Authors: Candy Spelling
Aaron was a tobacco pipe smoker and had a collection of about six hundred Dunhill and Sasieni 4 Dot pipes. He amassed this collection because he would smoke each one only between twenty and thirty times and then was done with it. When he posed for portraits for the television network, he insisted on being photographed with his trusty pipe. I came to know more about pipes than I ever thought I would because of Aaron. I learned how much tobacco to put in them to break them in and the different kinds of mouthpieces available. Aaron preferred the fishtail because he liked to hold the pipe in his mouth when he was working.
It used to really worry me to see the pipe just hanging on his lips. I couldn’t help but say something to him. We must have had the same conversation a million times. He would tell me he wasn’t inhaling and then I would point out that it didn’t matter, his mouth was still full of hot tobacco smoke.
Our ENT accompanied us to see the oncologist at UCLA. The strange thing about this particular appointment was that when the oncologist was verbally going through Aaron’s medical history with him, he asked him whether he had any history of cancer.
“No.”
I jumped in to correct my husband, “That’s not true. You had prostate cancer.” I was never quite sure if Aaron was intentionally revising his medical history or whether he edited that time from his memory the same way he edited out scenes from his scripts. In either case I knew I could never let him go to the doctor alone again.
Based on Aaron’s symptoms and an examination, the oncologist at UCLA was 99 percent certain Aaron had throat cancer. It was grim but not surprising. It was everything I feared all those years that Aaron’s Dunhill pipe sat in his mouth. The only thing more frightening than the diagnosis was the recommended treatment. The doctor believed that the only way to treat the throat
cancer was to remove three quarters of Aaron’s tongue. Aaron said he would rather die than let them cut out his tongue.
Somehow I managed to stay out of the emotion of the situation. There was no biopsy yet, so really we didn’t know exactly what we were dealing with. I believed there would be a better answer if we took the next step of having the biopsy performed. It would be at least a week before it could be done because even for this they needed to make sure Aaron was in good health. When the day arrived, we had the biopsy done and then headed out to Malibu. I’ll never forget our housekeeper erupting into hysteria when Aaron lit up his pipe at the beach house.
“Mrs. Spelling! Mrs. Spelling! He’s smoking again!” Our staff was crazy about Aaron and they didn’t want to see anything happen to him. None of us did.
Somewhere I had heard the expression, “Man can live forty days without food, three days without water, and about eight minutes without air … but not one minute without hope.” When the biopsy came back positive for cancer, I knew I had to keep hope alive. This was definitely our darkest hour. I had never dealt with oncologists before but somehow I figured out how to tackle it. I ordered slides of the biopsy and then called every leading cancer center in the country to let them know I was sending them. I had phone consultations and prayed that Aaron wouldn’t need to travel somewhere far away for treatment because I knew we’d have to take a train. The cancer was aggressive and we didn’t have the luxury of time.
Coincidentally, we ended up less than ten miles away at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica. The doctor there was confident Aaron’s cancer could be successfully treated with treatment and technology that UCLA did not offer because it was a teaching school. This particular external radiation machine was called an IMRT machine. It allowed the doctor to pinpoint the dose of radiation delivered in the body with greater precision than ever before. This reduced side effects and protected the healthy tissue in the body. The treatment required that Aaron be fitted for a face mask and a mouth brace so his teeth
wouldn’t fall out. It was a lot of information to process. Ultimately, we decided this was the path we would take.
The next six weeks were quite an ordeal for both of us. I could see that just preparing mentally for the treatment really took it out of Aaron. We were at the hospital almost every day, and when we weren’t there, we were at home bracing ourselves for the next round of radiation. Oftentimes, Aaron’s platelet count would drop, so he needed blood transfusions. It was grueling.
One afternoon at the hospital, we ran into the famous hot dog man from Holmby Park. He was at Holmby Park every day with his car, and attached was a little trailer that held his grill. He sold hot dogs, french fries, and popsicles and had a very distinct rainbow-colored umbrella open above his car. When he didn’t have any customers, he sat there under the umbrella watching the cars go by on Beverly Glen Boulevard.
Sometimes he kicked off his shoes and you could see his bright white socks from the other end of the block. Every day for years while we were building the house, I got my lunch from him at two-thirty or three in the afternoon. Now here he was in the same radiation treatment center as Aaron. It was very sad when he died.
It’s hard to believe that through all of this, we never discussed anything that was happening. Aaron was from the same generation as my parents, and they didn’t talk about these things. They just pushed up their shirtsleeves and got through it. This was a big difference between the two of us. I needed to talk about my feelings.
I had started seeing a therapist before Aaron was diagnosed. It was long overdue. I had a lot of feelings that had built up over the years, and I wanted to talk about them. There was no quiet desperation or anguish and there also wasn’t a last straw. I was just finally ready to start talking. At the time, I didn’t know that therapists had areas of specialization just like physicians.
The first therapist I saw was in Century City. She has since become the authority on getting men to “put a ring on it,” as they say. I went two or three times but wasn’t entirely comfortable. Turns out neither was she. At our last appointment she told me she couldn’t help me. She said I had a lot of anger
issues and referred me to a colleague who specialized in women and anger issues.
The second therapist was the right key. She worked out of home. Her office was in a space over her garage. It felt very private and personal. I did find, however, that I didn’t care for the traditional fifty-minute hour. I was so introverted that by the time I finally got going, the fifty-minute hour was up. I adjusted my hour to ninety minutes. Initially I went once a week. Then it was twice a week and before I knew it I was going three times a week. I like to joke that the therapist couldn’t shut me up.
I was so grateful to have the therapist as my support system during Aaron’s treatment. It was a challenging time. I found I was reliving what I had gone through with my mother and I was confused by this, but the truth was, I was resentful of Aaron’s illness.
It was such a relief when Aaron completed his radiation treatment and his scans came back clear. He had beaten the odds and triumphed over cancer a second time. I was happy to see my husband in good spirits as he recuperated from the torture he had endured.
Couples who are married as long as Aaron and I had been have a tendency to finish each other’s sentences and intuitively read each other’s minds. We were no exception to this. Shortly after his radiation treatment concluded, I noticed something was off but couldn’t quite put my finger on it. One day I happened to overhear him in conversation with one of his assistants and it finally hit me.
“Stop answering for him. Let him answer for himself.”
Aaron’s assistant looked at me as if I had lost my mind. He was a clever man and a brilliant writer who knew how to cut in and out of dialogue. He had used the tricks of his trade to hide Aaron’s memory loss. I asked Aaron to spell a word and he couldn’t. Aaron Spelling, true to his name, was the world’s best speller. When he couldn’t spell a relatively simple word, the truth was undeniable. This also explained his resistance to seeing people and socializing.
By the time I caught on, it was late in the game. I needed to talk to someone who would know about Aaron’s condition. Aaron and I had been close with former president Reagan and Nancy Reagan. Aaron and Ronnie had
known each other since Aaron moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1950s. We had had them over quite a bit, so I felt comfortable sharing what was going on with Nancy. She of course had been through it herself with her husband while he was still in the White House, so I felt she was the right person to confide in.
Unfortunately for me, Nancy confirmed my fears. She urged me to take Aaron to see Dr. Jeffrey Cummings, chief of the Alzheimer’s Unit at UCLA Medical Center. I promised Nancy I would make an appointment to see Dr. Cummings … and then I didn’t. Aaron had always been a sharp mind, and now he seemed lost. I didn’t know what to do with that. A few weeks later, I ran into Nancy, and she asked if we had been to see Dr. Cummings yet. Before I could say anything, Nancy was wagging her finger in my face. “I know you haven’t made an appointment because I called Dr. Cummings and asked him.”
I called and made the appointment the very next day. I very casually told Aaron that his regular doctor wanted him to see this “other doctor.” I had to be very careful because the last time we had been to UCLA, it was a very negative experience for Aaron. I’m not sure exactly how I did it, but somehow I got Aaron into the car for the short ride to see Dr. Cummings.
I knew the doctor wasn’t going to tell me anything about my husband’s condition that I didn’t already know. More than anything it was just a formality.
Aaron knew why we were there as soon as he read the sign for the Alzheimer’s Unit. He looked at me with a very sad expression on his face. “I may have to kill you.”
Once we were seated in Dr. Cummings’s office, he asked Aaron who the president of the United States was, what day of the week it was, and what month we were in. They were all ridiculously simple questions, and Aaron couldn’t answer any of them. I turned my head and cried. If I had any denial left in me, it was all gone now.
How could this happen to my brilliant husband? I was suddenly reminded that when I was pregnant, I never wanted to read all those books expectant mothers read. I figured whatever happens, happens. That was my approach to life. Aaron’s cancer had made sense, but this was not a scenario I had ever imagined. Especially not for someone as imaginative and present as Aaron had
been. The realization of what was happening to my husband took my breath away. I didn’t want him to see me crying, but it was too late.
Alzheimer’s is a brand name for dementia. We never found out 100 percent whether Aaron had Alzheimer’s or dementia because he never followed through on the full battery of tests. It hardly mattered. They’re different diseases but equally cruel and abusive to those afflicted.
I tried to keep things status quo throughout Aaron’s illness. I made excuses for him when he didn’t want to be seen by people and couldn’t handle social situations. He was never particularly interested in going out when he was well, so this wasn’t a good barometer of whether he knew his mind was failing him. In the beginning I wasn’t certain whether he knew what was happening. Looking back now, I think on some level, he must have known.
I thought it might help to get him out of the house, but he wouldn’t go and I couldn’t force him. I continued going to dinner parties for Aaron’s sake and mine. I went alone to places we would have gone as a couple. I made excuses for him and told people he wasn’t feeling well because that’s what Aaron wanted me to say. I don’t know why, but I suddenly thought about all the times that Aaron would call the hostess of whichever party we were attending and insist we be seated together. Typically, couples sit apart so they can socialize, and I enjoyed sitting next to someone new and hearing about their life experiences. I was the shy one, but it was Aaron who didn’t like sitting apart.
On this particular night, I realized I couldn’t maintain the facade. I didn’t want to lie anymore. It was towards the end when he really wasn’t himself anymore that I needed a dose of reality. Maybe it wasn’t fair of me, but I didn’t want to live this way. It was such a feeling of relief to finally be truthful and say that Aaron didn’t want to come to the party; that he couldn’t come. I realized as soon as I finished the sentence that everyone knew the truth anyway. As relieved as I was, I also felt guilty as if I were betraying my husband.
Believe it or not, there were times when Aaron could still fake it. I would hear him on the phone with friends telling them that he had been at the office every day the week before. It broke my heart because he wanted so badly to believe he had been at the office. It reminded me of when he was still healthy
and he told stories from when he was just nineteen years old and served in the Air Force during World War II. I never knew what was truth and what was fiction, but it didn’t matter then because the stories were so entertaining.
I came home from the dinner party that night and told Aaron the truth. “I told everyone at the party you didn’t want to go.” He was mortified. “I can’t keep covering for you.” Tears welled up in my eyes. “Our friends keep looking at me like I have two heads.”
After that, when we got invitations, I would RSVP for one. I went alone and nobody questioned me about Aaron anymore.
For most of my life, I had been Mrs. Aaron Spelling. For thirty-eight years his vision and creativity had defined our lives as a family. I thought about my own mother, how she had depended on my father her whole life and how angry she was. I was angry now too but in a different way. For my mother, on the surface at least, it was about money. When I married Aaron, she advised me to have what she called a “push-key” account of my own money in case the marriage didn’t work out. This was never my fear with Aaron. We had built everything together. I had always believed in him. When he had his moments of frustration with partners, I told him he didn’t need them and encouraged him to fulfill his dream of having his own production company. I had come a long way from sitting in the car while he met with the president of ABC-TV.