The Eternal Party
My Dad, Larry Hagman, portrayed the storied, ruthless oilman JR on the TV series Dallas. He was the man everyone loved to hate, but he had a personal reputation of being a nice guy who fully subscribed to his motto: Have Fun, Don’t Worry, Be Happy. Dad had a famous parent too, Mary Martin, known from many roles on Broadway, most memorably as Peter Pan. Off-stage she was warm and had a childlike sense of fun. Both were performers to the core of their beings. They were beloved. And their relationship was complex and often fraught.
My father never apologized for anything and after taking LSD said repeatedly that he no longer feared death. But in the hours before he died, I sat alone with him in his hospital room and he begged for forgiveness. In his delirium he could not tell me what troubled him but I sang to him and that seemed to comforted him as I watched the heart rate monitor calm. After he died I sought to understand why he kept saying forgive me.
