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At QVC, I’ll often do three shows in one day, with product design or other business meetings in between. By the time we are heading back to the airport, I’m pretty tired because I may have been talking for almost eight hours straight. It can wear on the vocal cords. So I always stop to get something soothing for my rough, dry throat. What’s more soothing than a cold milk shake or two? Shhhh. Please don’t tell my kids.

My daughters Rachael, Brianna and Abigail, 2012. Yes, they all inherited my sugar cravings. Brianna made killer cupcakes!

My Mallard at age one, Michael Bryan, forever imprinted on my heart and soul.

T
his week there will be another wave. I can feel the tug on me. I know I’ll be pulled under for a while, but now I can recover a little bit faster, catch my breath, and get back on my feet. Never easier, only sooner.

I’m writing this two years to the day after my son Michael left this earth at age eighteen. I have had countless waves of knockdown grief in these past two years. The respites of peace have become a little longer; but then, like the ocean, the bottomless sorrow I feel from losing my son stirs, builds, and then crashes over me once more. My family understands and my friends stay close by, but no one can make it better. After the first twenty-four hours of feeling the kind of grief that turns you inside out when you find out that your child has died, you realize that no one can ever make it better. Every day, even now, I stand in the shallows of an underlying sadness, fully aware that, at any time, another wave will pull me into the depths of anguish. It’s an inconceivable sorority of sisters that I have been initiated into without a choice: women who have lost a child. Only through my faith in God do I have the courage to get back onto my feet.

Four nights a week, right after our Las Vegas show, Donny and I do a “Meet ’n Greet” where we chat with people who have bought a VIP seat for that evening’s performance. We are one of the few shows on the Strip to offer one. I love to meet and talk with the audience members. One night, about six months before Michael died, I noticed a woman standing off to the side who didn’t have a “Meet ’n Greet” pass. Her expression was emotionless and hollow. She happened to be an acquaintance of my executive assistant, but they had lost touch many years ago. Without knowing why, I had a strong feeling that I should talk to her. I had seen the look in her eyes before: the look of not really being engaged in life, but merely existing in it. I had witnessed that look in my own mirror, when I experienced postpartum depression. I told my assistant to ask the woman to wait, even though I couldn’t really believe I was inviting this relative stranger to my dressing room. On most evenings, after the show and the “Meet ’n Greet,” I hurry to get out of my costume and home to my kids and my husband. But on this night, I knew I had to follow my intuition and hear what this woman had to say.

There was very little small talk between us right from the start. She told me that she could no longer live with her grief over losing her teenage son two months before. She had come to Las Vegas, by herself, to end her life far from where her family members would be the first to find her. She had planned to go straight to her room once she checked in, but something made her feel like she should get a ticket to see our show. She thought it would be something to take her mind off of what she
was about to do. After the show she had been drawn to this side room where we were holding the “Meet ’n Greet.” Once there, she saw my executive assistant, a friend she hadn’t seen in two decades. This hadn’t been in her plans.

Her son was seventeen years old and he had been out with friends at a party. The woman told me that although she never suspected her son had any drug problems, he had been found at this party dead of a massive overdose. The coroner had told her that the high level of drugs in his system had caused cardiac arrest. The look on her face now seemed to mirror the resigned anguish she felt inside. She had tortured herself endlessly, asking, “Why did this happen?” and “how” could she have saved him? Since there would never be a clear answer to either question, she had decided not to save herself, either. She had managed to gather enough prescription medication to go to sleep and not wake up. She had her room key and her bottles of pills. She was ready.

I somehow knew that I needed to keep listening to this woman, at least until she felt heard and understood. I thought that I could empathize with her pain. As one of the founders of Children’s Miracle Network, I’d been with quite a few women who have lost a child to illness or accident. But you don’t have to experience it to comprehend the anguish. Any mother can imagine what it would feel like to lose a child. Most of us probably had the same thought as we held our brand-new babies for the first time: “I love this child so much, I will protect her or him from any harm, even with my own life.”

As the night went on, I found myself in a silent plea to God
to help me know what to say to this woman, who was suffering so deeply. To my shock, it came into my heart to say something I would never say to a stranger: “Even if your son had survived the cardiac arrest and the overdose, he would never have been like your son again. His brain damage would have been very severe. Your son is free of a lifelong struggle that might have been much more painful for both of you.”

As soon as the words were out, I almost apologized for saying them. How could I possibly know if that was true? I only knew that I had to be the one to say it to her.

The woman became calmer as we talked and by the end of the evening, she promised me that she would go home and seek grief counseling. I gave her my e-mail address and asked her to keep me posted, and I had a late-night dinner sent to her room to make sure she knew I was supporting her decision to stay strong and go home to her family.

About two weeks later, she e-mailed me to say that the full autopsy report had come back with the very conclusion I had told that evening without knowing why. The same drugs that caused his heart to stop working had quickly damaged her son’s brain beyond recovery. She wrote that I was a “mercy from a loving God.” Little did I know then the extent of “mercy” I would need from a loving God only a few months into my future. She then wrote, “I know you were inspired that night because not only did your words cause me to think with more clarity, but on the way home I found a book someone had left behind in the airplane seat pocket. It was the exact book you had recommended. It was very helpful.”

The very next night during the “Meet ’n Greet,” another woman gave me a hug and said, “Oh, Marie. You’ve been through depression, abuse, divorce, kids in rehab, the death of your parents, illness, and challenges. What haven’t you been through?” Thinking about the grieving mother the night before, I answered, “I haven’t lost a child. That would be the worst thing that could happen.”

On February 26, 2010, the “worst thing that could happen” happened. My sweet son left me, his sisters and brothers, family and friends, by jumping from the balcony of his eighth-floor college apartment in downtown Los Angeles. Even as I write this, two full years later, I want to cry out, “Please, don’t let this be true.” What I wouldn’t give to wrap my arms around my child one more time.

*   *   *

When Michael was about two years old, his older brother, Stephen, gave him the nickname “Mallard.” All of my kids have had nicknames that they were called more than their actual names until they were about twelve years old, when the nicknames started to embarrass them in public. Jessica’s was “Angelic,” usually shortened to “Gelic,” Rachael’s was “Sweetness,” and Brandon’s was “Smiley,” for being the happiest baby of all. Brianna was “Princess,” because from birth she had a royal attitude, but sometimes “Piranha,” because, even though she was my most girly girl, she was inclined to chomping down on people as a toddler. Matthew had to suffer through “Bubbie” and then “Bubbalicious,” most often shortened to “Lish.”

Michael was the one who gave Abigail her nickname of “Baster,” and his reasons were always a mystery, but it had something to do with a turkey. The kids were all in the kitchen on Thanksgiving morning, and Michael pulled the baster out of the drawer, tapped Abigail once on each shoulder, and said, “Thy nickname shall be Baster. So it is written. So shall it be done.” I guess it had something to do with a baster’s function, she being a “little squirt” at that time.

Michael’s nickname, “Mallard,” had to do with the shape of his adorable top lip. When you looked at his face in profile, his thin little upper lip had a slight curl to it and overlapped his lower lip a tiny bit, giving him the appearance of a baby duck. This changed, by age seven, to look completely normal as his face grew, but the nickname stuck.

I never realized how fully his nickname actually fit his personality until Abigail wanted to see a photograph of a mallard to see if it really did look like Mike, and together we read a teacher’s helper page of fun facts on the Internet.

Michael was definitely an adaptable and adventuresome child, especially when it came to touring with me both nationally and internationally. Even though he was small for his age until about fifteen, and very reserved around new people, he was
usually the first one in the car, on the plane, or on the bus ready for an adventure. One time, when he was about five, Michael jumped in a taxicab in Hong Kong without the driver knowing it. The cab started to pull away with all of us chasing down the street waving our arms. I was always having to tell him to wait for me. He was also an avid observer, checking out every new social situation, which reminded me of myself as a small child. I would stand on the sidelines and watch for a while because I wanted to think things over and connect the dots before I jumped into a situation with people I didn’t know. Michael was the same way.

Michael was intrigued by every new place we visited, anywhere in the world. He absorbed the flavors of the culture, especially the art, designs, and style of the region. Sometimes, he adapted to it all a bit too much. In 1998, after I completed my run on Broadway as Anna in
The King and I
, I was invited to play Maria in
The Sound of Music
on a prestigious tour through Southeast Asia. I knew that it was a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity and that it would be a unique experience for my children. Well, the temperatures that summer were blazing hot, and my fourteen-year-old, Stephen, began to envy the clean-shaven heads of the Buddhist monks he would see on the streets. Halfway through the tour, he begged me to let him have his hair shaved off.

My hairdresser on the tour said she would give him his new look. The rest of the family stood by and watched as Stephen’s full head of hair fell to the floor, and the remaining stubble was taken off with shaving cream and a razor. At one point the
razor nicked his scalp and a small trickle of blood went around his ear, but he was happy with his new look.