Finding My Voice. Nita Whitaker LaFontaine
life challenges, and he’d looked them in the eye and conquered them. We had a saying when challenges arose: “Well at least it’s not cancer. Everything else we can handle!” Now cancer was in the living room of our lives, and we were forced to reckon with the awful fear that comes with just saying the word. Still, I knew Don to be a bull of a man—a tenacious spirit who could rise above anything—and that was what we were going to call upon.
We held onto each other in the middle of our kitchen, and I felt him lean into me. I was the one who usually leaned on him. For a few quiet moments we comforted each other without saying a word. And then we prayed, asking for strength to bear whatever this was. I knew God would see us through.
Don went to his computer to escape. (He loved emailing and watching Rachel Maddow and Keith Olberman. He loved their intelligence.) Though it’s my nature to try and fix everything and everybody, I understood. This was one that needed some space.
I called my sister Kathy, my prayer partner, and told her what we had just learned. Calling out to her, I used my voice to gain support and to rally those who would eventually become my prayer warriors throughout our entire ordeal. She was first on my list. Then I broke down and cried.
Kathy fortified me with her faith, conviction, and a word of prayer. She and Don were very close. The fear the word “cancer” brought up in me was over- whelming, and I had to release it so my husband would see only safety in my eyes.
After I spoke with Kathy, I called my two dearest friends, Deb and Adam. They both prayed with me for our family right there, and as they prayed I cried and found my strength and resolve to jump in the ring with this thing called cancer and fight like hell. When I got it together, I did what every woman with a family does: I began to make dinner.
“We will tell people when we are on the other side of this,” Don said later. He didn’t want anything to get out that could stop his career, so we chose to be careful about who we shared this information with. Don was very old-school Hollywood in this way: it was very important to him that he continue working.
Then we had to decide how to broach this with each of the girls. We called Christine in Florida, Don’s beloved daughter—who I call my bonus daughter. She had just had her first child, Riley; a little boy who filled Don’s heart with joy. Christine broke down and cried when we told her. Don reassured her he would be fine—that he was going to kick this thing.
Earlier that afternoon, Don had called home from the doctor’s office and blurted out his diagnosis as soon as (he thought) I answered the phone.
“Oh. Do you know Heath Ledger died today, Dad?” eighteen-year-old Skye responded. It was only then that Don realized he was not talking to me and apologized profusely.
When I asked Skye that night how she felt having heard her father had cancer, she didn’t seem upset. “Well, Dad’s gonna get over it. He’s very strong, Mom. We’ve just gotta fight it.”
This is her way, I thought. But Liisi could not have been more different. She is highly sensitive, her emotions often overwhelm her, and at that time she was experiencing enormous fears of death. We made a decision based on what she could handle. We didn’t give her the word “cancer”, we told her Dad had an abnormality in his lung and he needed radiation and chemical treatment. She accepted our words.
We’d known Johnnie Stewart—a spiritual mentor—for several years, and I had called on her to pray with me many times. I consulted her again in January when there was still so much uncertainty, yet we finally knew what we were fighting. During our conversation she encouraged me to speak positive words with Don. After we talked, she emailed me an affirmation to say with Don. An affirmation is a group of words said repeatedly to facilitate bringing to reality what you speak. It’s a vehicle to help you use your voice to bring about change. I wasn’t sure how Don would take it, but when I read it to him he liked the idea right away. “Let’s do it,” he said.
There is a scripture in the Bible that reads: “Whatsoever things are righteous, good and beautiful. Think on these things.” (Philippians 4:8) The affirmation Johnnie gave us was very simple and in keeping with this teaching of focusing on all that is good. We focused on the best—on seeing Don healed—not the worst. “I see me well,” Don would say to me. “I see you well,” I’d reply. Then we’d touch hands to complete our intention.
The girls saw us saying this to each other frequently, but since Don and I had so many little idioms between us they would just shake their heads and smile at each other. Still, on what we started calling “dip days,” when Don’s energy flagged after chemo, Skye would go into our room if Don was resting, fluff his pillows, and bring him a cup of tea.
***
Two days after Don’s diagnosis, he began chemotherapy. The plan was for Don to receive four cycles spaced three weeks apart, and thirty-five radiation treatments with weekends off. He experienced few side effects.
I located a physician who specialized in a newer area of treatment called integrative oncology. Dr. Mary Hardy had an office at UCLA and was a New Orleans native, in my home state. Before our first visit, she’d read Don’s entire medical record. Within two seconds of meeting us, she “got” Don, gave him a strict low-food chain diet, and prescribed several herbs and homeopathic remedies to balance out the effects of the chemicals he was receiving.
Through the seven weeks of treatment, the oncology doctors at Cedars kept telling us what an amazing patient Don was and how well he had done with this aggressive treatment (combining chemotherapy and radiation). With his usual upbeat attitude and steady stream of witty comments and jokes, Don kept everyone at the hospital laughing. No matter the situation, Don would find some way to ease any tension with a quip or a good-hearted tease. He quickly traded insults with the doctors and nurses, commenting on everything from their “sensible shoes” to calling someone on a fart. He in no way behaved like the King of Hollywood that he was. The Geico commercial Don appeared in made him recognizable after twenty years of relative anonymity. In it, a woman says something and Don, wearing earphones, repeats her words in his highly dramatic “voice-over” voice.
“In a world where both of our cars are totally underwater,” he intoned in his famous announcer’s voice. “In a world” is a phrase familiar to millions of moviegoers—one Don created more than thirty-five years ago, when he was a writer and editor in the movie trailer business. He’d voiced it in thousands of movie trailers from The Godfather to Fatal Attraction; Shrek and The Simpsons, and it’s been parodied by comedians from Pablo Francisco to Janeane Garofolo. But Don never made a big deal of it. Don was the same in the hospital as he was in our living room.
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Off-the-wall humor was just part of life in our household. Skye and Liisi grew up with a Dad whose daily comments put us all in stitches. It wasn’t unusual for them to see me drop to the living room floor rolling with laughter. Don would think nothing of dancing into a room with a new hip-hop routine (at which he was awful), playing it for the laugh. At bedtime, he’d make up stories to tell the girls, including hilarious character voices that made them both squeal with delight.
I admit to bursting into song at all kinds of inappropriate moments, like belting out “You can’t touch this” by MC Hammer (complete with the dance) for no apparent reason. Sometimes I made my daughters sing for their supper—literally, no song, no food. Some mornings, I’d be boogying them off to school and as the garage door closed in front me I’d hear Don call out, “Look at your wonderful mommy,” as he smiled with pride.
And throughout treatment Don kept his life as normal as possible. He continued to drive the morning carpool: Skye two days a week, Liisi one. He always pulled energy from somewhere when his children were concerned. When he returned home we would get back in the car, and I’d drive us to Cedars, sometimes listening to Eckert Tolle’s The New Earth. Don loved what Tolle had to say, but listening to his voice, Don said, was like taking a Nembutal. The drive there and the quick radiation treatment (all of two minutes) would take about an hour. When we got home by late morning, Don headed downstairs to his studio to work.
Don loved his work with a passion, and he wanted to keep