Widowish: A Memoir
Melissa Gould
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Most names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.
ONE
Make Him Better
Your husband is critically ill,” said a doctor in the cold hub of the ICU. There were three of them, in their white coats, refusing to look me in the eye.
Behind me, past a closed curtain, Joel lay in his hospital bed, his dark hair slightly disheveled, his green eyes closed, wearing nothing but a hospital gown. He was hooked up to an IV surrounded by tubes and wires.
Here, at the active nurses’ station, phones were ringing; I sensed information being exchanged about patients all around us, but all I wanted was clarity about my husband’s condition.
“What exactly are you telling me?” I asked. “We have a thirteen-year-old daughter. I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
The infectious disease doctor, who days earlier had examined Joel from head to toe looking for a bite or a welt or something that might indicate the reason for Joel’s illness but had found none, said, “Joel is gravely ill.”
Gravely? A second ago he had said critically.
I didn’t understand what was happening. It had been three days since Joel was alert and awake. Three days since my husband walked into the emergency room because of the flulike symptoms that had been plaguing him for nearly a week. I felt a sense of urgency. Joel’s health had rapidly declined since the hospital admitted him, yet no one seemed to have a clue as to why.
I had experience with Joel being ill. He had been battling multiple sclerosis for a few years. But MS is not a disease people die from. It’s a “quality of life” disease that can cause problems with balance, muscle control, and other bodily functions, but it does not typically leave a person in the hospital, noncommunicative and nonresponsive.
When I had arrived at the hospital that morning, I expected the doctors to share some positive or at least conclusive news with me. An explanation why Joel was so sick and what would make him better—a course of treatment. I thought the latest MRI or the various specialists conversing with one another would give us, give me, some definitive action to take that would help Joel recover from this mystery illness that landed him in the ICU. Instead, the doctors had me reeling with fear and uncertainty. If Joel was critically, no gravely, ill, couldn’t they help him?
“We’re in a hospital!” I screamed. “You’re all doctors. If Joel is sick, make him better!” They exchanged side glances at one another; it seemed each one was silently willing the other to say what they couldn’t bring themselves to tell me. The infectious disease doctor wiped his hand across his face. The head of the ICU covered his mouth with his hand and continued to stare at his feet.
Joel’s MS doctor, who had no privileges at this hospital, but whom I had fought to get approval for so that she could at least evaluate his chart and talk to the other doctors, finally looked at me with tears in her eyes. “We don’t think we can.”
I first met Joel in 1987. It was in the lobby of Atlantic Records on Los Angeles’s Sunset Strip, where we both worked. Joel was four years older than me, and this was his “real” job, while for me, it was my summer job during college. I knew immediately that he was someone I would like when I saw his long rocker hair, shorts, combat boots, and the Who T-shirt he was wearing. I knew it was love when he told me a joke a few days later. We were in his “office”—the mail room. I was sitting on the counter, my legs swinging beneath me; Joel was printing mailing labels when he stopped to look at me.
“Where do cantaloupe and honeydew go in the summer?” he asked.
“Where?” I said.
“John Cougar Mellencamp.”
He paused, waiting for my reaction, and a smile came to his face, his green eyes twinkling. I couldn’t help but laugh. In fact I laughed so hard, I started crying. He laughed, too.
With that silly joke, I decided that I wanted to marry someone just like him one day. I never thought it would be him, but right then and there, he set the bar high.
He was cool. He was funny. He was Jewish.
It was a trifecta that had otherwise escaped me. I was in my first serious relationship at the time, and Joel was living with his girlfriend. While we shared an unmistakable connection, our friendship was platonic. At night we’d see each other at shows. During the day at work we’d hang out in the mail room, and he’d play his current favorite songs . . . “What’s My Scene” by Hoodoo Gurus . . . “Alex Chilton” by the Replacements . . . “World Shut Your Mouth” by Julian Cope.
Having grown up in both New York and Los Angeles, I had been exposed to the arts at an early age and had eclectic taste in music. I could hold my own, but Joel was more than just a fan of music, he was a connoisseur. His knowledge extended far beyond top 100 hits, band lineups, and genres—he knew everything. He knew alternative music before it was called alternative. He knew B sides and obscure facts about recording sessions and aspiring musicians. He knew tour dates and which A&R reps signed what bands to which labels. He knew and saw bands before they even became bands. He understood everything about the business, and it was his knowledge, interest, and curiosity that gave him joy.
We would have lunch together almost every day. We would pile into his Volkswagen Karmann Ghia and head down the strip for tacos, or a quick run into Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard to check inventory or just hang out—sharing our favorite finds.