Hello Darlin' (31 page)

A few days later we drove up to Heaven. As we passed through the front gate, my beeper
went off. Maj looked at me; I thought, That didn’t take long. I called in immediately,
but they said it wasn’t them. It might’ve been a wrong number. Later that afternoon
the beeper went off again at the same spot on the hill and I figured out it was the
radar tower. The microwaves triggered the beeper. It happened often to my “fuzz buster”
when I drove up and down that road.

As we waited, Maj and I tried to enjoy every moment. We spent time with the people
we loved. Our kids and grandchildren came up to the house. Family and friends called
night and day, including my sister, Heller, whose talks with Maj helped keep her strong
and positive.

One day I was in the Jacuzzi with Richard and asked what his mother had been up to
lately. He laughed.

“Lar, my mother died a year ago,” he said. “She’s having lunch with your mother today.”

I knew that. It was my memory going as a result of my liver not working properly.

About two weeks after he’d diagnosed the cancer, Makowka talked to me about the possibility
of performing an intermediate procedure to buy more time while we waited. There were
risks, none of them pleasant. Before making a decision, I asked if I could go to Vancouver
with Patrick on a fishing trip at the end of July.

“Sure, go on your fishing trip,” Makowka said. “By the time you get back we’ll have
a recommendation.”

*   *   *

I made arrangements in case I had to get back to L.A. in a hurry, but the private
jet I had on standby throughout the four-day trip never had to budge from the tarmac.
Instead I had a wonderful, relaxing time with Patrick even though I didn’t catch a
single fish. It was like all our previous fishing excursions—a nonstop laugh riot,
only this time minus the booze.

When I got back, Makowka told me that he wanted to do the procedure. On August 5,
he performed a chemoembolization, a onetime procedure that killed the tumor with chemo
and blocked the blood vessel feeding it. I came out of the hourlong operation fine.
I kept a positive attitude. But it was impossible to predict how long my health would
last. It was only a matter of time. As Makowka said, there was only one sure thing
about my condition—I needed a new liver.

*   *   *

“The wait is hard,” Dallas Taylor told me. “It’s like being a condemned man on death
row waiting to hear if the governor will grant a reprieve.”

In 1990, Dallas had been in the same position I was in. He wore a beeper and hoped
a matching donor liver could be found before it was too late. Makowka had performed
his transplant surgery too. Dallas told me what to expect from the operation and was
a great inspiration.

So was David Crosby, who filled me in on the details of the seven-hour transplant
operation he underwent at UCLA in November 1994. I got together with David for lunch
and he proudly lifted up his shirt and showed me his scar, a huge incision that indicated
the surgeons split you open as wide as a frog in biology class. He also told me about
the side effects, like temporary pain and discomfort, your lack of immunity, the danger
of rejection, and how a buildup of fluids cause your scrotum to blow up about ten
times its normal size.

Nothing I heard during those pep talks scared me. Long after the operation was over,
some people said I’d seemed frightened, but I don’t remember feeling it. I didn’t
want to be in pain. Nor did I want to die. But the operation didn’t scare me. Death
isn’t the end of everything. It’s just another step.

“Did you have your tour yet?” Dallas asked one day.

No, that came next. About a week after the chemoembolization, I familiarized myself
with what was going to happen when I was operated on. At Makowka’s suggestion, I toured
the hospital’s ICU ward, where I’d be taken after my surgery, and I met Leonard’s
entire staff, from nurses to psychiatrists. I had no idea of the number of people
involved.

There was also a slender black man who stood in the background. His name was Dan Simpson.
He had an air of elegance that made him seem different. I asked what he did.

“I am the harvester,” he said.

“Harvester?”

“Yes, I go out and talk to the family of the potential donor and try to persuade them
to let me bring back the organ.”

I didn’t get to know him much beyond that brief conversation, but
I never forgot the profound effect meeting him had on me. Maybe because this gentle
soul was the closest anyone waiting for a transplant ever got to the most important
person in the whole procedure, and of course you never meet that one. The donor.

*   *   *

It’s worth emphasizing I had no idea when, or even if, I’d ever receive a suitable
liver. But we continued making preparations at the hospital, like special security,
ensuring Maj would have her own room while I was there, and protecting the privacy
of my hospital records from the gossip rags. It’s irritating we had to go to such
lengths, but if not, we were sure everything from my X rays to urine samples would
end up in the tabloids.

Then on April 14, my beeper went off. It was about eleven o’clock at night, and Maj
and I were in bed, reading. She bolted up and somehow her sister Bebe, who was in
the guest house, heard it too, and everyone started clucking around the house. I called
in to the hospital.

“Sorry, Mr. Hagman. I dialed the wrong number.”

“Okay, thanks,” I said, shrugging at Maj.

When I told Maj it had been a wrong number, the two of us sighed almost simultaneously,
clicked off the lights, and went to sleep.

Eight days later I was up early. While Maj visited with my sister, Heller, who was
in from New York, I went down to shoot on the skeet range Maj had built for me down
the hill near the helicopter pad. I hit my share of clay pigeons, which made it an
excellent morning. Then it got even better. I was in the middle of the driveway on
my way back to the house when Maj called out that Leonard Makowka was on the phone.
He said he had good news and bad news.

“Oh?” I said.

“The bad news is that I’d planned to call you today to invite you to go fishing next
weekend in Vancouver. I heard the salmon are running.”

“I was just up there. They sure weren’t running then.”

“It doesn’t matter. I can’t invite you—not this weekend anyway.”

“Why not?”

“That’s the good news. We have a perfect liver for you. It’s on its way. We’re sending
a helicopter for you. Can you be ready in half an hour?”

I’d been on the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) list thirty-three days. Now
I had less than thirty-three minutes to get to the hospital.

Right then I paused, the first of countless such pauses I’ve made since, to think
about the person whose liver would soon be mine. You aren’t permitted to know anything
about that person. Nothing. Not whether they’re male or female, black or white, rich
or poor, happy or unhappy, and I think that’s good. It’s proof that we’re all the
same, all here to help one another if we can. I thanked that person profusely for
signing their donor card.

The helicopter touched down on the landing pad beyond the driveway. The pilot smiled
and helped stow our small bags. Within two minutes, we were airborne, heading south.
I’ll always remember my little sister, looking so worried, standing on the driveway
and waving to me as we flew toward L. A. Maj and I held hands the whole way and looked
at the scenery below. It was so pretty. I turned to Maj at one point and said, “What
a nice day.”

Then we landed at the hospital. The entire flight had taken twenty-six minutes.

At that point, it was kind of like being in the theater and hearing the stage manager
say, “Show time.” Michel met me at the helicopter pad and took me on a roundabout
way into the hospital to avoid any paparazzi who might’ve been tipped off that I was
on my way. Then began the long process of being prepped for major surgery. Between
7:30 and 8
P.M.
, the helicopter landed with the harvester and his precious cargo. Maj was chatting
with Michel while I talked with Richard on my cell phone when a young man came in
and told me he was there to take me down to the operating room.

“I’ve got to go,” I said. “My driver’s here.”

My attitude couldn’t have been better. I was in a great mood, joking with Maj, not
troubled by an ounce of fear. On the way to the OR, I pulled the sheet over my head
so nobody could snap a picture of me. I kept wiggling my feet so they wouldn’t think
I was a corpse. In the OR, I was given an enema. I’ve heard of high colonics, but
this was ridiculous. Neither Dallas nor David had mentioned it. I hoped that enema
wasn’t going to be my last thought. Because then I got a shot, the first round of
anesthesia, and before anyone could tell me to count backward, I was out of there.

*   *   *

It was about 11
P.M.
when Makowka actually began the operation. During the sixteen-hour surgery, much
longer than originally planned, he played music to keep everyone’s attention sharp.
Later, he told me the first song he’d played, as he made the incision, had been the
theme from
Dallas.

Periodically Leonard or one of the other doctors left the room and gave Maj an update.
It’s impossible to predict what’s going to happen in the operating room, but with
each report he assured Maj everything was going well. The cancer hadn’t spread and
the new liver appeared to be a perfect match. There were a few minor complications.
Leonard had to rebuild the bile duct connection to my liver, and he needed three hours
to clean out gallstones. Earlier, I’d asked him to save the stones so my artist friend
Barton Benes could turn them into a ring, and he happily told Maj that I’d be able
to wear my ring.

Finally, late in the afternoon on August 23, Makowka came out and told Maj the operation
was over. The surgery had been successful and I had been taken to recovery. But he
added the cautionary words she already knew from previous discussions: I wasn’t out
of the woods yet. The first forty-eight hours after an operation like this were crucial
and would indicate my chances for making it out of the hospital.

*   *   *

I remember opening my eyes and seeing Makowka and Maj staring down at me. The operation
had finished five hours earlier. I was groggy from the anesthesia. I had a tube in
my nose, one down my mouth, two in my side, one in each arm, one in my groin, a catheter
on my dick, and I was on an aspirator. I was also connected to an automatic blood
pressure machine. I remembered Dallas had mentioned being frustrated by his inability
to speak, but I drew on more than twenty years of not talking on Sundays and relaxed.

“You’re doing great,” Makowka said.

Then I connected with Maj.

“You look just like a machine,” she said.

I made up some mantras and meditated on my favorite mental image, a field of mustard
in flower, that wonderful bright yellow with a red rose in the middle. I concentrated
on breathing. I’d take two deep breaths, then drift off into a kind of sleep. I felt
in a state of limbo.

At some point they gave me a piece of paper and pen and asked me to draw a Texas star.
I thought I did, but when I saw it later it looked more like an amoeba. Makowka asked
if I would autograph the picture, but he was just joking. He told me I’d come through
the operation with flying colors and to enjoy the rest.

I drifted through the heavily medicated first couple of days in ICU, spending most
of that hazy time focused on my celestial song. Everyone has their own unique song,
an inner melody that fuses each of us to the deep, modulating, harmonious hum of the
celestial orchestra that’s the collective energy of everything that’s ever lived and
ever going to live. It’s our life force. The power of the universe. Think of the aurora
borealis. When I see those lights, I can’t help but say, “My God, I’m part of that.”

Later, when I told Dallas about that song, he said, “Oh yeah, that’s your muse.”

When I asked if he had experienced anything like that, he said, “Sooner or later,
everybody does.”

The days I spent in ICU meditating on my song gave me a feeling that was ecstatically
happy and familiar—and it confirmed what I’d always suspected, that every one of us
living creatures is part of a collective energy that is also ecstatically happy and
familiar. The culmination of that energy is love. It’s with us now, it always has
been, and it always will be. Every one of us has this familiarity. We know it. The
problem is, we bury it under so much apprehension and worry.

But on medication I was able to blend into the bigger picture, the way I had done
on my first acid trip. I also glimpsed over the edge of this level of existence into
the next, and there was that person again, welcoming me but indicating it was not
yet the time to cross over. Yet I was allowed to understand there was more to life.
This was not the end. There were more levels, an infinite number of levels, of existence,
each one adding to the hum of the cosmic orchestra, as if we’re always spiraling upward
until we reach a state of atomic bliss, like the pleasant chime of a triangle being
played.

Every religion that I know of tries to figure out the same question—what’s the meaning
of life?—and each one offers a different path to the same answer, which is love.

The meaning of life is love.

So don’t worry.

Be happy.

Feel good.

A
fter two days in ICU, they took the breathing tube out of my mouth, allowing me to
talk. According to Maj, who stayed by my side, I said the same thing over and over.

“I am so lucky,” I said.

“Yes, you are.”

“I love people,” I said in a singsongy voice.

“I know you do.”

I also talked about starting a rock-and-roll band with Crosby and Dallas. I wanted
to call it the Grateful Livers and we could play my celestial song.