented our opinion of him being beyond compare. We took side trips to Venice, Florence, Milan. We wanted to tip the staff but George emphatically told us not to do that . . . several times.
We got back home renewed.
But what did I say about life? It never stops. We always hope that it lands in our favor. At least, that’s how stories play out onscreen. There is living life for pleasure, great moments, and living life waiting for doom and gloom. Life exists somewhere in the middle.
MaDaddy had a heart attack, a pretty massive one while I was shooting the movie Life Is Not a Fairytale in New Orleans. He was sitting down eating and fell over screaming my mom’s name. They had rushed him to the hospital. The next day he had quadruple bypass surgery. I was so nervous. I couldn’t get away but I was on that phone with family constantly, looking up everything about heart attacks, recovery from bypass surgery, life expectancy.
You become desperate when you think someone you love is dying. Realistically you’re not even taking any facts in that don’t support your need to keep your loved one alive. He woke up from bypass surgery the next day so happy to be alive! He kept saying, “Oh! I’m so happy to see y’all! Oh! I love you so much.” I was home for a short time after he had the quadruple bypass. I wanted to see him. Shopping with my sister one day, my cell phone rang. I rarely answered that phone.
People today say, “Viola, I was calling you for two years and you never answered.” I don’t know why I picked up the call. It must’ve been God. His doctor called to tell me they saw lesions on his liver and were pretty sure it was cancer. As he was recovering, he felt extraordinary back pain. It was first believed to be liver cancer, but it was pancreatic cancer that had metastasized, spread to his liver, lungs, kidneys. It was diagnosed in May. My father, who was just in recovery from the quadruple bypass, which he got through like a boss, was dying.
Deloris and I were silent. One of the things she said was, “Viola, Daddy is going to die in that nasty apartment they live in, infested with mice, roaches.” They had not wanted to live in another city. We hadn’t been able to get them a new place in Central Falls because so many people lived with them. No joke!! By this time, there were fourteen people living in an eight- hundred-square-foot space. There were better apartments in Central Falls
but not for fourteen people. MaDaddy was the stricter one in the house. He always said he just wanted it to be him and mom. He wanted a quieter life but he loved those kids, especially my sister Danielle’s newest baby, James. He just kept saying, “Daughter, I love this baby.”
We would try to get them homes, but there was too much activity in the house. Too many kids, friends, other addicts coming in and out, items being stolen. It was a minefield. I just couldn’t get them a better place to live. I wanted them to come live with me but they wouldn’t or couldn’t leave the children. So, instead we bought beds, appliances, paid bills, food, phone bills. Their life was such chaos trying to raise all those grandchildren: kids out of control; their friends in and out all times of night. I constantly tried to furnish the apartment.
The most beautiful furniture and best appliances would get broken. I helped. My sister Deloris helped. My sister Dianne helped. But there was a lot of need, a lot of people. Now, my daddy’s life was coming to an end at seventy.
Deloris was crying and spoke words that triggered healing in me. “Viola, Dad hasn’t really done anything with his life.”
I thought, We have given them trips to Jamaica. I’ve flown them out to California, to Atlantic City. “What were his dreams?” my sister asked, crying. “What were his hopes? He only had a fifth-grade education.”
What became apparent to me as he was dying was that we were his dream; his children and grandchildren were his dream. For a whole generation of Black people we were the dream. We were their hope. We were the baton they were passing as they were sinking into the quicksand of racism, poverty, Jim Crow, segregation, injustice, family trauma, and dysfunction.
Deloris and I had to tell him he was dying. I had to gather my courage to tell him. We went to my parents’ place and I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t tell him. But he already knew. Over and over again during this time my father apologized to my mom. “Mae Alice, all that stuff I did to you back in the day, you know I’m sorry. Right?”
“I know that, Dan,” she said.
And he said again, “I am sorry.” He was sewing it up. Closing out all unfinished business.
They had stayed together forty-eight years.
My father did not want to go into hospice. He did not want to go to a hospital. I was trying to take care of everything, and at the same time grieving myself. I told my mom, “MaMama, if you took him to hospice he would feel more comfortable. They have everything, they can even help him with the pain.”
“He don’t wanna go. He don’t wanna go,” she said.
He lay on that daybed and screamed in pain. He was down to eighty-six pounds and it was a horrible sight to witness. It was a daybed in the middle of the teeny tiny kitchen. He couldn’t nor did he want to be moved. They were trying to provide palliative care, pain management at home. He was wasting away in agony, in the crowded apartment. He was so tiny the visiting nurse could not find a vein. They had to give him liquid morphine. As he was dying, as if it couldn’t get worse, someone stole his morphine. There were so many people coming in and out of the house and drug addiction is in my family. Dementia had set in. His mouth was dry. Every five minutes he would sit up and scream, “Mae Alice!”
“Dan!! I’m right here!! Tell me what you want.” But he would just sit there and she would hold him.
I came home because I wanted to be there. Because I lived three thousand miles away, I didn’t realize what their day-to-day life was. I saw so much foot traffic in and out of the apartment—“friends” of people I didn’t know. Daddy was covered in waste that my mom and nephew cleaned up, barely taking water, screaming in pain at times. Boxes were stacked from the floor to the ceiling because my sister Anita had moved back in. There was literally no room to sit down in a chair. That’s how cramped it was.
Daddy’s condition was so bad that I finally called my mom one morning and said, “He’s got to go to hospice. They can manage his pain. I know he doesn’t want to go, but he’s got to.”
“Viola, I’ve already, I’ve already called them. I already made the decision,” she said. She sounded so exhausted.
“Okay. I’m on my way,” I said. I drove over, with my niece who had spent the night with me. The hospice people came, carried him down into the ambulance. We were all wailing. My father was not coherent. His eyes were open, but dead. I followed the ambulance in my car with my niece and nephew. I got to the hospice facility and MaMama was already there crying over Daddy’s bed.
“Viola, the nurse told me I got to tell him to go. I can’t do that. I can’t tell him to go. I can’t do it. I can’t do it.”
“It’s okay, Ma. I’ll tell him.” I knew he was holding on because of my mom.
He was doing the Cheyne-Stokes, the labored breathing of the dying. His hand was up. In hindsight, I know he was telling me to hold his hand. He had just gotten there. I was stunned that I was witnessing the last breaths of my father. I wasn’t thinking of the fights, the abuse, the cheating . . . I was thinking this is the man who participated in giving me life. This is my daddy and I love him.
“Daddy, it’s okay if you go,” I told him. “You don’t have to be in pain anymore, all right?” He just kept breathing . . . almost fighting for every bit of life. “God loves you. Jesus loves you. They’re waiting for you, Daddy. You did such a good job. We all love you so much. I’ll take care of Mom. I’ll take care of . . .” And I named all my nieces and nephews. “You don’t have to worry about anything, Daddy. Okay?”
He arrived there at 12:05. I was by his bed at 12:10. The doctors came in to examine him and then talked to us. They were so compassionate: “It’s probably going to be another day and a half and he will be gone.”
He survived a quadruple bypass, only to die a few months later of cancer.
As soon as the doctors had spoken those words, the nurse came, pointed to my mom, and said, “Mrs. Davis, can you come with us, please?” I followed her and brought my niece and nephew with me. The nurse said, “Mrs. Davis, can you stand here, please?” and put a stethoscope on my dad’s chest. She held my mom’s hand and said, “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Davis, but he’s gone.” Five nurses stood behind me, my niece, and my nephew, as we each reacted in our own way. My nephew held Daddy’s hand and mumbled, “Grandpa, no.” My niece cried. MaMama held his hand and looking into his face repeated, “Oh, Dan. Oh, Dan. Oh, Dan.”
He died at 12:31. He didn’t even last a half hour in hospice. Afterward everything happened fast. You have a lifetime with someone, memories— good, bad, devastating, filled with love, every freaking kind of memory— and then you see a body. The nurse said, “Mrs. Davis, we have to know where to send the body. We need to know in the next half hour or so, because the body will start decomposing.”
That’s when Julius, the provider, protector kicked in. Julius had been through it before. I phoned him that my dad had passed, and he said, “Oh my God. Oh my God. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Okay, I’m going to catch the first plane. This is what you have to do.” He gave me step-by-step instructions. Within three months of meeting him, he had insisted I get insurance on my parents, saying, You got to get life insurance on your parents. The way their life is, all the stress, Viola, I’m telling you, your parents can go from really good health to bad health within a very short period of time. And when it happens, it happens fast and no one has the resources. Get life insurance because when it happens, you will be devastated. I had listened to him and got life insurance on my two parents. When Daddy died, Julius said, “Viola, call the life insurance company, tell them your father has died, where you’re going to have the funeral, the address of the mortuary and they will pay for it immediately.”
“It’s that simple?” I asked, between sobs. “It’s that simple,” he said.
Viola, who was the most shy, had the most social anxiety, used to have the smallest voice, was suddenly at the funeral home with my mom, filling out the death certificate, giving all the information, picking out the casket. My sister Deloris wrote the obituary. “I’ll do that part, Viola,” she said.
Then I needed to buy clothes for all the nieces and nephews. No one had any clothes to wear to the funeral. I don’t mean nice clothes. I mean clothes
—clean and presentable. I had a day or so to outfit ten people and inform as many people as possible that Daddy died.
The funeral was devastating, but they did a great job with Daddy. He looked beautiful. Because he was so sick, he was emaciated, but they made him look great. That sounds macabre but it helped me a lot to look down at my dad and see my dad, not the sick, dying dad, but my dad. We got a suit together. We put pictures of all the grandkids in the casket. As we closed the casket, I looked down and saw he didn’t have any shoes on. I got so mad. I thought, We gave you his stuff to dress him. Why doesn’t he have on any shoes? and then realized, Viola, he doesn’t need any shoes.
My dad, who only had a fifth-grade education, didn’t make it into history books except mine, had a turned-out homegoing. Everyone came to his funeral. We had a police escort to the grave site with I don’t know how many police cars and officers in full regalia, usually designated for dignitaries. That’s how much my dad meant to them. We had lived in the
city since 1965. At funerals, no matter how much you think you know someone, you see a whole part of their life at the end. People sharing memories, stories that you never heard. I’m sure there were memories that would’ve surprised him because how many people make themselves vulnerable enough to share how you touched them? That’s something that you cannot always see when they’re alive.
When my dad passed, part of my heart went with him that’s never coming back. I feel the same way about Julius. I feel the same way about my child, my mom, sisters. It’s one heart. They are completely entwined in my spirit.
I remember seeing an episode of Golden Girls where Bea Arthur, who plays Dorothy, responds to a question from Rose, played by Betty White. “What do you want in your next husband?” asked Rose. And Dorothy says, “I want someone to grow old with.” That’s what most people don’t want. They want the young. They want the cute. When you get older, you change. You change physically. You change emotionally and a whole other area of life rears its head. Your body slows down, retirement; death becomes all too real. A lot of people are not in it for the long haul. They’re not in it for the changes the life journey brings—the health scares, death. I do want someone to grow old with. I understand those elements. I saw it with my mom when she had to sit next to Daddy’s deathbed. That’s marriage. That’s love. That’s commitment.
I found out weeks later when I had the courage to look up how to comfort the dying that they don’t feel heat or cold in the end. They usually have visions of people in their life who had passed before them. They have them because they need permission to cross over. You have to validate that. You keep their lips moist and give them little sips of water if they can take it. Most importantly, the number one comfort is this . . . hold their hand.
My daddy was gone.
How can life keep going after this? Why is no one celebrating, honoring the life that was Dan Davis? All that kept playing out in my mind was, The purpose of life is to live it.
The purpose of life is to live it.
