My father’s 737 jet out of Hong Kong had already been delayed for three hours due to bad weather. But that didn’t seem to bother him much. He just smiled and relaxed into his chair a row behind his film crew. Another hour passed on the tarmac. And then the jet spread her wings and climbed into the heavens.  

Shortly into the flight, his cameraman heard a loud snore. He wondered from where it came. He turned and saw my dad, his producer and director, gasping for air. A steward rushed back with oxygen. It was no use. He struggled a few minutes, and then he was gone.

Carl Ward Dudley, a man born on his father’s Vaudevillian show train in Little Rock, Arkansas, creator of more than 300 travelogues, died on yet another exotic excursion. Damned if he didn’t write the final scene himself.  

---

 

6 AM.  Beverly Hills. The phone rang in our Rodeo Drive kitchen.    

At 21, I just happened to be home and sleeping in the downstairs bedroom. After all, it was fun to indulge in the occasional dinner and overnight. But cushy and rent-free as my parents’ home may have been, I had moved out at 19 despite my father’s misgivings, and I had no plan of moving back in.

The man had absolutely no faith that I could stand on my own, and I’d been determined to prove him wrong.  

“You will never get a loan to buy your own car, get a job, or pay your own rent!”  he shouted as I left.

But, defiant as I am, I trumped all three. I got a VW loan for $32.60 a month, worked in the ‘rag’ garment business in downtown L.A., and found a $90 apartment above a Laurel Canyon garage.  It leaned to one side, but I was in my cups; even more so as I proudly walked my father around the place during his one and only visit.

“Jennifer, this place is pretty nice.”

Clearly it was a dump, but it was all mine. And his validation meant that, maybe, for once, in his eyes, I had done something right. He always paid more negative attention toward me than my five sisters. Barking at me was a sport. “KNUCKLEHEAD, can’t you do it right?,” “stand up straight,” and “get back in your room and stay there until I tell you to come out.”  I’m sure he had a gold medal in bullying. These rare, loving pats on the head were hard-won, and I reveled in them.

So it was fate that I, his most mercurial child, would be the one to hear the news first.

---

Early morning light streamed through the bedroom’s soft white curtains. Our nasty cocker spaniel, Keo, sprawled at the bottom of my bed. He always passed wind.

“Eck. Not again,” I said as I pushed him off, walked into the kitchen, and pushed the first line button blinking on the phone.

“Hello?”  

“Jennifer, it’s Barb.” My father’s film editor. He always said women were the finest cutters.  “Your father died from a heart attack on a plane in Hong Kong.”

I stood numb and naked in bikini underwear.

“Thank you, Barb. I am not being rude, but I have to tell my mother. I will get back with you.” My tone never wavered.

Just before I hung up, I heard another soft voice on the line, and I knew exactly who it was. I threw on a T-shirt, rushed up the stairs to my parents’ master bedroom, and opened the door. Carefully. Quietly.

My mother stood silently in the middle of the room.  

“Mom. I am so sorry.”  

She went to the window, opened the drapes and, for the first and only time in my life, I heard her wail.

“DUKE, I AM SORRY I WAS NOT WITH YOU.”  

She turned to me. I hugged her. And then I let loose with my usual sarcasm.

“Ma. I feel badly, but if there is a heaven, I hope he and I don’t end up in the same place. I can’t imagine being screamed at for eternity. That would be hell!”  

She smiled.  I suggested I let her children know. I have five sisters. Only one still lived at home.  She agreed, turned, and went back to her bed. This time on my father’s side.

I walked down the hall and entered the open door to my youngest sister’s room.

She was just out of high school. Very creative. A budding photographer and a songstress. We were never on the same page. I, the too emotional sister. And she, the more controlled, placid and sweet.

That morning was no different. She was sleeping on her back. Blanket and top sheet up to her neck. Headphones on. Plugged into one of her favorite albums. I shook her gently. No movement. Gently again. She looked up, eyes wide, as she removed her phones.  

“Dad died.”  

A tsunami of silence rolled off of her. She grabbed me around the neck so tightly I thought I would choke. And then she began to sob. A primal sob.

I left the room and called Betty, our nanny of many years, who was working with another family a few blocks away. I knew she would be a huge support. True to her heartwarming form, Betty arrived within a half hour, put her arms around my sister, and sat next to her in our back den. And there she stayed for days.  

Then, I called my four adult sisters, scattered across the country. One was living in Rome. Each familiar voice cried through seeming shock, despite the fact that this was Dad’s fourth heart attack. We really believed our zestful, tall, trim, louder-than-life father was unstoppable. He always survived. He always came back. Not this time.  

---

 

Just last week, I received a package from my eldest sister. A handsome tanned leather folder. My father’s gold plated initials, CWD, commanded the bottom right corner.

A collection of flowery, loving letters spilled out. He’d carefully written each one to his mother during his freshman year at Grinnell College. I never met the woman, but I heard he felt similarly about her as he did me – he didn’t “particularly like” her.

Somehow, this young Carl, pouring out his heart and desires for the future, chipped away at my years of anger and resentment toward him.   

But nothing could have prepared me for the three sheets of typewritten paper I picked up next.

It was an elegant letter written by Ed Drews, my father’s cameraman, who was on the plane the day my father died. He addressed the note to my dad’s close friends, the actor Ralph Bellamy and his wife.

The first few paragraphs described the evening before my dad died. I already knew most of those details – dining on the patio of the Peninsula Hotel overlooking Kowloon Harbor.  Breakfast in the elegant hotel dining room before collecting his bags to board his final flight.   

But then the letter shifted, somewhat unexpectedly, into darker details of my father’s heart attack. Facts I’d never known. My feet paced around the room as I read, until I reached the last page. I fell into a chair.

My dad’s last words appeared, carved into the pulp of the delicate paper.

“How lucky we are to get away,” he said as he stared straight ahead into the void.

I froze. My gut stiffened. I couldn’t feel my legs. My breath caught in my throat.   

The tears I never cried were too powerful to hold.