They tell me I died, but I don’t remember any of it. : A Day At a Time

Pearlie-May Simons believes she has died at least once, but doesn’t discuss the incident in terms of awe or beauty, as others have described what they call their “death experiences.”

Sitting in her tiny North Hollywood apartment smoking a long cigarette, she, in fact, categorizes dying in growling invective as “one big pain in the behind,” although she does not say behind.

“I didn’t see no damned lights at the end of the tunnel and I didn’t see God in a snowy-white gown,” she says, squinting through the cigarette smoke. “I just puked all over myself and passed out.”

There was more to the description, but the constraints of taste forbid elaboration. If I were to quote her verbatim, I would end up working midnight to morning in Arleta.

Pearlie-May Simons, who describes herself as a dirty old broad, does not mince words.

Her real name is Pearl, but acquaintances call her Pearlie-May, as in, “Pearlie-May, is it necessary to communicate in gutter language?”

“Damned fuddy-duddies,” Pearlie-May says.

She began writing me a year ago. I could not believe that a woman of 68 could be so consistently vulgar and so devilishly witty.

Perhaps, I said to myself, she represents a form of remote grossierete, where one is capable, through postal distance, of shucking inhibition in a manner not unlike the ambivalent behavior of Jekyll and Hyde.

But this wasn’t so in the case of Pearlie-May.

“Shucks,” she said to me as I entered her apartment, “I don’t know why the hell you’d want to talk to me, “ except that she didn’t say shucks.

She was wearing a jogging suit that matched her glowing red nail polish. Potted plants filled a table by a window of her apartment, and books filled her shelves.

A clock on the wall cuckooed the half hour.

She lives alone. A husband of 42 years died in 1982, and only when she talks about him does the crusty facade drop away and her voice choke.

Discussion of her own clinical death is offered in a narrative spiced with humor and invective.

I had no prior knowledge of Pearl’s problem. I only felt that this tough-talking old lady might make amusing copy for a rainy day, a decision rooted more in instinct than logic.

A city editor once said everyone had a story to tell, all they needed was someone to tell it to. He should have added that everyone also has a burden to bear.

Pearlie-May survives on Social Security and gets around the San Fernando Valley quite nicely, despite arthritis in one hip.

A physician suggested once she undergo surgery to replace the hip, but Pearl greeted the notion with a suggestion of her own, defining in specific terms where he might put his idea.

“You’ve got to be tough,” she says. “When I was a kid, I got beaten up by an older girl. I told my mother about it, and she slapped me and said I had to learn to fight back. I’ve been doing that ever since.”

Her biggest fight is staying alive.

Twenty-two years ago, after dinner with her husband, she complained of feeling ill. Moments later, she collapsed. Her pulse rate and blood pressure dropped to zero. Only instant medical attention brought her back.

“They tell me I died, but I don’t remember any of it,” she says. “My husband said I emerged from the coma only long enough to demand they let me out of their freaking hospital. The nurse wanted to know if I was a stevedore.” She hadn’t said freaking.

That was in 1965. Pearl was told the collapse was an allergic reaction and she should avoid nitrates in food.

“As God is my witness,” she says, holding one hand in the air, “I followed that order faithfully. But I passed out again in 1972, ’73 and a half-dozen more times after that. All I have to say is, ‘I don’t feel good,’ and everybody runs.”

Without immediate medical care, Pearl would almost certainly die. She lives with that every day of her life. “But, hell,” she says, “everybody dies. Am I so special?”

Endless examinations have ruled out a variety of diseases, with the exception of Shy-Drager syndrome, a rare neurological disorder. One specialist feels that’s Pearl’s problem.

Pearl says the hell it is.

She’s done her own research and insists that whatever slams her into a coma isn’t Shy-Drager.

“I’ve almost lost interest in what it is,” she says with a wave of her hand.

The gesture brought back a memory.

“One attack came when I was taking out the garbage. I waved for help at some people across the street, and the damned fools just waved back.” She shakes her head. “Jesus . . . “

Assistance has always come in time, but that doesn’t alleviate the burden of what could happen if she were alone, if she couldn’t reach the phone, if no one answered her screams. . . .

“I take all this bull-puckey a day at a time,” Pearlie-May says. “When I’m up and about, I don’t even think about it. When it happens, I’m never surprised. Write that down exactly.”

I can’t. She didn’t actually say puckey.