I Am So Popular: Molly, I Found Your Keys

My despair at losing Molly was a selfish thing—she’d taken me under her wing in the late ‘90s, encouraged my work, took me to lunch regularly, told he about her life as a journalist, coming up at a time when women had fewer opportunities in the field. For whatever pressure there had been on me as a young woman to forego a career and get married, have kids, settle down, be a good wife—that pressure had been much worse on her generation.

I remember Molly’s death for another reason, another bout of selfish grief that washed over me simultaneously. The night after she died, I showed up at a therapy session to try to work some more on my new but already failing marriage. By this point, my then-husband and I were already living in separate houses. I wanted to make it work, to be a good wife, to figure it out. I suppose if she hadn’t been busy dying at the time, Molly would’ve listened to my tale over lunch and said something like, “Screw that bullshit, Spike. Focus on your writing.”

At the therapy appointment, my then-husband arrived, extracted a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket, and read from it that he found me too weak to do the right thing and then, inferring he was doing me a favor and being strong for me, patronizingly announced I had two choices. I could accept a separation for an amount of time he would determine at a later date, or I could have a divorce right away. He did not want to hear my thoughts on the matter.

I felt as if I’d been hit in the head with a shovel. I was quiet for a long time. Then I took off my wedding ring and handed it to him. I don’t think there is ever really a “good” time for one spouse to announce to another that it’s over, no room for negotiation. But I would come to conclude pretty quickly that delivering this proclamation a mere 24 hours after the devastating news of my good friend’s horrible death was an act heinous beyond compare, one worthy of the Super Shittiest Asshole Ever Award.

Four years later, I stand by that assessment, though in other ways I’ve changed. And as ever, as Molly’s death anniversary approaches, I use this time to reflect back on that time, to do a little personal inventory. This year, I am feeling the loss of Molly in a new way. After the initial earthquake of grief I felt at her passing, I locked up a lot of those feelings and put them away. I kept by my bedside a copy of the Texas Observer dedicated to her, but could never read it, and only rarely could I look at the picture on the cover, a young, vibrant, beaming Molly. It hurt too much.

In 2009, Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life, was published. Written by Bill Minutaglio and Michael Smith, it, too, featured a cover shot of a happy Molly, with all of her hair, a bright smile belying the contents of the book, which detail more than a few difficult moments in her life. I wasn’t sure exactly what those stories were, since for a year I couldn’t open the book. I wasn’t ready.

Then last month, I got a note from my friend, the amazing actress Barbara Chisholm, who is portraying Molly in the play, Red Hot Patriot: The Kick Ass Wit of Molly Ivins, which just opened at ZACH. Barbara wanted to quiz me about Molly. Knowing she was taking on this monumental task of playing my larger than life friend brought me some relief. I’d so feared the play, worried some outsider would be brought in, thinking I’d feel sick if I saw it and sick if I didn’t. I’m going on Saturday, and I figure it won’t be easy but it will be okay, Molly safe in the hands of Barbara. (It’s also nice to see Kick Ass in the title, as Molly was the first Kick Ass Trophy recipient, an award created to celebrate the end of her first round of chemo.)

Partly in preparation for seeing the show, partly because I felt like I was finally ready after four years to revisit my grief, I recently started reading the biography. I don’t love it—not because of the writing, which is very good. But because of information revealed. Molly would be the first to tell you she wasn’t a fan of digging deep and getting all emotional. Ours was a friendship of talking and listening. Mostly she talked and I listened. She told anecdotes, and she told them well. But we didn’t spend time discussing much about her inner drive, her past, her battle with booze.

In her story I find, despite the vast differences in our backgrounds, an awful lot of uncomfortable common ground. Middle child of an overbearing father. Battles with editors. Too much drinking. One story that surprised me about Molly, and also resonated deeply, was about a romantic relationship she had as young reporter, her longing to make succeed that which seemed doomed from the start. How she struggled with it, her journal entry revealing a side I had not known.

This story, in particular, dovetails with the Double Dark Anniversary I observe each January: death of a friend, death of a marriage. Four years ago, I was so rattled to the core by my ex-husband’s walkout that things fell apart for me. I lost the capacity to laugh, eat, think clearly, sleep through the night. I chain smoked, dropped forty pounds, and for a long time could hear no sound beyond a voice in my head telling me what an utter failure I was. I succumbed, too often, to the urge to call my ex and say, in essence, “You stupid motherfucker I hate your fucking guts now come over here and love me.”

I look back now and feel so sorry for who I was then. At the same time, I feel boundless gratitude to the friends who propped me up, no matter how weary they were of my bullshit, my six-month crying jag, my need to tell them the same story eleventy billion times until, at long last, I, too, grew tired of it. I owe a debt I can never repay to the therapist who sat with me for countless hours, got me through and gave me tools I carry still— the knowledge that never again will I fall apart like that, not over a man. I look back and I see that four years is what it took to get all the way from there to here, to be able to open a book about my friend, to visit her life— even the hard parts— and to revisit my own struggles without crying.

After Molly’s funeral, more than one person pulled me aside and said, softly, that I had to carry on in her honor, to keep writing, to put my voice out into the world. This was flattering but not believable at the time—my voice felt gone, as if it might never return.

And then, a few months after Molly died, I had a dream about her. She came to me the way you hear people describe visits from the dead. She was so alive, and happy and had all of her hair. She spoke clearly to me, and though I do not always remember dreams, her words stayed with me.

“You still have the keys to my house,” she said. Upon waking I was puzzled. I’d never had the keys to her house in waking life. But then I decided she meant I still did have a strong will, a stubborn way, a big mouth, and that using these things was the right thing to do.

The climb out of my double-deep hole was long, and arduous and fraught. But I emerged eventually, forever changed and ultimately stronger for it. I miss you, Molly Ivins. Thanks for the keys.

Spike Gillespie blogs at spikeg.com, KnitBuzz, and WriteWithSpike.com where you can find out about her upcoming writing workshops. In honor of Molly Ivins she urges all the ladies to PLEASE GET A MAMMOGRAM.