Dreamer of Dune (47 page)

The poinsettias my mother planted on the hillside did not survive.

R
ESUMING HER
interior design classes early in 1984, Jan was given an opportunity to study at an extension class that summer at the University of Paris at the Sorbonne. We discussed it but were wavering because of the high cost of the trip, including lodging at a
pension
(boarding house) in Paris, near Luxembourg Palace. We had the problem of child care, too. Julie was going through a rebellious stage at fifteen, and was quite a handful. Margaux was quite young, only a toddler.

So Jan telephoned my mother and told her about the situation, expressing concern about leaving little Margaux and her sisters in my care for an entire summer.

“My God, Jan,” Mom exclaimed. “An opportunity like that doesn't come along every day!” And making a reference to Jan's ancestry she said, “You're French, aren't you? You have to go!”

Jan had a feeling she would disappoint my mother if she didn't go, and beyond that, Mom was right. Opportunities like that weren't likely to come along again soon. We talked about it more, decided in favor of it, and made the reservations. She would leave in late May.

On January 25, 1984, I wrote to Mom, enclosing my usual light fare, and among other things said to her, “I'm working hard on an outline of a science fiction story to present to Dad for possible collaboration. Working title:
A Man of Two Worlds
.”

I spoke with her a couple of days later, and she said Dad had given her the sweetest, most intriguing note. It said, “There is no ‘real' or ‘unreal,' only what we create together.”

I found a similar entry in
Chapterhouse: Dune
, just one of many passages indicating he was thinking of her when he wrote the book:

One morning my mother awoke earlier than usual and sat up in bed. The long vertical blinds over the windows were open, and she gazed through them at a golden sunrise. The sun was rising on another perfect day in paradise, but she felt her life setting. She heard my father pass her door and called out to him.

“Good morning, darling,” he said in response, then nuzzled his bearded face against her cheek and kissed her. “Would you like breakfast now?”

“Maybe later. I just want to sit here for a while. Look at that glorious sunrise!”

Dad felt a surge of hope, because she was smiling and her voice sounded strong. Beverly Herbert gazed out on the water, as if hypnotized by it.

“Call if you need me,” he said. And he went back to his book, the one she had named,
Chapterhouse: Dune
.

On January 30, Dad called and spoke with Jan while I was out. He was in tears, said Mom refused to eat. “She wants to die,” he said. “She's slipping away.” Penny was there with him, helping. He was having a cardiac specialist fly in from Honolulu.

I wasn't home when he called because I had lost my wallet, something I never did, and I was searching for it in the woods where I had been gathering kindling. I didn't find it, and when I returned, Jan told me of the call.

Somehow I seemed to be feeling my mother's anguish, as before, from far across the ocean. It was sending scattered signals through my brain, leaving me in dazed confusion.

I reached Dad by telephone, and he sounded dismal. He said Mom refused to go to a hospital, where they could hook her to life-support equipment. “She doesn't want to die in a hospital,” he said. There were long periods of silence and broken sentences, when he couldn't talk. I told him I loved him.

He canceled a scheduled book tour.

The following day I called him again. He said the specialist had given Mom medicine that was working well, and that she was starting to eat once more. Dad was planning to hire a private jet with medical equipment to bring her back to Seattle in March or April. That was two or three months off, so I thought the emergency had passed.

He said things were better, under control.

That evening I wrote a letter to my parents:

On February 3, I spoke with Dad, and he said Mom was doing a little better. We discussed
A Man of Two Worlds
, and it looked like we would definitely write the book together. He suggested the title
Man of Two Worlds
instead, which he thought would be stronger, and I agreed. The newspaper element in the story would concern a high-technology communications empire, with a strong lead character. Dad had spoken with his literary agent about it, who felt we might obtain a large advance for the book. We spoke of sending him a short outline of our proposed plot, perhaps two pages.

When Mom woke up the next morning she said to Dad, in a faraway voice, “You will fall in love with a younger woman.”

Oh no, he insisted, that would never happen. And besides, he told her, he didn't want her talking that way, as if she weren't going to be around.

On February 5, Dad called and said Mom had taken a sudden turn for the worse. The doctor only gave her three days to live. There was nothing to be done for her now, he said. His voice wavered, and he couldn't talk for several moments.

“I'm sorry for breaking down,” he said, finally.

I felt numb. “You don't need to apologize, Dad. I love you. Tell Mom I love her.”

He mentioned an unusual incident that occurred several days before, when Mom sat up suddenly in bed and said, “I just saw Federico [De Laurentiis, son of the
Dune
movie producer]. He was talking to me.” She had been especially fond of young Federico, who had died some years earlier in an Alaskan plane crash. This was a common experience, my father told me, in which dying people had visions of those already gone.

I also spoke with Penny, who was still with him. She was in tears.

For several hours after talking with my father and sister, I again struggled with my terror of flying. That evening I made my second reservation to fly to Hawaii, leaving the afternoon of the sixth. Again, I didn't tell Dad I was coming. Events lay before me in a haze. I would go to the airport and get on the plane, entirely sober. Drunkenness would only make it worse, would intensify my fear, I thought. With any luck at all I would arrive in Hawaii, where I would telephone my parents and surprise them. It didn't make a lot of sense, wasn't thought out at all.

But Jan told Dad about my plans, and he said for me not to come, that there was nothing I could do, and besides Mom was adamant that she didn't want a “big deathbed scene.” Dad said he had just read Mom a letter from a friend of hers, but she had trouble concentrating on the words, only picking up bits and pieces. Mom gave Dad a list of things she wanted him to do after she was gone, and made him promise to do them. It was a long list, he said, and involved us.

I spoke to Bruce, who said he had been told by Dad (pursuant to Mom's wishes) not to rush to Hawaii for a big ending scene. Mom didn't want drama. She just wanted peace.

I tried to sleep that night, but couldn't. I got up and tried to write, then tried to read, then tried to watch a late movie on television. I couldn't remain in bed either. Finally I dozed off on the family room couch, holding a letter she had written to me.

On the morning of the seventh, I called Dad early, afraid of what I might hear. Mom had slipped into a coma and was not expected to survive the night. He said it was her last wish to be cremated, with her ashes scattered on the land she loved, Kawaloa. He said he would come back to Seattle after it was all over. And he spoke of one of the items on her long list.

“She made me promise to finish
Chapterhouse
and get it off to New York, but I can't do it here.” He said it was a little over half completed, and that he had read many of the passages to Mom, receiving her comments and suggestions on them.

In a failing voice I asked if she might possibly pull through, but he said no. It was beyond that. I broke down and couldn't talk any more. Since she was in a coma, she wasn't going to fight back again, as she had so many times before. This was finality. I went in the family room and hugged Margaux while I cried. I asked Julie and Kim to pray for their Nanna.

I hadn't given them any details yet, feeling my daughters were too young to sense the immensity of what was going on.

Early that evening, Dad called. My mother, Beverly Ann Herbert, passed away at 5:05
P.M
. at the age of fifty-seven, while he was holding her hand. Dr. Milton Howell was in attendance, and he said, when she was gone, “She had grace.”

My father told me that after my call that morning he held Mom's hand and told her I said I loved her. She was in a coma, but he told her, “If you understand, darling, nod your head.”

She nodded her head.

I was only a little heartened when Dad assured me she was not in pain at the end.

They weren't going to spread her ashes yet, as it was Mom's wish that the ceremony, a simple one, be held at a future date at Kawaloa when the entire family could be there.

After the call, I told the girls, and we all cried.

I learned later that in her last days my mother had remarked, “I wish Brian were here.” It is a tragedy that I was not there, and I think I shall always suffer for it. What an astounding woman my mother was. What a terrible loss to me, and to everyone who knew and loved her. She had a valiant, strong heart.

And I recalled some two decades earlier, when we were living in San Francisco before the phenomenal success of
Dune
, when Mom predicted that she would die in a distant land.

A story on Mom's passing ran in Retail Ad Week, describing her career in retail advertising, and featuring Dr. Howell's description of her as a woman with grace.

Dad wrote a poignant poem about their life together, which he entitled, with the simple elegance that represented my mother, “Bev.” It spoke of their honeymoon on a mountaintop and little details about their life together, spanning nearly thirty-eight years. In reference to the cause of her lung cancer, he wrote, “Smoke buys your life.”

In the closing lines of the poem my father described their final moments together, when he held her hand.