Last Months of Sandy Simon: A Film of Tears, Triumph

It was only natural to expect a tear-jerker. Here was Sandy Simon, a dynamic redhead with her four sons, a handsome and wealthy husband, everything in life going for her until, at 47, she was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia. The prognosis: three to five years to live.

And now, a film about her last months, her efforts to create a hospice movement in Los Angeles, her family and how they coped with the anxiety and slow torture of losing someone they loved. As movies go, this could have been grim--not to mention a weird invasion of a family’s privacy during an incredibly difficult and personal time.

But it is not. Thoughtful and moving, yes, often brutally honest; but not maudlin, not a seven-hanky weeper. Maybe because that wasn’t Sandra Simon’s style. If anything, the 47-minute film, written and directed by Dan E. Weisburd (whose 1968 documentary “A Way Out of the Wilderness” was nominated for an Academy Award), is a primer--not on how to die, but how to live out the last days of a terminal illness with grace and dignity.

“I wanted to preserve the passion my mother felt for the hospice movement,” said Daniel Simon, the film’s executive producer. His manner intense, insistent, he looked at the notes he’d made to himself before the interview at his father’s home in Beverly Hills.

‘To Say It Right’

He’d thought so much about all of this, yet he wanted to say it right so that people would understand what this film was all about and why he’d wanted it made.

“It seemed to me that so much of what she could give . . . her counsel, her wisdom, her teaching . . . would go with her if we didn’t have a film. Of course, it’s not only an educational tool, but also a beautiful memory that we’ll always have.”

He paused, glanced at his father, John B. Simon (who’s known as Jack), sitting next to him on the flower-print sofa. “If I’d written a book, it would have been easier on the family. It might have been the same if she (his mother) wasn’t so attractive to look at, so articulate, so passionate. She wasn’t coached or anything, but she did it (speaking to the camera) so well, don’t you think?”

A Golden Family

The Simons would have seemed a golden family. Married when Sandra Bernard was 17 and Jack Simon 24, they started with nothing and together built two companies, National Auto Glass and West Coast Glass Distributors. They had four sons--Mark, now 36; Ken, 28; Jon, 27; Daniel, 23--with whom they were always close.

As the companies became more successful, the Simons lived a progressively more comfortable life. They traveled, entertained and 10 years ago moved from the San Fernando Valley to a sprawling, beautifully decorated home in Beverly Hills. But even before that, Sandy Simon, who had initially worked full time as vice president of the firms, was able to pull away and pursue other interests. A voracious reader, she began exploring dream therapy, meditation and parapsychology. She took classes at UCLA and eventually, with the Rev. Clifton King and clinical psychologist Loriene Chase, began conducting what they called New Dimension Seminars.

Dan Simon was 14 when his mother’s illness was diagnosed; 21 when she died just a few days after attending his graduation from UC Berkeley in 1983. The film was his idea. He produced, financed (with $50,000 of his own money and $10,000 solicited from friends), appeared in it and now is marketing the film in cassette form for $200.

Proceeds above the initial investment will be divided equally, he has decided, among the Hospice of Los Angeles, the Sandra Simon Leukemia Research Fund and the Sandra Simon Hospice Volunteer Training Program at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Hospice Program.

What audience does he expect for “And If I Die . . . “? “Hospices, hospitals, universities and anyone else who might be interested. It’s for people who are involved in care of the terminally ill, and also for those experiencing a terminal illness and their families.”

Curious Experience

The making of “And If I Die . . .” had to be a curious experience for everyone involved. Their agreement was immediate, said Jack Simon. “My attitude since my sons were grown has been that I’d support them in anything.” Though he had some idea what the presence of a camera in their lives would be like, he added with a wry smile at his son, “I didn’t know it would be quite so revealing.”

Some of it was familiar stuff: home-movie footage of Sandy Simon in her swimsuit playing Frisbee with her children, Jack Simon playing the trombone at a family party, Sandy with her arms around grandson Jason, now 8, as they looked at scenery during a family trip to Hawaii.

But there are also scenes filmed especially for the movie: Sandra Simon and clergyman-author Clifton King discussing her feelings as they walk arm in arm around the grounds of Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills; Jack Simon telling his son Mark and daughter-in-law Joan that they can’t see Sandy because they’ve had a cold; Joan, the sons and Sandra’s brother Arthur Bernard complaining to each other that they practically had to show a ticket if they wanted to see Sandy; psychologist Dr. Jack Haer telling Jack Simon that it’s time the family let go.

‘The Dignity of Living’

And because this film is definitely a plug for the hospice movement, there are interviews with several other terminally ill patients, a hospice nurse, a volunteer. There’s Sandy Simon’s narration explaining how “hospice started to become my passion. It represented to me the dignity of living as well as the dignity in dying. For me, death is a transition, a rebirth and God’s loving will. But how I would die was overwhelming for me to face. The knowledge that I could have hospice care set me totally free. I became so passionately involved that I couldn’t even think or talk or become involved in or do anything except learn about hospice. From that day on the journey started, the hospice journey started.”

The hospice movement: As conceived in London in the 1500s, hospices were way stations for travelers and health-care centers offering hospitality, medical attention and a place to rest for impoverished disease sufferers. The modern hospice is a place where a patient is made as comfortable as possible during the last stages of a fatal illness.

A hospice can be either in a home or in a special facility; but unlike hospitals, where the emphasis is on keeping the patient alive, hospice goals are alleviating pain and loneliness and helping the patient and family maintain a normal life style for as long as possible. Care is one-on-one, involving doctors, nurses and volunteers who are trained to deal with the physical, spiritual, social, psychological and economic stresses experienced by both patient and family during the final stages of illness, death and bereavement.

Final Adventure

As Daniel Simon talked about his mother, Jack Simon interspersing and clarifying, it would seem that Sandra Simon accepted her cancer as sort of a final project, even adventure. In an interview before her death, she said she never experienced the classic stages of denial, anger, resentment that some specialists say are typical of patients with terminal illnesses. Rather, she was concerned about how she was going to die--if she could do it without great pain and without causing great suffering to her family.

Once she heard about the hospices--from Sister Carol at Casa de Maria, a retreat in Santa Barbara where Sandra Simon often went to meditate--she was able to put what was happening to her in perspective and get on with life.

Finding the hospice philosophy intriguing, she set out to establish a local program and recruited her family to the cause. She conducted informational meetings for hospital administrators, established a nonprofit organization, Hospice of Los Angeles, which now serves as an educational and referral source on hospice care, and worked directly with administrators and doctors at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to establish its hospice program, which provides both inpatient and home care hospice services. She also counseled newly diagnosed leukemia patients, seeing them at her home.

Record Fund Raising

Jack Simon, meanwhile, decided he wanted to spend more time with his wife. He sold his businesses, devoting half his time to real estate development and the other half to Sandy Simon and her projects. He also joined the Leukemia Society and served as its president for two years, doing record fund raising.

As far as father and son are concerned, however, it was Sandy Simon who kept the family propped up. “My late wife was an unusual woman,” said Jack Simon. “She was always the rock of the family. We were able to cope only because she was able to cope. She set the example.”

If ever there was a time to communicate, Sandy Simon believed, this was it. No subject was too sensitive.

But for all the talking they did, for all the love expressed, “it never became easy,” said Dan Simon, to live with what was happening to his mother. He was the youngest son and the one who, because she was no longer working full time, had the most time with her. He was a boy who so adored his mom that he studied Middle-Eastern religions and watched “As the World Turns” so he could share these things with her.

‘A Lot of Pressure’

“Then when I’m 14, she contracts leukemia and that becomes my life. There’s a lot of pressure to say the right things, do the right things, to be a good son. No one places it on you. You just feel it.

“I think it was symbolic that she was so determined to attend my college graduation. It’s a way of acknowledging that her baby had become a man.”

Jack Simon nodded. “When we returned from Berkeley, she told me: ‘I’ve done it all now.’ And a few days later she was unconscious.”

During those last 6 1/2 years though, every day was a celebration, said Dan Simon. Not only birthdays, but half-birthdays were celebrated. Every family ritual was relished. There was a buoyancy to life, but at the same time an undercurrent of dread. Would they get through this day or would there be yet another terrifying emergency trip to the hospital? Undoubtedly, having money helped. “It enabled us to have the best medical care and attention. We were able to hire people to help us--a housekeeper, round-the-clock nurses when we needed them,” said Jack Simon.

“And there was the family vacation in Hawaii,” added Dan. “Not many families could do that. But as my dad once said, it doesn’t take money to have quality in your life. It’s not the luxuries in your life that count, but the way you’re living.”

In the end, Sandy Simon was cared for by the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Hospice Program.

Home Not for Sale

Since her death two years ago, Jack Simon has devoted more time to his real estate investments, though lately he’s been joking that he enjoyed making the film so much, he’d really like to get into acting. He has no plans to sell their home: “It’s my sanctuary.”

Daniel Simon, who graduated with a degree in social sciences from UC Berkeley and worked for a year as a real estate appraiser in San Mateo before concentrating on finishing the film, recently moved with his girlfriend to an apartment in Brentwood and is hoping to get into film production. Eldest son Mark is a bail bondsman, his wife Joan a teacher. Ken and Jon Simon are opening six Sizzler restaurants in New Mexico.

As for “If I Die . . . , “ maybe, Dan Simon acknowledged, the same amount of money could have gone directly to cancer research. His dad had already donated $175,000 to that. “This, I think, will reach more people. It’s just a different way of helping.”

There’s more, however. And it’s unspoken between father and son this warm summer morning, the day after the film’s first semipublic screening for friends and staff at Cedars-Sinai. It’s quiet, restrained, yet there--a pride in the memorial they’ve created, the culmination of her family’s love for Sandy Simon.

Information about “And If I Die . . . “ can be obtained by writing Daniel Arthur Simon Productions, P.O. Box 49811 , Los Angeles, Calif. 90049.