Memory is the gift from God which death cannot destroy.
- Kahlil Gibran
I
learned a lot from Michael Landon. Today I believe that my strength comes from him. Weeks before he died, he wrote his parting advice to me. It’s very special to me and I read it often. In it he said, “Be strong. Be solid. Live life, love it and be happy.” Michael once told me, “Don’t grieve too long.” I’m trying, but losing someone like Michael is something that stays with you forever.
When you lose someone you love, you struggle with it every day. At first, our fiveyear- old, Sean, had a tough time talking about his father. Just recently he began watching Michael on television again and admitting how much he misses him. Still, this morning he told me he missed his daddy so much his stomach hurt. Jennifer is eight and it’s been rough for her, too. All three of us are in therapy. We just take life day by day.
The children and I visit the cemetery often. We bring Michael letters, usually just to tell him about what we’re feeling and what is happening in our lives. But I really don’t feel as close to him there as I do at home, where there are pictures of him in every room and his clothes are still in his closet, just as he left them. This is where Michael most loved to be. Sometimes, especially when I go up to bed at night, I wish he was waiting upstairs and we could just sit down and discuss the day’s events.
I first met Michael when I was nineteen and hired as a stand-in on Little House on the Prairie. Seeing the way he treated everybody, I developed a terrible crush. One night, two years after I’d joined the show, he came to my apartment after a party on the set. From that moment on, we were wildly in love.
Michael and I were married on Valentine’s Day, 1983. As a husband, he was the best - strong, caring, supportive and very witty. Michael was also a homebody. Every day before he left the studio, he’d call and ask what we needed from the market. He’d show up with a bag of goodies in his arms. Michael loved to cook, and on many nights he’d take over the kitchen. His specialties were Italian dishes like spaghetti with sausage and chicken cacciatore.
He was as good a father as he was a husband. I used to love to watch him with the children, especially on vacations. In Hawaii, he taught them to skip stones across the water and got as excited as the children did when they dis-covered a beautiful shell or a tiny hermit crab. He would spend hours, literally hours, playing in the ocean with Sean and Jennifer. Everything was just perfect. Michael loved our life and his work. He’d always been incredibly healthy. We were looking forward to growing old together.
Then in February 1991, he began having abdominal pains. It was always tough to get Michael to see a doctor. Finally I made an appointment, and he was examined for an ulcer. Nothing was found, but they put him on some medicine that helped for a while.
In early April, the pain resurfaced. Four days later - April 5 - we had the results of the biopsy: pancreatic cancer that had metastasized to the liver.
Looking back, I now believe Michael knew even then that he wasn’t going to make it. Pancreatic cancer is swift and lethal, with a five-year survival rate of only 3 percent. I was angry, stunned. Why was this happening? Michael looked at it more pragmatically, as he did everything in his life. From the moment he was diagnosed until the day he died, he was never angry. Once he told me, “It’s not God who does it. It’s the disease. God doesn’t give you cancer.” For Michael, death wasn’t something to fear, but he didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to leave everyone he loved.
We leveled with the kids from the beginning. Michael and I called our older children to tell them what was going on, and then we sat down with our two little ones. We told them that Daddy had a very serious type of cancer and that Daddy was going to do the best he could to fight it, but there were no guarantees. Sean was very calm. I’m not sure he really understood. Jennifer, too, seemed to take it well, but later there were indications she was suffering inside - stomachaches, headaches and anxiety attacks.
These first moments were before the storm, the hurricane of media that surrounded us as soon as news of Michael’s disease hit the press. Photographers staked out our home and the hospital. They climbed over our walls and peeked in our windows. The tabloids came out with bizarre stories. Almost every week, they printed a new fabrication. Once they said Michael had only four weeks to live. Another time, they claimed the cancer had spread to his colon. Neither was true. At the same time, the public responded with compassion and love. We received a flood of letters - twelve thousand a week. Michael was deeply moved, and he told me, “This is the first time I’ve realized how many lives I’ve touched.”
In less than a month, the cancer doubled in size. For the first time, I think both of us realized Michael was probably going to die. That afternoon, we held each other. I lay my head on his lap and cried. Michael stroked my hair and whispered, “I know, I know.”
Although he had resisted at first, Michael finally agreed to undergo experimental chemotherapy. He hated the idea, and I don’t think he would have done it if it wasn’t for the children and me. He was making a final effort to survive.
Michael’s health continued to deteriorate, however, and by Father’s Day, June 16, it was obvious to all of us that we wouldn’t have him with us much longer. In past years, we bought Michael gifts like tennis rackets. This year there were pajamas and beautiful homemade cards. The whole family showed up to see him.
Shortly after Father’s Day, Michael told me that he only had a week to live. That last week, Michael’s health continued to fail. Then, on Sunday morning, June 30, the nurse told me they believed the end was near, so I called the children and Michael’s best friends to the house. Since the doctors had increased his morphine and Percocet, Michael was drowsy and drifted in and out of consciousness. Throughout the last day, each of us said our private good-byes and let Michael know that it was okay. If he was ready to die, it was all right to let go.
The next morning, Michael was in a dreamlike state, and we were all in the bedroom again when he suddenly sat up in bed and said, “Hi. I love you guys.” Then a little while later, Michael asked the others to leave so we could be alone. Looking back, I believe he was ready to die, and he really didn’t want it to happen in front of the whole family.
I stayed with Michael, waiting for the inevitable. Sometimes he drifted off into almost a trance. At one point I asked him, “Do you know who I am?” He looked at me and answered, “Yeah.” I said, “I love you.” He answered, “I love you, too.” Those were his last words. A moment later, he stopped breathing.
I felt stunned and stayed with Michael for a little while before I went downstairs to tell the others that he had died. There was, however, little time for contemplation. As if they somehow knew, we heard the swirl of helicopters overhead as the press circled in. Suddenly we heard screaming outside. Jennifer had climbed to the top of the swing set and was shouting, “Not my daddy. Not my daddy. I don’t want my daddy to die.” I told the others to let her be, because I wanted her to be able to get it out. Soon she climbed down and was sobbing in my arms.
A while later, the undertaker arrived. When they carried Michael’s body out, I knew he was never coming back. That was the finality of it - Michael was gone.
That night, both children slept with me. Jennifer and I wore two of Michael’s shirts to bed with us. I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere, like I just didn’t fit in anymore.
I was completely lost, lonely.
The best thing I could do was leave, so I took the kids away for four weeks in Hawaii. We went to a place Michael and I loved. It was hard, because he wasn’t there. But it was even tougher coming home, knowing that Michael wouldn’t be waiting for us.
We’re getting better, but it all takes time. The children still sleep with me sometimes, though not as often as in the beginning. They just seem to need to be hugged more often. And I continue to have some very difficult moments. A few days ago, I was on the expressway and got off at the wrong exit. I ended up at the studio. That was where the children and I would go visit Daddy. It was such a part of our lives. But Michael is gone, and all of our lives are changing.
It’s odd, but before Michael died, I was frightened of death. I used to worry about illness or sometimes just getting on an airplane. Now I’m no longer afraid. Life is too short. You never know, so you’d better make the best of every moment.
When I think about Michael, what I remember most is how he relished life and how fiercely he loved his family. Ours was a good marriage: Michael was always there for me, and I was always there for him. He told me once, after he’d been diagnosed, that win or lose he could handle whatever happened. He said, “I’ve had an incredible life, great happiness.” I miss Michael every day, but I know wherever he is, he’s happy and well - and that someday I’ll see him again.
- Cindy Landon with Kathryn Casey