Mary’s Last Autumn

The scene was disturbingly normal: a small house on a tree-lined street, a dog named Blackie sleeping in the center of the living room, a piano in the corner, sunlight through a window.

Bob and Mary Abrams fit nicely into the picture, he an ample-bellied press agent so familiar in L.A., she a housewife with a faint resemblance to Judy Garland, appearing somehow small and vulnerable.

But looks can deceive, and the fixtures of a normal existence can mask grief so profound to be almost unbearable. That’s what the Abrams were doing that surreal day, dealing with sadness as heavy as a shroud.

They were, as she put it, erasing Mary Abrams.

At 48, she has been given only months to live. Cancer that began in her lungs has spread to her brain. If the terrible prognosis is correct, Mary will never see another autumn.

“I’m terminal,” she says with a nervous laugh. “It’s a funny feeling.”

The symptoms appeared two months ago when she inexplicably fell. Then she began to lurch as she walked. Finally there were blinding headaches.

Tests determined her fate. The neurologist told her husband first, and together they told Mary. It was left to her to tell their only child, 16-year-old Josh.

“Telling Josh was the hardest,” she says. A clock bongs the hour in a room grown suddenly quiet. “The perception of motherhood is forever. I told him he would have to accept reality and responsibility.

“He and his father cried together. They have a lot to figure out.”

My being in their home seemed an awkward intrusion into a very private moment, a husband and wife of 22 years dealing with final plans.

Bob Abrams, whom I have known many years on a professional basis, called to tell me his wife was dying. He had to tell someone he felt could empathize with his own anguish.

It wasn’t a press agent speaking, but a man trying very hard to cope with a terrible truth, that he would soon be without someone he loves very much.

I asked if Mary would talk to me about it and she said she would, “to honor two people who will survive me.”

If my job is to put a face on the city, this was appropriate. The face bears many expressions.

Birth and death dance together in L.A., and I could see no valid reason why either should be ignored.

There were no tears or hushed tones the day I visited Bob and Mary Abrams in their Westside home.

By nature bombastic, Bob continued to be so, even as he faced a reality he could barely tolerate. Pain was evident in the bravado.

“Get this,” he says loudly, “she cheers us up! Josh and I would be basket cases without her. I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do. . . .”

Mary remains philosophical. She laughs quickly at the prospect of dying and, so doing, snaps her fingers in the face of death.

“Why not?” she asks. “Most people don’t get time to fix up their lives before they go, to put things in order. I have.”

“I don’t like making arrangements at the Westwood Mortuary,” Bob says. “I don’t like taking her name off of our checks.”

That’s when Mary said it, smiling slightly, “He’s erasing me.”

Given months to live, how would most of us react? Mary will do what she’s always wanted to do, take a hot-air balloon ride. Then the whole family will travel to Europe.

“I’m leaving Bob bereft and broke,” she says.” He’ll be mourning and moaning.”

The room is silent again as she gathers her thoughts. This is her moment, her time to talk.

“Time is kaleidoscoping for me now. I’m seeing people in a week I would normally see in a year. Everyone feels the pressure. My mind is racing. I can’t concentrate.”

She worries most about Josh, who fights grief by enmeshing himself in sports at University High School. He has asked his baseball team to wear “M.A.” on their uniforms in honor of his mother.

Mary is trying to make life for them as normal as possible. “I make sandwiches, I wash dishes, I run the washing machine. I’m feeling OK. I plan to be around to cook for a large group on Christmas Eve. I’d like to see Josh graduate next June . . . but I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“We used to go to Ensenada every couple of months,” Bob says. “We’ll go one last time, then I’ll never go again. There’ll be too many memories. I’ll never be able to go alone where we once went together.”

Mary has been listening quietly to her own thoughts and what emerges is a non sequitur as cold as winter. “A month ago,” she says softly, “I was approaching 50. It just occurred to me. I’m not approaching 50 anymore.”