I remember taking her hand, both of us joyous and laughing, the wind tousling those famous curls as we drove from Tahoe to Reno, to the church. The night before, I’d removed the gold band from a Cuban cigar, slipped it on to her ring finger, and proposed.
She accepted, saying: ‘So, you think you can make an honest woman of me, do you?’
The lake and the forest at Tahoe have a soothing beauty – Farrah preferred it there: the mountain air, the hikes, and, of course, the rugged horseback riding. This was one of those spontaneous moments when everything seemed aligned, as if nothing could get in the way of our future. Finally, we had decided to get hitched.
Then the flat tyre. I flagged down a car whose driver offered to take us on to Reno or back to Tahoe. We chose the lake.
Looking back, I wonder how my life with this rare woman might have been different if we had gone through with it that day. Why didn’t I just fix the damn tyre and get us to the church?
She’s married. Her name is Majors. Her husband is Lee Majors, who starred in The Six Million Dollar Man. It is the autumn of 1979 and Lee is in Toronto for a movie. I’m there visiting my daughter, Tatum, who’s shooting a film with Richard Burton. She is 15.
Lee is a companionable big guy, worth at least five-and-a-half million. We fly home together, the limo drops us off and there’s this beautiful girl waiting for him. She’s delightful, full of childlike warmth. She’s vibrant and wholesome – refreshing in this town. I’ve just met Farrah, the woman who will become the love of my life.
I had gone to their home for dinner that first night, and the next night, too. That second night they start to talk about their relationship. He’s a man of few words, a monosyllabic cowboy type. Farrah is more open, and she has no compunction talking about their problems.
She says when they were staying in Nevada, he was in a successful Western series with Barbara Stanwyck and Linda Evans called The Big Valley. (This was before Farrah’s fame through the hit television Charlie’s Angels and the poster that had made her the fantasy of every teenage boy in America.)
Lee would call her from a bar near the hotel and say: ‘Get undressed, I’m coming home.’
‘So I’d get undressed,’ she tells me. ‘I’d wait for him, and wait for him. He wouldn’t arrive, so eventually I’d get dressed again.’ She says this more in resignation than bitterness.
We first kiss at a party thrown by Swifty Lazar, the talent agent. Gregory Peck is there; Anne and Kirk Douglas; Burt Lancaster and other stars of that era. She arrives at Lazar’s fabulous home in jeans, boots and a snakeskin jacket. She sparkles. Kirk Douglas tries to get her attention by broadening his smile until we can see his molars.
She is a great kisser. She has such sweet breath. I knew by the way she was kissing me that she had made up her mind.
I remember the insecurity that would take hold of me while waiting for her phone calls, worrying I wouldn’t be able to hold on to this extraordinary creature.
She once told me, with a wink and a smile, that she was maybe the most recognisable person in the world, and I said: ‘What about Muhammad Ali?’
She answered: ‘Well, OK, the most recognisable Texas girl in the world.’
I’m curled up on the couch with Farrah watching reruns of Peyton Place. (I did 500 episodes at $750 per episode. That’s also where I introduced Frank Sinatra to my co-star Mia Farrow. I never played Cupid again.)
Farrah shyly admits that she was a fan of the series and used to have a crush on me.
I admit not so shyly that I saw a few episodes of Charlie’s Angels and entertained a thought or two of my own about her. ‘Tell me,’ she says. I do and she actually blushes.
I’m not the only one who’s been struck with Farrah fever. My sons Griffin, 14, and Patrick, 12, adore her too. Griffin is Tatum’s younger brother from my first marriage, to Joanna Moore, and Patrick is from my second marriage, to Leigh Taylor-Young, both actresses. The boys stay with me every weekend.
Patrick is serious and respectful. Grif will never be a model citizen. He is already defying authority at every juncture.
I have a sauna at the beach house, and Farrah loves to take saunas. The boys start hiding under the bench in the hopes of getting a quick peek, but she’s always running so late that by the time she gets into the sauna, they’ve been poached and have to be doused with cold water.
Farrah is always patient with them and kind. I’m especially pleased for Griffin, who can use all the affection he can get. His mother has fought addiction and depression all her life, and it’s damaged the children.
I tell myself Farrah is a wonderful woman. Now my children and I can have both ends of the rainbow.
Though we don’t flaunt our affection for each other in public, by now Lee has acknowledged our union. Later he and Farrah will divorce.
Spring 1984 arrives, and with it big news. Farrah is pregnant. While I’m overjoyed, she is ambiguous. My problems with Griffin and Tatum have taken their toll. She’s afraid to bring another O’Neal into the world.
That fear has been simmering for years and we’ve avoided talking about it. As the months pass, the slow expansion of her belly will ease her fears.
The traditionalist in me says that Farrah and I should make things legal now, but with three failed marriages between us, there’s another part that says why change? After the baby is born, Farrah will ask me to marry her. I’ll foolishly sidestep the question and she won’t press me. We call our son Redmond.
Motherhood completes Farrah. She’s attentive and calm. We spend happy, lazy days with our new baby, relishing every early milestone, the first smile and the first crawl. As time passes, though, our different parenting styles cause tension. I worry that Farrah is too strict with our son.
We start arguing about how to set boundaries for Redmond: bedtime, food, respecting adults and, most vital, why rules must be obeyed. I defend myself by saying that I’d raised three children, that I was the experienced parent, not her. And that’s exactly what worries her.
The stricter she is with Redmond, the less influence she has over him. A therapist could have figured this out, but we never consult one.
Our clashes over Redmond escalate. Once, she locks herself in the bathroom and I punch my fist through the door. A piece of wood hits her face, cutting her above the eye. I break a knuckle.
Another time, Farrah and I are in my room, quietly quarrelling. It develops into a shouting match.
Suddenly, our six-year-old son is standing in the doorway in his Winnie-the-Pooh pyjamas, staring at us. He’s holding a butcher’s knife.
He must have climbed on to a chair and pulled the knife out of the rack on the kitchen counter.
He points the tip of the blade at his chest. ‘I’m gonna stab myself if you don’t stop it!’ That ended the argument.
By the close of 1996, Farrah and I are barely living together. We had so much together, and we let it sour over everything and nothing. The two of us together had become a steaming volcano.
There was so much hostility bubbling beneath the surface. Our only safe place was sex. And soon even that, the one aspect of our love for each other, would be poisoned.
Farrah and I did occasionally get physical with each other when we fought. Neither of us possessed the emotional discipline to say: ‘Wait a minute, this isn’t normal, we need help.’ But it was not the way that people like to depict it.
You have to remember that I’m a trained boxer. I sparred with the world champion Joe Frazier, and if someone is coming at me with fists flailing, my instinct is to block the blows, which is what I did with Farrah. Back then there was no YouTube, but if there had been and someone had shot footage, it would have generated millions of hits not because of the violence but for the slapstick dance. Most men of my generation would have reacted the same way. But I know that doesn’t make it right.
If I was in Hell, Farrah was in purgatory. One moment Farrah and I are making love, and I’m reading to her and then she’s whipping up a batch of chilli con carne just the way I like it; the next, she’s dictating a press release to her publicist announcing our split. By now all the drama in our life was heartbreaking.
I had met an actress, Leslie, 25 years my junior. She was a smart girl, attractive and sweet, a decent, God-fearing Episcopalian from a small town in Minnesota. Things unfolded gradually then, one morning, I realised the first two things I’d look for on the set were my cup of coffee and her smiling face.
We are at the beach house, where I mostly lived, when Farrah calls and says she wants to come down. Leslie is listening.
‘Are you one hundred per cent sure she’s not going to come over?’ she asks. ‘Absolutely,’ I answer. ‘Farrah has her pride.’
I was only 80 per cent sure, but I figured the odds were with me, and I had locked the door just to be sure. At two in the morning I hear someone coming up the stairs and I gulp. I briefly consider scaling down the terrace out to the beach and making a run for it, but then I remember my bad knee. I lean over and frantically begin whispering to my girlfriend, ‘Get up! Get up!’
Farrah walks in. We are naked in bed. She must have let herself into the garage and taken the house key out of my car.
My girlfriend pulls the covers over her head. I pull on my shorts, putting both legs in one hole. Farrah is yanking at the covers to get to my girl, and I’m bouncing around sputtering inanities such as: ‘This isn’t what you think.’
By now Farrah has practically stripped the bed and is giving my girlfriend this withering Bette Davis stare. Farrah utters a warning, turns on her heel, and leaves, collecting photos and other items on her way out. I stumble down the stairs, trying to explain. I feel embarrassed for her, and I want to comfort her.
I tell Farrah that this isn’t some girl I just picked up, that this is a woman I care about. I know, I know, not the smartest thing to say but in the 18 years we’d been together, I’d never cheated on Farrah, not once. Now we were living separate lives, and I wanted her to know that I wouldn’t just hop into bed with anyone. Later, I realised what she must have been hearing, that I’d replaced her with a younger woman. That wasn’t the case. Farrah had simply become too exhausting.
As the years slip by, Farrah and I find our way back to that comfortable place we thought could never be recaptured. She moves part-time into the beach house and occupies the bedroom across from mine.
It’s autumn of 2006. Farrah and I are lying in bed. I see her considering her legs.
‘Is one of my thighs bigger than the other?’ she says. ‘Of course not,’ I reply. She points to her right leg. ‘This one is larger,’ she insists. She’s right. Her body is retaining fluid.
Since the death of her mom the year before, Farrah had been feeling exhausted. But on September 22, Farrah is diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer and told to get her affairs in order. For the next two-and-a-half years we will fight to save her life.
By January 2008, Farrah’s body was ravaged by medical treatments intended to save her, while her cancer was growing more invasive. She never gave up. Her oncologists were impressed by her relentless determination to live. Farrah would not wave that white flag yet.
Meanwhile, I’m doing everything I can to help Redmond. Drug addiction has withered his character to the point where he is barely recognisable to himself or his family. Redmond is stoic, but underneath I know my son is scared. We’ve tried every rehab program out there – 12 steps, 50 steps, 40 turns – it doesn’t matter; they don’t work for him. By the spring of 2009, he would find himself behind bars.
Less than six months earlier, in June 2008, Tatum had been busted in New York City for buying crack cocaine. Then, in September the police raid my house in Malibu early one morning as part of a court- mandated check on Redmond, who is on parole. Farrah is back home and sleeping upstairs when they descend upon us. They ransack the place, determined to unearth something, and they do. I had found a packet of crystal meth in Redmond’s room the night before, so I took it from him and hid it in my shoe under my bed, thinking I’d dispose of it the next morning. The police came before I had a chance.
The police find Redmond’s stash. We are both booked and prosecuted. (Two months later, to protect Redmond, I would plead guilty to possession of crystal meth and be sentenced to attend outpatient drug management sessions. I had claimed ownership of the meth thinking the court would go lighter on Redmond. In retrospect, it didn’t help him and only further sullied my reputation.)
By April 2009, Redmond is in prison. By then Farrah is too weak to read the papers herself. I make sure she never sees a word about Redmond’s incarceration and tell her the reason he wasn’t able to visit is because he’s in rehab.
It was during this period that Farrah would see her son for the last time. Redmond, his feet in shackles, is briefly released from prison and led into his mother’s bedroom, where he lays his head on her chest, telling her how much she means to him.
As I watched him clinging to his dying mother, a thousand and one snapshots flicked across my memory: Farrah tickling her red-headed toddler as he giggled with glee; little Redmond and his mom snuggled under the covers singing Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf; Farrah running with her son on the beach; lean, adolescent Redmond shooting hoops with Farrah in the driveway.
On May 15, Farrah’s Story – a documentary account of her struggle to beat the cancer – was broadcast for the first time. We watched it together that night. Farrah couldn’t sit up on her own, so I sat beside her and she leaned on me for support.
Her body is dying while her hydrangea-blue eyes are alight with fierce satisfaction. In the coming days I ask her to marry me again and she accepts. I buy the ring.
The priest at St John’s Hospital arrives to marry us but administers the last rites instead.
After the priest leaves, I lie down next to her, wrap my body around her to keep her warm, and then take her hand. I can feel a steady pulse. Her oncologist Dr Piro comes into the room and says: ‘I had hoped I would never have to say this, but I think we should let her go.’
‘We need some time,’ I say. And Dr Piro leaves us alone. I caress her hand for hours. Her heart refuses to quit.
I feel someone patting my shoulder. Dr Piro’s whisper tells me: ‘It’s time to remove the IV, the nourishment is just feeding the cancer. There is no possibility of recovery any more.’
I watch a nurse take the needle out of Farrah’s arm, and she’s careful to put a Band-Aid over the puncture just as she would for a healthy patient. I can hear the wheels of the IV stand being rolled out of the room.
Dr Piro says to me: ‘It may take some time and I know you want to stay with her.’
I’m left alone with my love. I take her hand. I can still feel her pulse, but now it is fluttering. She’s trying to let go. Her heartbeat slows, then disappears. On the morning of June 25, Farrah slips into eternal sleep.
I don’t remember that long walk down the corridor as I made my way out of the hospital. I can’t think.
I go to her condo. I walk into the bedroom and lie on the cool, crisp sheets. Draped across a chair are a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, probably her outfit for a next morning that never came.
Her hairbrush is sitting on the dresser, strands of her exquisite golden locks reflecting from the sunlight. It’s as if she’s still there and will be breezing in at any moment.
I close my eyes and gather my courage for the phone call that I’m so terribly reluctant to make but know I must. I dial the prison where Redmond is incarcerated. I ask for the chaplain, who then brings Redmond to the phone. I tell him that his mom is gone.
He’s silent for a moment, and then I hear a sob.
I’m sitting in my bedroom in Malibu, watching a movie I last saw 25 years ago. I am in it. The moon’s light reflects off the ocean and through my windows. I’m rapt.
There is good reason all those girls and women cried; there is a reason Love Story remains one of the most popular movies ever: while premature death may be a dramatic cliche, it is also half of all human unhappiness.
That is why a generation wept, and why after losing my mate too soon, I will not go into that long good night without a fight.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2136607/To-hell-Charlies-Angel-Ryan-ONeals-breathtaking-honesty-tumultuous-life-Farrah-Fawcett.html#ixzz1tVdPivnV
She accepted, saying: ‘So, you think you can make an honest woman of me, do you?’
The lake and the forest at Tahoe have a soothing beauty – Farrah preferred it there: the mountain air, the hikes, and, of course, the rugged horseback riding. This was one of those spontaneous moments when everything seemed aligned, as if nothing could get in the way of our future. Finally, we had decided to get hitched.
Ryan and Farrah in 1984, the year she became pregnant with their child
Ryan O'Neal with Farrah Fawcett and their son Redmond in 1985
Looking back, I wonder how my life with this rare woman might have been different if we had gone through with it that day. Why didn’t I just fix the damn tyre and get us to the church?
She’s married. Her name is Majors. Her husband is Lee Majors, who starred in The Six Million Dollar Man. It is the autumn of 1979 and Lee is in Toronto for a movie. I’m there visiting my daughter, Tatum, who’s shooting a film with Richard Burton. She is 15.
I knew by the way she was kissing me that she had made up her mind...
I had gone to their home for dinner that first night, and the next night, too. That second night they start to talk about their relationship. He’s a man of few words, a monosyllabic cowboy type. Farrah is more open, and she has no compunction talking about their problems.
She says when they were staying in Nevada, he was in a successful Western series with Barbara Stanwyck and Linda Evans called The Big Valley. (This was before Farrah’s fame through the hit television Charlie’s Angels and the poster that had made her the fantasy of every teenage boy in America.)
Lee would call her from a bar near the hotel and say: ‘Get undressed, I’m coming home.’
Their son Redmond O'Neal at home
We first kiss at a party thrown by Swifty Lazar, the talent agent. Gregory Peck is there; Anne and Kirk Douglas; Burt Lancaster and other stars of that era. She arrives at Lazar’s fabulous home in jeans, boots and a snakeskin jacket. She sparkles. Kirk Douglas tries to get her attention by broadening his smile until we can see his molars.
She is a great kisser. She has such sweet breath. I knew by the way she was kissing me that she had made up her mind.
I remember the insecurity that would take hold of me while waiting for her phone calls, worrying I wouldn’t be able to hold on to this extraordinary creature.
She once told me, with a wink and a smile, that she was maybe the most recognisable person in the world, and I said: ‘What about Muhammad Ali?’
She answered: ‘Well, OK, the most recognisable Texas girl in the world.’
I’m curled up on the couch with Farrah watching reruns of Peyton Place. (I did 500 episodes at $750 per episode. That’s also where I introduced Frank Sinatra to my co-star Mia Farrow. I never played Cupid again.)
Farrah shyly admits that she was a fan of the series and used to have a crush on me.
I admit not so shyly that I saw a few episodes of Charlie’s Angels and entertained a thought or two of my own about her. ‘Tell me,’ she says. I do and she actually blushes.
I’m not the only one who’s been struck with Farrah fever. My sons Griffin, 14, and Patrick, 12, adore her too. Griffin is Tatum’s younger brother from my first marriage, to Joanna Moore, and Patrick is from my second marriage, to Leigh Taylor-Young, both actresses. The boys stay with me every weekend.
Patrick is serious and respectful. Grif will never be a model citizen. He is already defying authority at every juncture.
I have a sauna at the beach house, and Farrah loves to take saunas. The boys start hiding under the bench in the hopes of getting a quick peek, but she’s always running so late that by the time she gets into the sauna, they’ve been poached and have to be doused with cold water.
Farrah is always patient with them and kind. I’m especially pleased for Griffin, who can use all the affection he can get. His mother has fought addiction and depression all her life, and it’s damaged the children.
I tell myself Farrah is a wonderful woman. Now my children and I can have both ends of the rainbow.
Though we don’t flaunt our affection for each other in public, by now Lee has acknowledged our union. Later he and Farrah will divorce.
Spring 1984 arrives, and with it big news. Farrah is pregnant. While I’m overjoyed, she is ambiguous. My problems with Griffin and Tatum have taken their toll. She’s afraid to bring another O’Neal into the world.
That fear has been simmering for years and we’ve avoided talking about it. As the months pass, the slow expansion of her belly will ease her fears.
The traditionalist in me says that Farrah and I should make things legal now, but with three failed marriages between us, there’s another part that says why change? After the baby is born, Farrah will ask me to marry her. I’ll foolishly sidestep the question and she won’t press me. We call our son Redmond.
Farrah, centre, with Jaclyn Smith and Kate jackson in Charlie's Angels in 1978
Farrah Fawcett starring in the 1979 thriller Sunburn
We start arguing about how to set boundaries for Redmond: bedtime, food, respecting adults and, most vital, why rules must be obeyed. I defend myself by saying that I’d raised three children, that I was the experienced parent, not her. And that’s exactly what worries her.
The stricter she is with Redmond, the less influence she has over him. A therapist could have figured this out, but we never consult one.
Our clashes over Redmond escalate. Once, she locks herself in the bathroom and I punch my fist through the door. A piece of wood hits her face, cutting her above the eye. I break a knuckle.
Another time, Farrah and I are in my room, quietly quarrelling. It develops into a shouting match.
Ryan with his children Tatum, Griffin and Patrick
He must have climbed on to a chair and pulled the knife out of the rack on the kitchen counter.
He points the tip of the blade at his chest. ‘I’m gonna stab myself if you don’t stop it!’ That ended the argument.
By the close of 1996, Farrah and I are barely living together. We had so much together, and we let it sour over everything and nothing. The two of us together had become a steaming volcano.
There was so much hostility bubbling beneath the surface. Our only safe place was sex. And soon even that, the one aspect of our love for each other, would be poisoned.
Farrah and I did occasionally get physical with each other when we fought. Neither of us possessed the emotional discipline to say: ‘Wait a minute, this isn’t normal, we need help.’ But it was not the way that people like to depict it.
You have to remember that I’m a trained boxer. I sparred with the world champion Joe Frazier, and if someone is coming at me with fists flailing, my instinct is to block the blows, which is what I did with Farrah. Back then there was no YouTube, but if there had been and someone had shot footage, it would have generated millions of hits not because of the violence but for the slapstick dance. Most men of my generation would have reacted the same way. But I know that doesn’t make it right.
If I was in Hell, Farrah was in purgatory. One moment Farrah and I are making love, and I’m reading to her and then she’s whipping up a batch of chilli con carne just the way I like it; the next, she’s dictating a press release to her publicist announcing our split. By now all the drama in our life was heartbreaking.
I had met an actress, Leslie, 25 years my junior. She was a smart girl, attractive and sweet, a decent, God-fearing Episcopalian from a small town in Minnesota. Things unfolded gradually then, one morning, I realised the first two things I’d look for on the set were my cup of coffee and her smiling face.
We are at the beach house, where I mostly lived, when Farrah calls and says she wants to come down. Leslie is listening.
‘Are you one hundred per cent sure she’s not going to come over?’ she asks. ‘Absolutely,’ I answer. ‘Farrah has her pride.’
I was only 80 per cent sure, but I figured the odds were with me, and I had locked the door just to be sure. At two in the morning I hear someone coming up the stairs and I gulp. I briefly consider scaling down the terrace out to the beach and making a run for it, but then I remember my bad knee. I lean over and frantically begin whispering to my girlfriend, ‘Get up! Get up!’
Farrah walks in. We are naked in bed. She must have let herself into the garage and taken the house key out of my car.
Farrah, now battling cancer, with her son Redmond who was allowed out from prison on a drugs charge to say his final goodbye to his ill mother
Farrah undergoes a test in hospital during her cancer battle in 2009
By now Farrah has practically stripped the bed and is giving my girlfriend this withering Bette Davis stare. Farrah utters a warning, turns on her heel, and leaves, collecting photos and other items on her way out. I stumble down the stairs, trying to explain. I feel embarrassed for her, and I want to comfort her.
I tell Farrah that this isn’t some girl I just picked up, that this is a woman I care about. I know, I know, not the smartest thing to say but in the 18 years we’d been together, I’d never cheated on Farrah, not once. Now we were living separate lives, and I wanted her to know that I wouldn’t just hop into bed with anyone. Later, I realised what she must have been hearing, that I’d replaced her with a younger woman. That wasn’t the case. Farrah had simply become too exhausting.
As the years slip by, Farrah and I find our way back to that comfortable place we thought could never be recaptured. She moves part-time into the beach house and occupies the bedroom across from mine.
It’s autumn of 2006. Farrah and I are lying in bed. I see her considering her legs.
‘Is one of my thighs bigger than the other?’ she says. ‘Of course not,’ I reply. She points to her right leg. ‘This one is larger,’ she insists. She’s right. Her body is retaining fluid.
Since the death of her mom the year before, Farrah had been feeling exhausted. But on September 22, Farrah is diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer and told to get her affairs in order. For the next two-and-a-half years we will fight to save her life.
Farrah has a reunion with her Charlie's Angels co-stars Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith
Meanwhile, I’m doing everything I can to help Redmond. Drug addiction has withered his character to the point where he is barely recognisable to himself or his family. Redmond is stoic, but underneath I know my son is scared. We’ve tried every rehab program out there – 12 steps, 50 steps, 40 turns – it doesn’t matter; they don’t work for him. By the spring of 2009, he would find himself behind bars.
Less than six months earlier, in June 2008, Tatum had been busted in New York City for buying crack cocaine. Then, in September the police raid my house in Malibu early one morning as part of a court- mandated check on Redmond, who is on parole. Farrah is back home and sleeping upstairs when they descend upon us. They ransack the place, determined to unearth something, and they do. I had found a packet of crystal meth in Redmond’s room the night before, so I took it from him and hid it in my shoe under my bed, thinking I’d dispose of it the next morning. The police came before I had a chance.
The police find Redmond’s stash. We are both booked and prosecuted. (Two months later, to protect Redmond, I would plead guilty to possession of crystal meth and be sentenced to attend outpatient drug management sessions. I had claimed ownership of the meth thinking the court would go lighter on Redmond. In retrospect, it didn’t help him and only further sullied my reputation.)
By April 2009, Redmond is in prison. By then Farrah is too weak to read the papers herself. I make sure she never sees a word about Redmond’s incarceration and tell her the reason he wasn’t able to visit is because he’s in rehab.
It was during this period that Farrah would see her son for the last time. Redmond, his feet in shackles, is briefly released from prison and led into his mother’s bedroom, where he lays his head on her chest, telling her how much she means to him.
Ryan with Farrah at an awards ceremony in America in 2003
On May 15, Farrah’s Story – a documentary account of her struggle to beat the cancer – was broadcast for the first time. We watched it together that night. Farrah couldn’t sit up on her own, so I sat beside her and she leaned on me for support.
Her body is dying while her hydrangea-blue eyes are alight with fierce satisfaction. In the coming days I ask her to marry me again and she accepts. I buy the ring.
The priest at St John’s Hospital arrives to marry us but administers the last rites instead.
Farrah pictured in 2004 at the MTV Video Music Awards
‘We need some time,’ I say. And Dr Piro leaves us alone. I caress her hand for hours. Her heart refuses to quit.
I feel someone patting my shoulder. Dr Piro’s whisper tells me: ‘It’s time to remove the IV, the nourishment is just feeding the cancer. There is no possibility of recovery any more.’
I watch a nurse take the needle out of Farrah’s arm, and she’s careful to put a Band-Aid over the puncture just as she would for a healthy patient. I can hear the wheels of the IV stand being rolled out of the room.
Dr Piro says to me: ‘It may take some time and I know you want to stay with her.’
I’m left alone with my love. I take her hand. I can still feel her pulse, but now it is fluttering. She’s trying to let go. Her heartbeat slows, then disappears. On the morning of June 25, Farrah slips into eternal sleep.
I don’t remember that long walk down the corridor as I made my way out of the hospital. I can’t think.
I go to her condo. I walk into the bedroom and lie on the cool, crisp sheets. Draped across a chair are a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, probably her outfit for a next morning that never came.
Her hairbrush is sitting on the dresser, strands of her exquisite golden locks reflecting from the sunlight. It’s as if she’s still there and will be breezing in at any moment.
I close my eyes and gather my courage for the phone call that I’m so terribly reluctant to make but know I must. I dial the prison where Redmond is incarcerated. I ask for the chaplain, who then brings Redmond to the phone. I tell him that his mom is gone.
He’s silent for a moment, and then I hear a sob.
I’m sitting in my bedroom in Malibu, watching a movie I last saw 25 years ago. I am in it. The moon’s light reflects off the ocean and through my windows. I’m rapt.
There is good reason all those girls and women cried; there is a reason Love Story remains one of the most popular movies ever: while premature death may be a dramatic cliche, it is also half of all human unhappiness.
That is why a generation wept, and why after losing my mate too soon, I will not go into that long good night without a fight.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2136607/To-hell-Charlies-Angel-Ryan-ONeals-breathtaking-honesty-tumultuous-life-Farrah-Fawcett.html#ixzz1tVdPivnV
