Bewitched and Beyond: The Fan Who Came to Dinner (23 page)

Only twice did I ever see her really fall apart, because that just wasn’t her style. Kasey was always very accepting and knew how to proceed with her life.

We were given tons of exercises to do to try and help her be able to swallow again. The “K” sound, for instance, is formed when the throat comes together at the point where it swallows. So one of her exercises was to repeat words after me that ended in a “K” sound: truck, black, pick, Mark, Mike, Quack, (that was one of her favorites) and we’d always end that exercise with “DICK YORK”! We always tried to make it fun and sometimes would find ourselves laughing through the whole thing! Especially when she would holler F*CK!

Our last Halloween together was actually a fun time as well. I bought tickets to see a King Tut exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum. The day was dreary and the weather kept threatening rain, but the air was still comfortable for late October. After we had gone through the exhibit, we walked over to the Marie Callender’s Restaurant right next to the La Brea Tar Pits on Wilshire Blvd. We sat together on the same side of the booth, as we had for so long, so I could feed Kasey through the G-Tube without a lot of people noticing.

We decided to order our favorite Cosmopolitan drinks. This was the first time I had ever put one straight into her G-Tube, and the effect was darn near immediate!

We ate… or rather,
I
ate, and we laughed at everything and probably had the best time we had had, since all the cancer crap had begun! It truly is still one of my favorite memories.

Such a long distance from the first Halloween we spent together.

That December was one of the hardest and busiest months I’ve ever spent. Kasey would be turning 80 and she wanted a party… a party to say “thank you, and I love you” to all her family and friends.

By this point, I was totally exhausted and told her kids that I just couldn’t handle it by myself. But as it turned out, I pretty much ended up having to do it all anyway. SueAne offered her lovely backyard, so we got heat lamps and rented tables and chairs.

The decorations would be pink and white linens, a pink poinsettia placed in the center of every table, and hundreds of glittery clear snowflakes in several sizes.

At the last moment, a bit of inspiration came over me and I got 80 silver frames in various sizes and made copies of 80 different pictures of Kasey from her birth to now. The photos, along with tea lights, were placed everywhere.

The food was served inside, buffet style, and sat on a table that was also loaded with pink poinsettias and black and white pictures in silver frames.

It was lovely.

Several of the Ashers came, as well as the Fox’s. This was also the last Christmas we would get to spend with Bernard and Jacque’s daughter, Valerie. I got in touch with a couple of
Bewitched
fans (who have since become close friends): Mark Simpson, his friend Ross, and Ross’ friend Paul, to come down from Seattle and help out with the bartending and picture taking.

Poor Mark Simpson, being such a huge
Bewitched
fan, he seemed incredibly flustered when I asked him to pick Kasey up for the party that night and bring her to SueAne’s. When he arrived at our condo, he found her standing outside in her fur coat waiting on the curb! This was his first introduction to Louise Tate!

I spent days prior at SueAne’s decorating for the party, at the same time decorating our own condo for Christmas, all the while trying to keep up with Kasey’s schedule, as well as working at Rose Marie’s!

And then there was Wink.

Our little dog had been sick, and had been trying to tell me for days that it was time for him to leave. I just couldn’t bear the thought. I used to take him over to SueAne’s every day while I was decorating, and put him on a towel in the sun. I even made his favorite meal — pan browned chicken, and would try and feed it to him. But nothing was working. Wink was slipping away.

I finally made myself face up to it, so I took Wink to the vet.

I was told what I had been afraid to hear. The time had come to say goodbye to my little boy. Kasey’s daughter Monika had been driving her to a doctor’s appointment and turned around to come back and be with me.

It was all so unbearable.

It was also Kasey’s birthday, December 15th. Luckily her party was not until the following Sunday.

I had to let Wink go in the midst of all this other trouble and heartache.

I will forever be grateful to Monika. She paid to have Wink cremated, and I still have him with me. Someday I will scatter his few ashes over the lake here in Calabasas where he so loved to walk.

One night, not too long after the party, but still before Christmas, Kasey and I came home to find a gift on the front porch. Sitting behind that gift was a black cat with white feet.

That cat, who was wearing a name tag that said “Toonsy,” instantly came up to me and would not leave my side. It was strange.

After Kasey went in, I sat there on the porch for more than an hour with that cat on my lap. He seemed to want to comfort me as I cried. Inside, the condo never looked lovelier, but it wasn’t a very Merry Christmas.

I tried to take the cat home to its owner, a lady named Judy Unell, who lived behind us in the Motion Picture Home. She was 90 years old at the time but you’d never know it!

But that cat would not leave. He wouldn’t come in the house, yet he wouldn’t leave. Both my neighbor Anna, whose 46 year old fiancé was fighting adult leukemia, and I began feeding Toonsy. He became like therapy to us. Anna was going through the cancer treatments with her fiancé, while I was going through the treatments with Kasey. We’d even run into each other from time to time at the hospitals.

On one particularly cold night, I peeked out the door and found Toonsy sitting there. I opened the door and told him to “come in.”

He finally did and he never left. He slept right next to me from then on.

That was the Christmas I gave Kasey the matching earrings to the heart shaped diamond and ruby necklace I had given her on our tenth anniversary. I placed them in a silver painted walnut shell and hung them on the tree.

A stunning KR at the first annual
TV Land Awards.

Me and Shirley (Partridge) Jones.

Bill Asher, KR and me at Bill’s star dedication.

Kasey and Henry!

Rose Marie and Bernard at the Stagecoach Inn in 2005.

Greeting you at the front door was SueAne Langdon, dressed in a gorgeous, brown, silk bustle-gown.