The Dalai Lama and My Mama

I've been reading Barbara Walters' memoirs, Audition. An elderly friend of mine bought the book for two dollars from the Chapel Hill Public Library and passed it on to me.

Every time I think of Barbara Walters, I think of my dad. My father was on his deathbed in Baptist East Hospital in the fall of 2003. I had flown to Louisville to visit him. I had plans to meet two friends, Susan Ward and Kim Maddox, for lunch. My dad was short of breath because he was dying from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. It was my second day in his room, and we'd been over the important stuff. It didn't seem appropriate to waste breath on small talk, so my dad asked me what I would like to watch on his television in his hospital room. I said The View.

"That damn Baba Wawa," my dad said, in an exasperated tone of nearly benign disgruntlement, "I never did like her."

After reading Barbara's memoirs, I realize one thing: Men hate her or they try to seduce her. Harry Reasoner--hated her. Fidel Castro--tried to seduce her.

I'd been reading the memoirs in a fairly linear fashion, which is something that I do on rare occasions when I am entirely fascinated. On Mother's Day weekend, I had asked my husband to read me the chapter on Monica, so I had already skipped ahead a bit. Last night I chose to read the chapter on celebrities. Barbara writes of her visit with the Dalai Lama in that chapter.

Now two friends of mine, Troy Campbell and James Protzman, have recently spoken of the Dalai Lama to me. Troy mentioned the Dalai Lama when he told me about the movie Happiness Is (Troy is an associate producer of the film)and James said that he would most like to interview the Dalai Lama when I interviewed James about his first book, Jesus Swept. So I was clearly at attention while reading this passage from the book, even though it was about thirty minutes past my bedtime of ten o'clock Eastern Time.

I got to the part toward the end of the chapter where Barbara interviewed the Dalai Lama, and he told her that the purpose of life is "'to be happy.'" I had to put the book down. I had an acoustic memory.

It was January of 1987, and my mother was on her deathbed. We were both on her deathbed, actually, because I was lying with her in her bed in her bedroom. I was getting ready to leave Louisville to return to Lexington for the spring semester of my first year of medical school. My mother, realizing that the breast cancer was going to win, turned to me and said, "I want you to always be happy." That was it. The last piece of wisdom my mom ever bestowed.

And yet, it did not seem profound to me. I was climbing, climbing, up and up toward a dream of becoming a physician, and my mom was advising me to be happy. The advice seemed so cliche at the time that I filed it away into my memory archives and never really thought of it too much. To be honest, the advice she gave me one day in the Brown Cancer Center, upon watching a rather plain jane physician walk past us ( "Heather, when you are a doctor, at least put on lipstick in the morning") is advice I have mentioned to my daughter and to my friends because I thought it was clever. It was slightly more directive than, be happy. At that age I really craved substantive advice and lipstick seemed more substantive than happiness.

When I was able to pick the book back up, I mused that Barbara seemed fairly surprised that such an important man gave such simple advice.

Upon reflection, my mother's advice about happiness was much harder to follow than her advice about wearing makeup.

And so on this spring day, when the dog took one look at my inbox and whispered, "There's nothing to edit yet, take me on a walk," I did. We saw a mockingbird chasing a crow away from his turf. I felt amused. When the breeze whispered, "This may be the last spring day," I headed to Southern States for soil and fertilizer and worked on my patio garden past noon without sweating. I found the first tomato on the tomato plant. I felt happy.