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Las Vegas had been a fresh start for Michael, and with one successful, drug-free year behind him, he felt he was ready for the challenge that college would bring. He couldn’t wait to delve into the life he wanted more than anything. As he wrote in his application essay: “My mind is full of ideas that I can’t wait to express with a pencil and a piece of paper. I feel like that newly born bird that wants to fly with all its heart and is trying to find the courage. I am excited to experience the life I can have, if I just stay focused.”

Before he left for college, Michael cleaned out his bedroom so that it could be used as a guest room while he was gone. As we were packing, he told me a lot I didn’t know about how he’d felt growing up. It’s impossible to rewrite history; so I practice forgiving myself for not seeing clearly what was creating pain for my son. Children don’t have the life experience to judge their circumstances. Other mothers have told me the same: “I can’t believe my child didn’t tell me what was going on.” This is exactly why, as mothers, we have to be so diligent in reminding our children that they can tell us anything they want without fear that we will be angry. We need to remind our children, occasionally and without frightening them, that if something happens that feels wrong or hurtful, then they need to come and tell us, even if it points the finger at someone they see as your friend or a member of their family.

My son said that a few years earlier he had asked my father,
his beloved grandpa, for advice about possibly changing his last name. His grandpa told him about his own childhood: how after his father had died when he was an infant he had had two different stepfathers, who were both extremely difficult. He said to Mike, “Son, you must forgive and move on. But you also must be able to live with honor for your name. If that can’t be done with the name you carry now, then change it for your own peace of mind.” In the same words he used for each of his own nine children while we were growing up, my father told Michael, “There are two things worth defending to the death: your faith in God and your good name.” As we finished packing his room, Mike told me that he planned to sever ties with his father completely and change his last name to Bryan, which was his middle name. He felt that Michael Bryan also had a better ring for a designer. I won’t write about my son’s reasons for wanting to change his name for the sake of privacy. It was a legal privilege that he looked forward to when he turned eighteen.

During Michael’s first semester of college, I was working as a correspondent for
Entertainment Tonight
covering
Dancing with the Stars
. It was the season that Donny was one of the celebrity contestants (and, in case you haven’t heard
on every
show he’s done since then, yes, he won). Every Monday morning for ten weeks, I flew to Los Angeles from Las Vegas for the
shows that taped and aired on Monday and Tuesday. I would pick up Michael after his morning class on Mondays, and we would spend most of the day together and then have dinner after the show was done taping. He would then stay with me at whatever hotel I was in, and we would sit up and talk until about two a.m. The next morning, we would have breakfast, run errands for school supplies, or whatever he needed. Then I would drop him off for his afternoon class, go to the show, and fly home that evening. I loved having these hours with my son and hearing about his life at school, meeting his new friends in his apartment building, and looking at his finished creative assignments. Often we would get tacos at his favorite place and then try to walk them off on the beach. He would tell me about the girl he was interested in dating and why he was attracted to her, and ask my advice about asking her out. I was just starting to date Steve again, so I could sympathize. I was feeling pretty much like an awkward eighteen-year-old, too. During one of our long walks on the beach, my son turned to me and said, “Mom, I really like Steve. And I want you to be happy. If you ever want to marry him again, you have my approval.”

I knew Michael was being sincere. I also know he could tell that Steve was making me happy and that he was a good father figure for his younger siblings. He could also see how Steve was willing to put the effort into helping me as a mother. After all, it was Steve who was there to carry boxes when Michael moved into his new apartment and to help him set it up with everything my son might need. I think many mothers experience a
rather sweet turning point with a grown child, though it usually can’t be linked to a specific day. It’s more of a gradual change of perception, when your child becomes aware that you are more than a mom. You are a woman who deserves happiness of her own.

When Michael came home for the holidays, he seemed to be even more aware of his status as an adult, especially to his younger siblings. He would spend hours riding skateboards and playing football with the boys and trying to teach Abigail to ride a two-wheeled bike. There was only one present on his wish list: a printer so he could print out his assignments in his apartment. When I asked what gift he wanted for fun, he said, “Things don’t matter to me, Mom. I just want to find a wife, have a family, and travel the world whenever we can.”

After the Christmas break, when he was back at school, I flew to Los Angeles for a scheduled TV interview with Mary Hart of
Entertainment Tonight
, and Mike came with me. Mary always asked about each of my kids, and when she saw Michael, she enthusiastically asked him about FIDM.

Mike answered, “I’ve never been happier.”

The week my son passed away, a friend from his drug-taking days decided to pay Michael a visit, arriving with some of her other friends in tow. Michael’s roommate told us later that this group wanted to go out to experience Los Angeles, and Mike was asked to be the designated driver as they were intending to drink and they thought they might end up intoxicated by the end of the evening. Not wanting to be rude, Michael agreed to go out with them. We were told that the next
morning, about seven a.m., Mike returned to the apartment, alone and looking terrible. He told his roommate that he had woken up under a highway overpass and had walked back home. He had no idea where his friends had gone, how he had gotten there, or what had happened along the way, only that they had obviously left him. He said he had not had any alcohol or taken any drugs on his own, but felt that one of the people in the car must have laced what he was drinking with something that made him pass out. According to his roommate, Mike missed his classes that day and the next day, too, and could barely manage to get out of bed the following evening. This all happened just a few days before he passed away.

Michael never told me of this incident, but my mother’s intuition was telling me two days before he died that something was different. I heard a change in his voice over the phone, and it frightened me. He sounded weary and disappointed and said that he felt like he had no friends, even though his roommate and his new best female friend at school both assured me that Michael was always with their group of friends and rarely spent an evening alone. I could hear that he was emotionally down, but I thought it was compounded by the stress of finals. I also wondered if he had been turned down by one of the girls he was interested in dating and didn’t want to tell me about it. I later found out that he was using a prescription medicine for his acne that has now been shown to raise the risk of depression in some people. Parents, you must research any and all prescribed drugs, even if it’s to treat something as minor as acne.

I know now, too late, that my son was masking how deeply depressed he was.

I had three more shows at the Flamingo that week and a speaking engagement at a luncheon for five hundred businesswomen the next day, so I told Mike I would get him a plane ticket and he should come to Vegas to be with his brothers and sisters for a couple of days, but he didn’t want to miss any more classes. In that case, I said, I would fly to LA on Monday, my day off, and we would go to lunch and talk about what was going on. We spoke a little longer, and we left the conversation with our plans made.

I’ve gone over that phone conversation thousands of times in my memory. What could I have possibly said differently? What if I had known that it would be the last time I spoke to my son? My one consolation is that I never end a conversation with any of my children without saying, “I love you.” It was the last thing I said to my son.

My daughter Rachael, who works on our Vegas show as a costume designer and my wardrobe assistant, was the closest in age to Michael. When he left for college, she missed him greatly, and they would talk on the phone a couple of times every day. That Friday, I sent Mike two text messages telling
him to check in with me, but he didn’t respond. Then, during a costume change about twenty minutes into the Vegas show, my makeup person, Kim, looked at the caller ID on my phone and said, “Michael called while you were onstage.” I was relieved at hearing from him and thought that he must have been okay. I assumed that he had left a message and I would call him back right after the show. He didn’t leave a message.

Rachael told me later that he called her cell phone during the middle of the show. She picked it up long enough to say, “Hi,” and said that she’d have to call him back, because everyone was hurrying to get costumes ready for the next quick change. She could tell by his voice that something was wrong, though, so she stopped long enough to ask him about it. “You sound down. What’s going on?”

He answered, “I just haven’t felt good.” Then he told her, “I love you. No matter what happens, I will always love you. You need to promise me something. Don’t marry the guy you are dating right now. He’s not the one for you.”

“I’ll call you back in a bit,” Rachael said. “You’re okay?”

“Yes. I’ll be fine,” Michael responded.

When Rachael tried him back about twenty minutes later, Mike didn’t answer his phone.

My executive assistant’s youngest daughter had gotten married earlier in the day, so after the show and the “Meet ’n Greet,” Rachael and I and members of my executive assistant’s family gathered in my dressing room so they could fill us in on the highlights of the wedding. Before I started chatting with them, I called Michael. He didn’t answer. About ten minutes
later, Rachael tried to reach Mike on her phone and again got no answer, so we both thought that he had gone to sleep or was with friends.

I didn’t have to hurry home that night because all four of the younger kids had gone to Utah to stay with my brother Jimmy and sister-in-law Michelle. Jimmy’s youngest daughter was being baptized the next morning, and the kids all wanted to be there to celebrate. Steve offered to drive them to Utah because he had some business there and also wanted to see our son, Stephen.

I was exhausted from a nonstop week with the shows and the luncheon speech the previous day, and I was supposed to be back at the Flamingo the next day pretty early for a costume fitting. Donny had flown home in his personal plane to spend the day with his family and would be returning before the Saturday show.

For some reason, which I thought was exhaustion, I felt like I couldn’t go home to an empty house, so I decided to stay the night in a hotel room at the Flamingo. I asked Rachael to stay with me overnight, telling her that I needed her. On any other night, Rachael might have laughed and said she was going to her own apartment, but this night she agreed immediately. Looking back, we must have sensed that we would need to be with each other more than we could ever have imagined.

We finally got into a hotel room, and I was getting ready for bed about one a.m., after checking my phone again and listening to messages from the younger kids. Rachael had crawled into bed and was already asleep when my cell phone rang
around one thirty a.m. I didn’t recognize the number, so I let it go to voice mail. No one left a message. This happened again, and finally, the third time the number rang, I decided to pick it up. I was sure it was a wrong number.

The person on the other end was the guard at the gate that leads into my neighborhood. He told me that there was a police officer there to talk to me and asked if it was okay for him to let him through to my house. I said, “I’m not there. I’m at the Flamingo Hotel. What’s this about?” The security guard said, “They won’t tell me, except someone is here from the coroner’s office. They are coming to the Flamingo to see you.”

My heart dropped to the floor, but my head went into instant denial. I kept telling myself that this was some type of mistake. Rachael sat up in bed, wide-awake, when she heard me on the phone. After I hung up, my legs started shaking uncontrollably. I said to Rachael, “It’s Mike. It has to be Michael.”

“No, Mom, no,” she said. “I’ll reach him. I’ll call right now.” She dialed and redialed Michael’s cell phone, over and over. She kept saying, “Pick up, Michael. Come on. Be there.”

I called the friends whose daughter’s wedding we had been celebrating. They were staying at the hotel, too. I told them about the phone call and asked them to please be with Rachael and me when the officer got there. They came right away to our room. I don’t remember what we talked about or how long it took for the officers to arrive. My pulse was pounding in my ears, and Rachael and I were trying to think of someone to call at Mike’s school, but were hesitating; it was now two a.m. and we didn’t want to alarm anyone for no reason.

One of my friends opened the hotel room door for the officers. After they identified me, the officer from the coroner’s office said, “I’m very sorry to inform you that your son Michael committed suicide at nine twenty-five this evening.”

When he left, he turned at the door to say once again, “I’m very, very sorry.”

The next thing I remember is seeing Rachael on her knees with her face in her hands. Her legs had collapsed beneath her. I thought, How can I comfort my daughter when I can’t even catch my own breath? I thought someone had run a knife into my heart. It was the worst stab of pain I’ve ever felt. I tried to wake myself up from the nightmare, because this news couldn’t have been true. My own legs started to shake uncontrollably.