Science Comedian

Darlene Malow June 29, 1937 – Sept. 4, 2008

September 15th, 2008

Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001:  I spent most of the day at my mother’s bed­side, at St. Luke’s Epis­co­pal Hos­pi­tal, in Hous­ton, Texas.  That may sound like an odd place for a fam­ily of Jews to gather, but St. Luke’s is home to the Texas Heart Insti­tute and is widely con­sid­ered one of the best med­ical cen­ters in the country.

Under the direc­tion of Dr. Den­ton Coo­ley (famous for hav­ing per­formed the first suc­cess­ful human heart trans­plant in the U.S. in 1968, and also the first to implant an arti­fi­cial heart in a man in 1969), the Texas Heart Insti­tute has per­formed over 100,000 open heart pro­ce­dures – sev­eral of which I know more about than I wish I did.

My fam­ily is all too famil­iar with the halls of St. Luke’s, ever since my father’s first heart attack in 1984, his sec­ond ten years later, and the inti­mate rela­tion­ship that saw him on and off the heart trans­plant wait­ing list until, ulti­mately, he’d been the recip­i­ent of a new – well, not new but used – heart in 1996.

So, by the time my mother suf­fered a stroke on August 24, 2001, just a cou­ple weeks before 9/11, we’d already had a 17-year rela­tion­ship with that institute.

Inter­est­ingly, on the first floor of St. Luke’s Hos­pi­tal – I kid you not – there is a McDonald’s restau­rant…  as if to guar­an­tee a flow of patients.  It’s a strange but not uncom­mon expe­ri­ence to see peo­ple stand­ing in line with rolling IV’s.  It has always made me pic­ture every­one in line with IV’s, oxy­gen masks, in wheel­chairs, on gur­neys and full rolling hos­pi­tal beds, buy­ing Quar­ter Pounders with Cheese, french fries, and Cokes.

Thanks, in part, to that sort of diet, my father was only 47 when he had his first heart attack.

That’s an inter­est­ing phrase:  “his first heart attack.”  May it never enter your vocabulary.

For years now, as I’ve grown closer and closer to that fate­ful age, I’ve won­dered what’s brew­ing inside me.  My father was over­weight, a cig­a­rette smoker, and a worka­holic.  And I’m none of those things.  But how much is genetic and how much environmental?

My mother was also over­weight, a smoker, and led a seden­tary lifestyle.  Her stroke, at 64, was dev­as­tat­ing, life-changing.  She would never fully recover.

My father passed away three months after her stroke, hav­ing lived with his sec­ond heart – a stranger’s heart – beat­ing in his chest for five and a half years.

At his funeral, two men intro­duced them­selves to me.  They were also mem­bers of St. Luke’s Heart Exchange pro­gram – the sup­port group for recip­i­ents and those on the wait­ing list and their fam­i­lies.  They told me they had received the hearts just before and just after my dad’s.  His death must have been por­ten­tous to them.  I’ve often won­dered how they’ve fared with their new hearts.

My mother’s phys­i­cal state sta­blized, but in the sub­se­quent years her men­tal state would decline and plateau, decline and plateau.  Vas­cu­lar demen­tia ate away at her mind and, by the end, per­haps Alzheimer’s, too.  They’re known to pal around together.

On Thurs­day, Sept. 4, 2008, at 2:50pm, seven years and eleven days after her stroke, my mother passed away, with sev­eral of us gath­ered around her bed­side for the final hours.  I was hold­ing her hand.  My girl­friend, Tara,  was hold­ing my other hand.  There was one false alarm, when we thought she had drawn her last breath.  Shari, my mom’s care­giver, said, “She’s gone, baby.”  We cried some more but then she sur­prised us by mov­ing again.  She still had another five or ten min­utes of life in her.

We’re a stub­born lot, the Malows.

At her funeral, my sis­ter read part of an old love let­ter my father had writ­ten to my mother even before they were mar­ried 50 years ago.  He said, “You never get used to miss­ing someone.”

I guess I’ll have to get used to that.

My mom was, truly, a mom.  Her life was devoted to rais­ing her two chil­dren – the come­dian and the lawyer.  And, when we grew up and flew from the nest – giv­ing her less and less to work with – she never gave up on us but she began rais­ing dogs (Bichon Frises), mid­wif­ing a cou­ple lit­ters a year.  She also did res­cue work for orphaned and abused dogs.  On the phone, she’d lis­ten to my sis­ter prac­tice every one of her clos­ing argu­ments as she read­ied for a trial.  And every time I per­formed in Hous­ton, she came to the com­edy club and laughed as if it were the first time she’d heard the “clas­sic” jokes.

From the audi­ence and from the din­ing room table, I’ll miss her laugh.