11.23.22
Emphatically, yes, and so much more.
When my son’s father, Patrick McDermott, disappeared 17 years ago, becoming friends with his girlfriend, Olivia Newton-John, never entered my mind. I assumed we would talk a few times while trying to figure out what happened to Patrick. Unfortunately, he and I barely spoke. Try as I may, a united front was not to be. A simple nod or wave during pick up or drop off with our son, Chance, was the sad reality.
20 years ago, when Chance was eight years old, I was picking him up at Olivia’s on Thanksgiving. I texted Patrick when I arrived and waited for Chance to come running out. Two minutes later, Olivia came running out with a shining smile. I’d only spoken to her on the phone up to then. I rolled the window down, and she said, “Do you want to come in for a cuppa?” “Sure,” I said, then stepped into a sea of her family and friends, where Olivia introduced me to each one of them, then made me a perfect cuppa.
We stood in the kitchen and gabbed as if already friends and found we had the same humor. I watched Patrick pace anxiously at the far end of the living room, and said, “Look at him — he’s freaking out that you and I are in here talking.” That was the first time I heard her classic cackle. The kind you can’t help but cackle back to. I remember Chance running by and saying, “Hi, mom,” and thinking this is how it should be.
After Patrick went missing, Olivia and I started hiking together, and inevitably, talked about him. On the very first hike, after many tears and many laughs, we decided Patrick had good taste in women. In the beginning, I rarely called her. I didn’t want her to think I wanted anything from her — because I didn’t. But she called every day and often had Chance and me over for dinner. She was the one person who consistently checked in on us and had an incredible instinct to call just when I was headed down a rabbit hole and talk me out of it.
There’s no manual for how to deal with someone that goes missing, much less the father of your child. And there certainly isn’t one for when it unfolds in the public eye — around the world. If it weren’t for Olivia’s global celebrity, Patrick wouldn’t have been given a second thought. But here we are, 17 years later, and people still want to know what happened to Olivia Newton-John’s missing boyfriend. There was another “sighting” of him just this year. Yet again, never a picture in a world of cell phones.
Believe me, I want to know what happened to him too. More than anyone. For over a decade, I had to know — needed to know for my son. It consumed me. It wasn’t healthy. As hard-headed as I am, Olivia managed to guide me toward the notion of acceptance. I hated that word for so long. Now it’s everything — it’s all I’ve got. There are no answers, only headlines, theories, rumors, alleged sightings, and assertions from those who have a need to stay in it for a little notoriety. One man, in particular, has relentlessly insisted that I had something to do with Patrick’s disappearance and that we pulled off a life insurance scheme, just because I declined to be part of his story on network television. Narcissists don’t like to be told no.
Olivia would tell me to ignore this man, but it was difficult to ignore someone who went on TV any chance he got and told awful, bald-faced lies about me, year after year. Narcissists also create their own narratives to suit them. I’m a strong woman, but it hurt. Olivia would let me cry on her shoulder, then manage to help me laugh it off. She cared. She truly cared — about everyone, and always came from the heart.
I’ve been asked many times, “Is she really that nice? That genuine? That real?” She was all those things. Never once in 17 years, did I ever see her “be a celebrity” with anyone. She connected with people. She was open to conversation. She listened. She made people’s day.
She was also a great cheerleader. She encouraged me to keep writing my memoir when I wasn’t sure I had the bulwark to stave off the amalgam of emotions that surfaced. “You’ll get through it,” she would say. “Keep going.” I’m still going. Some people write a memoir in a year, some take a decade. When you’re working three jobs trying to keep a roof over your head and food in the cupboard for your son, the last thing you want to do is sit in front of a computer and drum up feelings.
One of my jobs is a t-shirt line, BE SO DO SO, I launched just before Patrick disappeared. Simple, inspirational quotes. That year around Christmas, Olivia told me to bring a bunch of my shirts over; that she wanted to buy some as gifts. She pulled about 25 shirts, I gave her my wholesale price, but she insisted on paying retail. I fought her on it for ten minutes, then she sat down and wrote a check for triple the wholesale price. I stood there holding back tears because I’d taken a chance with my last $500 but had yet to break even. Olivia’s favorite shirts were, Laugh at yourself often and A smile costs nothing. She started wearing my shirts everywhere, giving me a sense of pride.
But I felt like a fraud wearing my shirts. With the never-ending news cycle that Patrick “faked his death,” I struggled with how to protect my son and give him a sense of normalcy with journalists posted at our door. Laughing at myself was a distant memory. I’d always been the first to smile at a stranger but kept my head down in public, mortified that my headshot and details from my divorce were always part of the story. I didn’t come through Patrick’s disappearance with flying colors. I’ll never be okay that my son lost his dad at 13. In fact, I’ve never been the same.
During one of my darkest times when Chance was 16, depression had a grip on me, and I had no idea how I was going to pay rent. Olivia came to Chance’s baseball game and told us she’d be a judge on American Idol that night. When we turned it on, she was wearing one of my shirts, It is what it is. Maybe she was trying to tell me something. Her fans took to the internet and that shirt sold out in two days. I was incredibly grateful. I never shared my financial fears with her, but the media had shared ad nauseam that Patrick hadn’t paid child support in over a year.
I have so much to be grateful for in the unexpected friendship with Liv that neither of us saw coming. I was ridiculously protective of her. About a year before she passed, we were floating in her pool, and I’ll never forget how the sun bounced off the water and landed on her blue eyes, and how beautiful she was in a floppy straw hat without a stitch of makeup at 72 years old.
Later, I hopped in the Polaris and made my way down the long, tree-lined driveway to check the mail for her. In it was a letter addressed to Olivia, postmarked but with no address. She lived in a small mountain town; the post office of course knew her address. She was lying in a lounge chair when I got back, and I handed her the letter, cursing the post office for delivering it to her. “They should’ve returned it to sender,” I said, fearful of anthrax from a deranged fan.
Liv opened the envelope and pulled out a Get-Well card. It was lengthy; a fan thanking her for getting her through her own cancer journey. I watched tears roll down Liv’s sun-kissed cheeks, then followed suit with mine as she read it out loud. “That’s really lovely,” she said, then asked me to put it in her office. Me: “Anthrax!” Liv: “Don’t be silly.”
I loved being silly with her. Boy, do I miss her. She taught me so much: That a brisk walk around the neighborhood can do wonders for our mind, body, and spirit. She taught me to sit still in a lounge chair under the sun and watch birds play. She taught me the beauty in the shape of the mountains beyond her pool, the clouds, the sound of silence, and just watching our dogs play together in the grass. She never shied away from saying “Love you,” instilling in me to do the same. She taught me grace. She was grace.
I could go on and on, but I’d be remiss not to mention her Cancer and Wellness Center in Australia. https://www.onjcancercentre.org/ What an incredible legacy; to give people a kinder, gentler way to get through cancer. When I was there in 2019, I watched her visit every single patient and spend considerable time with them. Not because she had to, but because she wanted to. On her 70th birthday, she ended up checking herself in and learned firsthand what a gift her own hospital was. What a gift she was, always raising awareness for animals, and our planet, and leading by example.
I spent a lot of time with her this year and was astounded by her resilience and determination during some awfully hard days. Her body was giving out and she was in a lot of pain, but she still managed to laugh at herself often. Her love and light will be eternally missed.
May we find a cure for cancer — and soon.
