I grew up in Creston in the 1950s, where it was clear to me early on that I was going to be out of the loop. I didn't sound like other little girls, I didn't look like other little girls. People used to come to the door and say, "Is your husband in?" I WAS NINE, FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE!

When I was 13, my mother got pregnant again. She was not happy about that, and smoked and drank her way through the pregnancy, while Dad was beside himself with joy. Dad was 45 when my brother was born, and was the best dad in the world to Jimmy. One of the closest times I ever had with my dad was taking care of Jimmy, who had seizures during which his temperature rose to 105-106°, and his crib would shake as though it was being shaken by six grown people. They happened in the middle of the night. My mother slept through them while Dad and I walked the floor with him. These seizures continued until he was about four.

I loved that baby, and Jimmy loved my dad. As awful as Dad was with us girls, that's how great he was with Jimmy. I loved Jimmy and took him everywhere with me. I'd take him to the woods and lay him on his blanket, or I'd take him in the little basket on my bike. Those were my early puberty years which were so desolate for me. I didn't have friends, I hadn't discovered humor, nobody was talking to or interested in me, I was getting beaten up at home, so when my brother came along, he was like a present. I gladly got up to walk him at night and take care of him all the time. I left home when he was five and we never again lived in the same town. Now he is a pharmacist, living with his family in Davenport, Iowa.

I was Catholic in the fire and brimstone days of the 50s, when there were two things to watch out for, the Communists (Commies) and hell. My mother had long ago given up the Church but my father insisted we kids attend through high school. I started catechism at the age of seven, which meant I couldn't go to Saturday afternoon movies anymore. I was not happy about that. We had to give money to the church or we were going to hell. By the time I was in high school and garter belts and high heels, the priest tried to talk to me about sex and wouldn't believe me when I told him I hadn't had sex — the fact is, I hadn't even thought about it. The earliest "urge" I had was when I was a little girl and saw Roy Rogers. I didn't know what the feeling was and certainly didn't associate it with what the priest talked about.

Religion in general seemed pretty confusing. I didn't see it caused people to treat each other better. I was from a family in a town that was totally white, where people weren't crazy about anyone who wasn't like them, while I'd never had a problem accepting people for who they were. It became clear to me pretty early on that my prayers were not working out so I began considering another approach. I think that was what made me stop looking outside myself for spiritual answers and led me eventually to Eastern religion and Buddhism.

So there I am in Creston, Iowa taking my inventory— having a bit of a rocky childhood, including a very difficult relationship with my mother. I'm thinking, what have I got going that I can parlay into an interesting life. I can't sing, I can't dance, I'm no beauty; but I realized I had a couple traits that have held me in very good stead throughout my life, as I approached its challenges. Those are tenacity and a sense of humor — both of which I got from my Dad, Poke Wallace, a larger than life character with no impulse control, big dreams and terrible luck. So I thought, hey, keep your eyes open, duck when you need to, do your best and remember what Poke said, "Don't have no cheap dreams."

In 1958, Dad went to Chicago. He had been going there on an occasional bender. My mother went with him at first but she said he would drink a bottle, throw up, pass out, wake up and do it all again. What fun was that? And she wanted fun! So he started going alone. He'd binge, check himself into a hospital, sober up and come home. After years of this, his Chicago doctor died and Dad didn't come home when expected. After he had been missing for a few days, we had an urgent call from a hospital telling us to come immediately. Dad had suffered a fall and been hospitalized. The doctors pulled us aside and told us in hushed tones they feared there had been brain damage, but we talked with him awhile and concluded, "Nope, that's Poke." I don't think, however, he finished a sentence after 1958. In retrospect, he hadn't passed through life unnoticed, and not a lot of us can say that.

Several things changed in high school. I discovered humor — self-deprecating humor. I started putting myself down and the kids would laugh and laugh. I finally figured out how to be popular. In addition to tenacity and a sense of humor, I discovered acting. Darlene Green, a great teacher, told me, "You could make it in the theater. Why don't you go to college on a scholarship, and then you could transfer." I filled out the forms, applied, and was accepted by Parson's College, Fairfield, Iowa. The school was kind of famous in the 60s. It was on the cover of Life magazine, referred to as "Flunk Out U," because the founder, Millard Roberts, accepted rich kids who flunked out of Ivy League Universities. So the college had tons of money, a lot of doctoral programs and the third highest paid faculty in the country after Harvard and the University of Chicago. They had a really wonderful drama program and brought in B-movie stars like Virginia Mayo and Pat O'Brien. It was called Parsons Summer Festival and I was in plays with all these terrific people.

When my two years of college was over, I had no more money. I was 19, had a scholarship, but I still had to pay for my room and board, so I got a job at a credit card company. I was there for about six months when my grandfather died and left me $5,000. That meant I could go back to school and the day I graduated, I went to New York. I'd been looking toward that career ever since I heard the applause after the play in high school, followed by those sensational summers in the Parsons Summer Festival. I still have a copy of a letter I wrote to my friend Wendy at Christmastime 1964, "I'm in the Big Apple! I weigh 230 pounds and have $150 cash in the bank. Oh, all right, I suppose my ready cash should at least equal my weight, but I've always had more guts than brains."

My transition to New York was in 1964. There were two fellows I knew there — Carl and Dick — and I stayed with them. Around the corner was a supermarket as big as my hometown and I was beside myself! So many snacks, so little time. I ended up with an armful and put a big package of M & Ms in my pocket, forgot they were there, paid my bill and walked out. I was grabbed by two guys who took me back in and had me sign a paper saying I would never darken their doors again. That was during my first week in New York, and already I had a record.

However, my tenacity won out and I paid $3 to see "Funny Girl" from behind a pole, and when I saw "Hello, Dolly," I could see myself in the chubbette role. I called David Merrick's office and asked for an audition. I didn't know it wasn't the thing to do and forgot I can't really sing. The audition happened, however, and I was definitely not good, but loud — loud enough not to hear the woman who kept yelling, "Thank you, that will be all." So my entry to the "Big Apple" wasn't great but my anticipation was. I wrote a friend, "It's a matter of time... I love it here."

I found an apartment inhabited by cockroaches we called the June Taylor Cockroaches. We'd walk through the door and they'd dance. After about a year, I moved with two other friends into a brownstone that probably rents for thousands of dollars now but this as before they tidied up the neighborhood. My first job was as a saleslady but I am an enormously good typist and found a typing job which paid 95c a page. I typed the movie script for "Hello Dolly." In those days, I also never slept. By then, to a degree, I had learned my way around. I found a club where I could do improvisation for free chili. I worked there until 4:00-5:00 in the morning and then typed scripts.

I had learned from my dad how to get along on whatever money I had, so in 1966, during my second year in New York, when I discovered I had to have surgery to move my jawbone back in order to give me a bite, I realized I had no insurance, but I took three jobs and paid it off. They told me I would be in the hospital 10 days but I left after only two.

I knew I needed and wanted to take acting classes and picked teacher William Hickey who was hilarious, talented and wildly eccentric. He found a nightclub, Hilly's, where they let us start a little improv group. In that situation I met some well-known comedians — Judd Hirsch, David Steinberg, Stiller and Meara, and Vallerie Harper. It was a great time. We didn't get paid but it was so much fun! We ended up in a theater on 80th Street, where we did real improv and ran for years.

One night Dan Sullivan, at that time a second string drama critic for the New York Times, saw me do an improve, liked it and wrote about it. From that I ended up doing 75 appearances on the Mery Griffin show. During that time, he was doing his show in L.A. and flew me out. It was one of those unbelievable chances. That night he decided to bring out all the guests — five or six of us at once, and as he interviewed us, the others talked about esoteric things — life and the universe. I hadn't said anything for the longest time and finally Mery said, "What about you, Marcia?" My answer was, "Oh, hon, I'm just trying to get somebody to take me bowling." It turned out to be a real rave segment for me and that's how I eventually got on the Bob Newhart Show. It might seem to have been "overnight success," but along the way, I beat on about seven billion doors and showed up for about twenty thousand auditions. And it all started at Hilly's.

I lived in that fabulous city for almost a decade, but the neighborhood was starting to change. It became much more upscale and rent skyrocketed. When I returned from L.A., I found a a message via my answering service telling me I was evicted. Ever the optimist, I thought, "This is my opportunity to move to L.A." It was easy. My possessions were a bowling award from the Broadway Show League, a feather boa, some books and records — and that was it. L.A. seemed the next logical step. I was on my way.

One day I was auditioning for a galoshes commercial that was going to run in Montana. As I was driving back, I was thinking my career was never going to work out; I should never have chosen this one, it was a big mistake — but as I walked in the door, the phone was ringing. A woman introduced herself and said, "Hello, I'm calling for Grant Tinker; just a moment." Grant Tinker! Handsome-married-to-Mary-Tyler-Moore Grant Tinker! He came on and said, "Hello, this is Grant Tinker. We'd like you to be on the Bob Newhart Show."

Of course, I thought it was a joke but luckily I didn't make some glib remark. I said, "I'd be happy to come in and read for you." His answer was, "No, you don't understand, you have the job." I went on assuring him I'd be happy to do whatever was required, and he kept telling me I had the job. It came about because Bill Paley, founder of CBS, had seen me on the Mery Griffith Show the night I was so funny. He had seen the pilot of the Bob Newhart Show and wanted to make some casting changes. "Get me that red-head I saw on Merv." Just like that I had the part, which they wrote for the secretary/receptionist Carol, just for me!

Carol turned out to be a nice person, hard worker, an optimist and really good at her job. She also had a great sense of humor and in a lot of ways, Carol and I were the same person. Midwestern, loyal, funny, optimistic, and we both used our humor as a defense. But the depressing part is, she had a lot more dates. She also met and married the man of her dreams ten years before I did.

As time went on, however, a strange thing happened. I think the problem was, I kept trying to make the people on the show my family and they weren't. I didn't know where Carol began and I left off. The more successful I became on the show, the worse I felt. I became more and more lonely, more and more isolated. I would go home after the show and feel alone in a way I never had before. Suzanne Pleshette, Bob's wife on the show, was always a good friend and always tried to be upfront with me, said, "Marcia, don't do this. I'm telling you, not just for today, but for your life."

I got through the first year, but after that I began having a real hard time sleeping, and I became bulimic to keep the weight off. I had a headache for about seven years so I was taking lots of pills, one of which had phenobarbital in it, which exacerbated my condition. The second year of the show I cried a lot, my headaches were worse so I was taking lots of pills, and I began to get real dizzy. It began to affect the shows — only two, but that is more than enough. People ask me what it's like to totally lose it, to have a complete nervous breakdown. I answer that for me it was like watching a movie of somebody else's breakdown.

It finally happened. I had totally unraveled. On national television. I went into the U.C.L.A. Neuropsychiatric Institute, which I affectionately termed "The Bin." When I told Grant I was going to check myself into a hospital, he said, "We're really glad you are doing this. We like you very much. We don't want you to leave, but this is a business. We are not your family, and if this had continued, we would have had to fire you, and we don't want to do that." I checked myself in, got Judy Garland's old room, and absolutely loved it.

I was there for three months altogether. After the first three weeks, we were allowed to go outside The Bin. Fortunately, the show had been off for the three weeks I'd been there but now it was starting up again. My timing was really good. I was actually very lucky that nobody would put up with my behavior. I wasn't their responsibility. Every single member of the cast — Bob, Suzie, Peter, Bill Daily — everybody wanted only the best for me but I wasn't their job. I think of my breakdown as a Reader's Digest version. It lasted about two years and eventually I was able to let the job be just the job.

Looking back, it's very clear what brought it all on. Abusing medication, yes, but that was only part of it. I couldn't deal with being on the show but not being in the family, even a make-believe family. I thought I would feel like I belonged. I expected it to make me happy. I was thin . . . I was successful . . . people knew me . . . and I was getting love letters in the mail. Shouldn't I be fulfilled? My best friend, Brett Somers, says I went crazy rather than putting the weight back on. There's no question that the cushion of a hundred extra pounds can keep those demons at bay. When the hundred pounds went, out came the sadness and rage I had stuffed inside along with food, and I felt completely vulnerable and unprotected without the weight. I was full of self-loathing and I kept hearing my mother's voice, "You're fat and ugly and no one will ever love you."

I met Brett Somers on "The Match Game," which I started doing when I'd just gotten out of The Bin. The first thing she said to me was, "You'll have to forgive me because I'm not myself; I just separated from my husband." (Jack Klugman) I said, "I didn't notice anything wrong. I just got out of The Bin," and we were best friends from that day forward.

Back in Iowa while all this was going on, family members were amazed I'd gotten on a hit TV show. My parents decided they were wrong about me and my sister said they immediately changed alliances from her to me. The first time I tried to talk to my father, he said, "I know, your mother hated you. I told you that before." That was his answer. What about those beatings? Oh, well, yes, "But it was for your own good." My relationship with my sister had been loaded, too, because we were so different. But she is the one person I can always count on.

I went back to Creston in 1965, when the town was celebrating its sesquicentennial. They asked me to come back and be a part of it. A former music teacher, Dave Rissler, whom I always thought should have been a performer, and I were going to do improvs together. First, they changed the location from the auditorium to the football field, which put us on a stage the size of a postage stamp. And every night during our performance the California Zephyr would come by, everything would start to shake and the entire audience would turn to look at the train. The schedule for the evening had us following an act of a cow named Cookie. She drank strawberry pop and prayed. After her, the announcer, who didn't know me and kept mispronouncing my name, would call out, "N-o-o-w-w we h-a-a-v-e Cre-s-s-t-o-n's Ma-a-a-a-rtha Wa-a-a-a-ler!" It was a nightmare!

I bombed so bad! Talk about the wrong venue for a touch of light comedy. The two of us out there on the football field on that tiny stage again and again and again. And we were miked up to this awful public address system. One night I couldn't take it and blurted your basic obscenity heard loud and clear over the P.A. system. I did get them back from the California Zephr real quick. Along with all that, somehow the gossips in the town decided I was making a bundle, "And she's not even very good." My dad said, "You can never please them," and I agreed you can't really go home again. Especially with a lousy P.A. system.

The Bob Newhart show was part of the Saturday night lineup that became part of the culture of the seventies, our show reran in the eighties, went on Nick at Night in the ninties, and is currently on TV Land. It was a dream job playing a swell character. I wish it for every actor. Moneywise, I never made it to the big time, but it was a fortune compared to what my father used to make.

Readers will undoubtedly have noticed an absence of references to romance in my story and while there have been some really good men friends, they came and went. Nothing lasting — until Dennis. Now the big four-o has passed and Dennis has come into my life. He and I had the plus of being in the right place at the right time, both ready for something, both mature, both having experienced life and been through a lot. He'd had one marital experience and it didn't whet his appetite for another. I was ready to enjoy what I had and not worry about Dennis' unwillingness to get married.

Dennis was in the hotel business, and was suited for it so well. He enjoyed creating an environment where people were comfortable. He loved beauty, symmetry and design. He loved good food, good houses, good furniture and good times. He moved in with me, and very casually, calmly made the house a wonderful warm, beautiful, loving place to be.

There were, however, adjustments to be made: He was extremely well organized while my organizational skills leave something to be desired. He wasn't the sort of obsessive person who ran around and made the bed when I got up to go to the bathroom; he just had a place for everything and everything in its place (which was not under the couch where one time I discovered my will and two lizards the cat must have brought in.) Not a day went by that I didn't have to call him to ask him where stuff was because I never knew. He learned to be a little less organized and I tried harder. We also had to do some negotiating on talking. Springing from the "beat the dead horse" school of life, I was always getting verbal. But he learned to talk more and I realized I could actually have an unuttered thought. I didn't have to share every single thing that whizzed through my mind.

Because we were so right together, because we had such love, passion, affection, respect for and enjoyment of each other, none of this ever seemed as hard as back in the days when I was trying to make relationships happen. We had great fun and great times. I learned he had boundaries and most importantly I learned this was a guy who deserved respect because he was so respectful of me. We were like kids. He wanted to do everything, except he didn't want to get married. He said, "Let's go to Europe" and we did. We took trains all over Europe and saw everything. This was in 1985, and when we returned he said, "This was glorious. I didn't know if we could be together for a whole month, and I discovered we could. But I gotta tell you, I still don't want to get married. I don't want to be with anybody but you, but I don't want a wife. I had a wife and I wasn't happy."

That was in May and in November he said, "I can't go one more day without being married to you." It could well have been the greatest moment of my life. We set a date but three days later I was diagnosed with cancer. I found the first lump in my breast. I had been aware of this tendency of women who develop early, so I had been very good about having regular check-ups. I saw an ob-gyn who recommended I see a surgeon. He explained the procedure, concluding with, "And if it is malignant, we'll come back and take your breast off" I had never particularly defied authority, but this seemed too barbaric to me. I knew women found out they had breast cancer when they woke up alone in a cold, dark recovery room without a breast. Thinking about that tears my heart out. I said, "No." He said, "Well, that's how we do it and you have to do it that way." I said, "No, I don't."

I got on a plane and went to my hometown, to my favorite doctor, my Uncle Jimmy. He removed the lump, and since they had no lab in Creston, my sister drove to Des Moines carrying the lump in a Chinese food carton, singing to it all the way "Begin The Benign!" The experience was kind of an epiphany for me. I didn't even know what questions to ask. I didn't know anything about options. I didn't know anything about anything. I was just another scared woman listening to a male doctor tell her what to do about her own body. And I thought, "I'm never going to be this scared or this unprepared again. The doctors can be in charge of my medical treatment, but I am going to be in charge of my health."

I vowed to make three changes. First, I'd quit smoking. Second, I'd get off the couch and start some sort of an exercise program. It's not my natural bent by a long shot, but we know now the wonderful things exercise does for women — for our bones, hearts, endorphins, and libido. It turns out that regular exercise decreases the risk of getting breast cancer in the first place. And the third area I knew I had to change — big time — was my diet. On that one, I am still a work in progress. Hey, I'm from the Midwest, birthplace of fudge. As far as I'm concerned, chocolate is a vegetable. Well, it is a bean.

I thought my mother would be so happy when I told her I was getting married but all she said when she met Denny was, "If only I were 20 years younger." She loved him! When I told her about the cancer, the first thing she said was, "Is he still going to marry you now that you have cancer?" Not only did Denny make it very clear he would love me without a breast if I had to have surgery, but he was right beside me through it all. He went with me to every doctor's appointment. For some reason, he couldn't wait at the hospital. He would drive me and leave, than come right back.

The surgeon could tell immediately when he removed the lump, it was cancerous. He recommended a mastectomy but I opted for radiation instead. All it did was make me really tired, not sick. When all was said and done it would make about a ten-minute movie-of-the-week but it is plenty exciting for real life.

Not to be outdone in the midst of all this, my dad actually got throat cancer. We all met at the Mayo Clinic. His prognosis was terminal but he declared, "You ain't takin' my voice box. If can't talk, I don't want to live." And Poke being Poke, they didn't and he lived.

On May 18, 1986, I married the man of my dreams at the Buddhist Temple in Cucamonga, California, in the most wonderful wedding ever imagined. We had 250 people and Denny was able to put everybody up at the hotel. He said, "This is our wedding. We can do whatever we want, and I want the best champagne." He felt that way. He always wanted everything to be the best. To this day people come up to me and say it was the best wedding they ever went to.

My dad didn't make it. I knew he was on his way out if he passed up a wedding with stars. He was always in the wrong place at the wrong time. Once the network was going to fly him in and put him on TV to surprise me, and there was the worst blizzard in the history of Iowa. He finally passed the real estate exam after 13 flunks and then the real estate market crashed. Now I was finally getting married and there's a free trip to L.A. and a fabulous party with stars, and he's too far gone to be there. So my uncle Jim walked me down the aisle. Not every detail of the wedding went precisely as planned, but nevertheless, it was wonderful.

We were marled on Sunday and we didn't leave for our honeymoon until Tuesday. We went to Bora Bora because somebody told me about it and it sounded fabulous. It is an island James Michener called paradise. It is surrounded by a lagoon so there are never any storms. The winter is 80° and the summer temperature is 82. You can bicycle all around the island — it's only 17 miles, and there are no phones or TV or anything. The water is unbelievably clear. When you skin dive, the fish come up and take food out of your hand. We snorkeled in water where the visibility was about 40' down. We swam, we rented a boat and captain, and he took us all around the island. We took advantage of hammocks being everywhere. It was idyllic!

While we were on the island Denny remarked, "Marcia, I don't think I want kids," but eight months later he suggested we should think about having a child. We spent months trying to be pregnant, finally considering adoption, but during that time, my daddy died. It was hard but we had left nothing unresolved. I had no regrets and a real sense of appreciation that he was my father. He was a truly hilarious man whose dreams eluded him. Sales was his life and I'm sure now he's some­where selling my old gym socks and asking everybody if they ever saw "The Bob Newhart Show."

Buddhism had taught me that my baby would find me. In the process of trying to adopt, we were given the name of an attorney who could help us and at his suggestion, we had written an  "audition letter," in which we said, "We are so in love, not too fat, not too thin, not too poor." I went back to Iowa to help my mother move out of her house into an apartment, and while there we tried to find somebody with a camera to take a picture of us that would show all those qualities, to audition for a 15-year-old girl in Montana.

Once the letter and picture were "out there in the universe," we had babies falling out of the sky. I was on the road playing the female version of "The Odd Couple" with Jo Anne Worley when there were great prospects. Finally Shalane Moras and we chose each other and everything worked like magic. We invited her to come meet us before the birth and through our acquaintance, we were able to share the pre-natal months with her. Michael Wallace Hawley was born on January 29, 1988.

I can't imagine having a child other than Mikey. He's the world's greatest kid! My mother saw Mikey for the first time when he was six months old. She came out with my brother Jim, his wife Beth, and their six-month-old daughter Kathleen to celebrate the formalizing of the adoption. We decided we would always tell him the whole truth. We explained he grew in some other lady's tummy and came home with us, and he always said, "Okay, fine."

Nobody enjoyed their kid more than Dennis did, spent more time with him, had more patience. He was always cautious with him. In the pictures Mikey drew of his dad later, the body language is unbelievable: wide-open arms, big smile, moustache. When Mikey was six or seven, Shalane was in Los Angeles and I asked her if she wanted to meet Mikey. She hesitated and I asked Mikey if he wanted to meet Shalane. "Yes, but who's my real Mom?" My answer was, "Mikey, your real mom is the one who keeps you safe, and reads to you, and makes sure you are warm and fed and happy. I'm your real mom." When Mikey was seven, I told him he had a sister, Ashley, five years older than he. They started talking on the phone, then we flew Ashley out and she spent a week with us. She treated him like a normal teenage big sister and Mikey adored her and followed her around like any little brother would do.

My Christmas letter for 1992, announced immediately that something terrible had happened. I referred to the way our lives had progressed since the last letter. They were wonderful with Mikey growing up, Dennis into motel renovation, and I was on the road in a production of "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown." Dennis had begun saying we needed our own house. I'd owned my house on the hill for about 20 years and it was a great house, but Dennis wanted our house. We found one we loved on Genesee. We moved into the new place when Mikey was 1 1/2 years old. But then things began getting crazy financially. We ended up having two houses to support for 1 1/2 years, and a tax problem. Tax shelters which had been all the rage when I had money, were now declared invalid. It had taken me twenty years to save $120,000 and about an hour and a half to spend it. It kept getting worse. Let me put it this way — as great as it was for six years of incredible excitement, love, a family, baby, marriage, travel, that's how bad it became in reverse. And when I thought it couldn't get worse, it did.

Ever since I had known him, Denny had always had a lot of stomach pain, and was always told it was an ulcer. Sometimes he'd be incapacitated by it but most of the time it was just some­thing he dealt with. In September 1991, he was in great pain and went to a doctor. He called me from there and said, "They think it's my gall bladder and they are going to remove it." They did but they kept him in the hospital because he continued to run a high fever. We told ourselves it was the after-effects of the surgery but the next time Mikey saw him, he said, "Daddy, your eyes are yellow." I denied his eyes were yellow. He said, "I'm full of cancer. I just know they are going to find I'm full of cancer." I was totally in denial but came a time when he admitted, "Bad news. They think I might have pancreatic cancer." But rather than go back through and relive it all again, I'll share my letter:

Christmas 1992

Dear friends,
I dedicate this Christmas letter to my beloved husband, Dennis Hawley, who died of pancreatic cancer on a Sunday in June. He died with his usual dignity and humor, after fighting this deadly malignancy for seven months. Dennis and 1 always believed the mind, body and spirit work together in any healing process. We also believed that somebody has to be that two percent of people who survive this particular cancer, and why shouldn't he be one of those people? This was our approach. We didn't know any other way to begin this journey. And I know we'd do it the same way again.

I'm nowhere near the end of this experience of grief and loss — that big wrecking ball crashes into my heart daily. But I am moving forward and I really wanted to write this letter. I wanted to reach out to all of you in profound appreciation for your friendship and generosity. The support was spectacular. His beloved parents were here in a flash and did everything; his cousin and dear friend, Colleen, took a hiatus from her job as a nurse in Hawaii to come help us; my sister, as always, was the one I called when I was falling apart; my brother Jim took a second job on Saturday fifty miles from his home to send us the money; my mother, who loved Dennis with all her heart, wrote him regularly.

And our friends, our fabulous friends, people like yourselves — you did so much. It meant more than you can ever know. You gave us your time, your money and your hearts. You made us food and you made us laugh. You gave me work and you gave Dennis rides to endless doctors, and you listened to us both. You cared for Mikey, and you cared about him. You called and you visited and you cared deeply about Dennis's life. He knew that, and it touched his heart.

Everybody who knew Denny knew he considered regrets to be a giant waste of time. Why look.back, we're not going that way? And he was not afraid to die. Please don't misunderstand, he did not want to leave us, and he fought — oh, how he fought — until he couldn't anymore. It was very hard for me to let go; I had become this spiritual pit bull. But he woke me up at four in the morning on Memorial Day and said, "I can't do this anymore." I said, "Okay."

Ten days later, at about four o'clock on an absolutely beautiful Sunday afternoon, I sat down next to him and took his hand and said, "It's time. It's time to go to the light, and it's okay. You didn't let anybody down, and we will love you forever." He took three deep breaths and died. I know that he waited for me, and this probably seems like an odd word to use, but it was the most precious moment of my life. Mikey came into the room and said, "Is my dad dead?" and I said, "Yes, honey," and he said, "Well, let's call the firemen and they'll pour water on him and he'll grow again."

His awareness has been astonishing, this child of Dennis Hawley, this Michael Wallace Hawley. Before his dad died, we were looking at family pictures, and I said, "There's Daddy," and he said, "No, that's my other dad, that's my well dad." After he died, Mikey said, "Mom, my dad's spirit is in the universe, right?" and I said yes. Just then a lamp flickered in the room; he put his hands on his hips and said, "DAMN."

One day I picked him up at school when he'd been having trouble cutting a pumpkin, and he said, "Mommy, Mommy, I cut my pumpkin all by myself! You know what? Something happened in my brain and my Dad helped me." Last week, I was crying and he said, "Mom, don't be sad", and I said, "Well, I am sad, honey; I miss Daddy," and he said, "Can't you be just a little happy? I know we can't be happy Daddy died, but can't you be happy nobody chopped down all the trees today?" And you know what? I could.

I know this letter is way too long, but I didn't know how to condense such a life-altering experience; it somehow diminishes the life and death of this extraordinary man. And I didn't just want to talk about him, I wanted to include something of him, by him. Dennis Hawley was hands-down the best parent I ever saw.

Here's the letter he wrote to his beloved boy before he died. To my dearest Michael,

Both your mother and I believe that life is eternal and that the soul and the spirit never die. We believe that the love we have for each other as a family ... a mother, a father and a son ... will live forever. We believe this so strongly that it somehow makes Daddy's death easier to understand and more a part of what life is about. You're the only child I ever had and if I got to pick from all the children in the world I couldn't find anyone more wonderful than you. I wish there was something your mother and I could have done to prevent this terrible tragedy and I know it will be many years before you get over the loss of your dad. I just want you to know how special you have been to me ... no one else could ever take your place and the years since you were born have been among the best and happiest years of my life. I will always be there watching over you and our special connection will never be broken. I told this to your mommy and she typed it for me, but it is from my very heart and soul and I will love you and your mommy every day of your beautiful lives.

Daddy

I loved Dennis Hawley more than I've ever loved anyone, and rightly so; he made my life sing. As long as this heart of mine beats, my Denny, my wonderful Denny, lives there.

The process of grieving has been studied but it may be different for each person. I found grief is not linear — you can go up and down so much in the same day — anger, denial, bargaining, acceptance, and back to anger — you get whiplash. But life goes on regardless. For a year after Denny died, the debts kept mounting. I hadn't been able to sell the house, it was in foreclosure twice, and I still owed the IRS the penalty from dissolving my retirement fund too early. I wasn't working much, Denny hadn't worked for a year, there was a ton of medical stuff insurance didn't cover. I wanted to climb under the covers and stay there but instead I borrowed more money and I kept going by taking a small job for awhile.

One day, I was on the cover of "Life" magazine along with other cancer survivors, which opened the door to speaking engagements. Little by little I learned how to do it and be at my best, and after months and months on the road I paid back all our debts. My real "pay," however, was when a woman at the end of my presentation said, "All right, I'll check out that lump."

One day I woke up and realized I had $5 — that was it. My friend Gary Dontzig called and said, I'm coming over with $500 and you don't have to pay me back." I did as soon as I was able but something changed with that money. Things started to get better. For one thing, I won an Emmy for outstanding voice-over in my role as Bart's teacher on the Simpsons. This really thrilled me. When I got the word, I was doing the female "Odd Couple," in Missouri, flew back to Iowa, and family members were there for the presentation and big celebration. (You can take the girl out of Iowa but you can't take Iowa out of the girl.)

As long as Denny was alive, things were good between my mother and me. She regarded him to be every mother's dream for her daughter. One of the great things about those years with Denny was that my mother loved me and I loved her. But when he died, it all came back. The same old demons. We had one horrible fight, but I had learned from losing Denny that reconciliation with your family is everything. I wasn't able to work through everything but still I didn't want to leave anything unresolved.

I was speaking in Des Moines not much later and she came to hear me — the whole speech, and loved it. For the first time, she reached out to me and the walls between us started to come down. Six months later she was dying and I went to see her. Two days after Thanksgiving 1996, she died of Crohn's disease in her hometown of Creston, Iowa with her three children by her side. Not long before she died, my mother and I healed our differences and I truly came to appreciate her. Her funeral was profound because I came to realize something wonderful — I received letters from people who said she was the best friend they ever had. "Your mother used to listen to me and she made me feel good about myself."

My mother died just before Thanksgiving. I came home just before Christmas — the first Christmas after Denny died. I refused to have a tree — I just couldn't do it, our Christmases had been so great and putting up the tree had been so special I couldn't do it the first year. Instead, I took Mikey to Club Med, which was hilarious. The second year my sister said, "I'm going to get a little tree for Mikey," and she did.

This Christmas we put up a big tree with all the ornaments. Brett was staying with us. Mikey and I went to a movie leaving her behind. When we were coming home, I said, "Oh, look, Mikey, there's a fire on our street . . . Oh, look, there's a fire in our block . . . Oh, look, there's a fire in our house! Aaaaaarggggh!" Without going into details and blame, it happened, and the fireman pointed out how lucky we were that no one died in the fire. "There was so much smoke," he said, "We've pulled many bodies out of much less smoke than this."

The place looked like it had been bombed. I lost my wedding album, my wedding pictures, thirty years of books, thirty years of Christmas ornaments. But one thing was very sweet: my neighbors were all lined up to greet us. They said, "We wanted to be out on the street for you when you got home because we knew it wasn't going to be a good moment for you." I was very touched. Another good thing was, I had this excellent fire insurance policy dating back from the days when I was rich. The first thing they did was arrange temporary accommodations in the Koreatown Oakwood apartments, where Mikey, in second grade, and I became acquainted with a new set of people in a new set of circumstances. And in the end, the company gave me the total replacement value of everything, which was several hundred thousand dollars.

By now my sister and I weren't getting along. We were both trying to cope with the death of our mother. We would get into awful fights but we stayed together. We couldn't be less alike and yet we are totally committed to this sisterhood. The bond is too deep, so we kept going.

Here we are now. Even though the best part of me died with Denny, I have had some good times since he died. I have wonderful friends, reconciliation with my family, and best of all, my son. I love my boy! We went through such a hard time for both of us and he got it together long before I did. Career-wise, I'm still doing "The Simpsons" and other voice-overs and yearn to do another sitcom. I've also been on the circuit speaking as a breast cancer survivor. I was in 37 cities in six weeks. In 1998, I was the spokesperson for the California Prune Growers.

I went back to Creston, Iowa, for my fu ... fu ... fortieth high school reunion last summer and had a fabulous time. I remember my mother going to her fortieth, and I said to her, "Well, I can't believe any of you are still alive." Oh, kids, be very careful what you say! We had a wonderful time. Mikey loves it there, and every time I go back I appreciate it more and more. And here's the shocker: Mikey spent days doing manual labor on a friend's farm. He baled hay, for heaven's sake. I was so hoping his attack of Midwestern work ethic would survive the plane ride home, but nooo!

I think the summation of my life was described in E.L.Doctorow's "The Book of Daniel": "It was the way he existed in the space he occupied - right out to the edges." I always felt that way about myself and hoped it was a good thing.

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Last Revised December 31, 2014