All My Life (20 page)

At the time I don’t believe any of us realized how quickly he would deteriorate. I was working in New York, but was monitoring the situation every single day. Liza was busy working at a new job in Los Angeles. It never occurred to me to tell her to come be by her grandfather’s side. I honestly believed he would recover and come home. Andreas was very close to his grandfather, so he wanted to fly to Florida to be with him. My father had spent a lot of wonderful time with Andreas over the years. They both shared a love of golf. There were many times when my father went to the driving range with Andreas, watched him practice, and played in the many tournaments he competed in. My father was an early riser, so he frequently picked Andreas up in the mornings to take him to a diner for breakfast before heading out to the golf course together. I know it meant so much to him to have Andreas by his side during his illness, even if he couldn’t tell him so.

My father passed away at five-thirty in the evening on November 22, 2002. My mother had gone home to get some things done and was on her way back to the hospital. It was devastating for all of us that no one was with him when he died. In a way, it was very much like my father to go when no one was around so he could protect us from having to suffer through his dying.

I saw my father be so good to my mother for my entire life, and now my mother was in that role for him. She was so hands-on good to him during his last days. Any insignificant differences we had with each other melted away. There was no meaning in petty grudges or family squabbles. None of that seemed important anymore. My father could sense this. I know he could and I am certain he had tremendous joy in his heart because he regained that twinkle in his eyes that I recognized from when I was a little girl. He had watched our family coming together during those last weeks. Knowing he felt that way before he died filled my heart with happiness, even if my heart was slowly breaking each day as he slipped away.

After receiving word that my father had passed, Andreas and I flew to Florida on the very first flight the next morning.

When we arrived in Palm Beach, we helped my mother make the proper arrangements. My mother asked me if I would give the eulogy. I wasn’t prepared to speak at the funeral. Although I was very glad to have the opportunity to tell everybody how wonderful my dad was, it was also very difficult for me, as I was extremely distraught and very emotional. I was having a hard time comprehending that my father was really gone. I couldn’t believe that it happened so fast. Three months had passed from diagnosis to his death. As I look back, maybe this was a blessing in disguise, but at the time it all felt unreal and like there hadn’t been enough time to prepare, to heal, to fix, or to say good-bye.

After my father passed away, I worried about my mother being all alone. My mother and father had each other for so many years. She didn’t know any other way of life except being with my dad. There is never enough time on this earth with your loved ones and never a good time to watch them go. My natural progression was to begin thinking about what my life would be like if I ever lost Helmut. I found myself going into an imagined mourning for when he’s not there anymore. I started playing a terrible game of “what if?” and “when?” that took me several years to stop doing. Imagining my life without Helmut was the worst feeling I have ever had. The hardest thing about loving someone is how vulnerable it makes you.

I miss my father so much.

I could see that my mother was really lost without my father. There have been many times when I’ve called out to ask him to look after her, and while he’s at it, to put in a few good words for my children and grandchildren, too, because he was such a good man that I am sure my father has God’s ear. My mother has been such a trouper. Somehow, she managed to pick herself up by the bootstraps and continue on with her life. I have no idea how she does that, but I have seen it happen over and over again.

I don’t think I ever realized just how capable and able my mother could be. Although it has been several years since my father passed away, I am sure there isn’t a single day that goes by when my mother doesn’t miss him. I know I do. After a decent period of time had passed, I began encouraging my mother to start accepting invitations from her friends to go out and do things. She has terrific friends in her life in Palm Beach. Although I offered to bring her up to New York to be closer to us, she wouldn’t hear of it. She likes her life in Florida. She likes living so independently. I totally understood what she meant and why that was so important to her. She hasn’t let her loss break her spirit.

Celebrations

Thirteen has always been my lucky number. Helmut and I were married on September 13; my mother and father were married on October 13; my daughter, Liza, was born thirteen days late; and Andreas thirteen days early. All of these life-altering events made it hard to ignore the significance of the number thirteen in my life.

As our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary was fast approaching in September of 1994, Helmut and I wanted to do something very special to celebrate. But, as we discovered after we married, September is a challenging time of year to get away. Our kids were going back to school, I was busy at work, and there were lots of demands that found us postponing a celebration for this milestone anniversary.

In an effort to make some time to spend with the family, I decided to take a week off around Thanksgiving. Helmut and I thought it might be a good time to take the kids to Austria and visit his family. I couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate our anniversary than a family vacation.

We arrived in Vienna on a Saturday night. The next morning, Helmut arranged through a friend of his for us to go to the Hofburgkapelle, the emperor’s private chapel, to hear the Vienna Boys Choir perform. I hadn’t realized the Vienna Boys Choir was a five-hundred-year-old institution. They sing at high mass on Sunday in the chapel. It was breathtaking. The boys sounded like angels. Literally every note I heard gave me goose bumps.

It had been a very rainy and dreary day. When we left the chapel, we dashed across the street and stopped into a café for some coffee. Liza, Andreas, Helmut’s brother Gunther and sister-in-law Erna were with us, too. About twenty minutes after we all sat down, Gunther turned to Helmut and asked if he had seen the package he had been carrying. He was speaking in German, so I was doing my best to understand. Helmut told him he didn’t notice a package. Gunther asked Erna, who also said she didn’t know anything about it.

“I must have left it in the chapel,” Gunther said.

We finished our coffee and walked back across the street to see if we could locate the missing article. By the time we got to the chapel, however, everything was closed up tight. There was a big Gothic-looking door and beside it was a tiny bell. Helmut pushed the button, hoping someone would come to answer, but no one did.

Helmut then turned to Andreas, who was carrying two oversize umbrellas, and said, “Use those to knock on the door.” Hearing that loud pounding, the altar woman we had seen arranging flowers earlier opened the door, but only a tiny little crack.

Gunther explained the situation, again speaking in German. The woman nodded her head and motioned for us to come in and look around for the missing package. She opened the door just wide enough for us to walk through. Once we were all inside, she slammed it shut behind us. From that particular entrance, the only way to get into the chapel was to walk down the long center aisle. As we started to make our way, I noticed that all of the lights were turned on. I looked up and saw the most beautiful arrangements of flowers on the altar. I didn’t think anything of it because we were, after all, inside the emperor’s private chapel, in Vienna. This was obviously how they always keep the church—beautiful and spectacular!

Helmut took me by the arm and began walking me down the aisle. That’s when I noticed that he had the biggest smile painted on his face. And, as I looked to my right, so did Liza and Andreas. And then I saw Gunther and Erna smiling, too, and suddenly I heard a soloist singing “Ave Maria” from the balcony. As we continued walking down the aisle, I looked up and saw the archbishop of Vienna walking toward us.

He very pleasantly took Helmut and me by the hands, looked right into my eyes, and began to speak very slowly in German so I could understand him.

“Do you want to marry this man again?” he asked.

By this time tears of joy were streaming down my cheeks. Helmut had arranged all of this through his great friend Klaus Zyla, who is a former Austrian diplomat. Klaus was able to help Helmut arrange it so we could renew our vows in his home country and in front of our children, who were with us to witness this very intimate and romantic moment. Everyone was in on it except for me—even the altar woman who answered the door! She deserved an Academy Award for that performance…or at the very least an Emmy!

After the ceremony, the woman collected all of the flowers on the altar and placed them in my arms. I was told it was an Austrian tradition to have the bride walk through the streets with her wedding flowers, so that was exactly what we did. Helmut and Gunther had arranged for us to have a beautiful Sunday dinner at a very special restaurant, which we had all to ourselves. It was spectacular.

I have always believed in celebrating as much as you can, because let’s face it, life can sometimes be hard and unexpected things can happen. That’s why celebrations are very big in our family. We don’t take a single moment together for granted. The demands of my professional life have been enormous, which means I often end up spending many more hours of my day with my colleagues than with the people in my personal life, including my family. If I ever let myself get caught up in that whirlwind, I feared I would lose my focus on what really matters most in life because every moment of every day could easily be filled with phone calls, meetings, and work, and under those circumstances I might wake up one day and realize I had no life.

As I mentioned earlier, when All My Children was extended to its one-hour format, my work obligations grew exponentially. It wasn’t so much the added thirty minutes of showtime that took me away from home more often and for longer periods each day as it was the extra hours of preparation and our new shooting schedule. Around the time that Liza was three years old, I was sometimes working for twelve to eighteen hours a day, five days a week. Being away from her that much made me very sad. There were too many days when I wasn’t there as she woke up in the morning or I wasn’t home by the time she went to bed at night. That was killing me. No matter what time I came home, though, I always made it my first priority to go into her room to see her, stroke her hair, and listen to her breathe.

Before I was able to negotiate a clause in my contract that allowed me to take my children’s birthdays off, I would have to be on set if my schedule called for me to be there, whether it was Liza’s birthday or not. Because I was determined to mark those special days in special ways even if I did have to work, I came up with something that has become a favorite tradition in our home—the birthday breakfast. At the very least, I made sure I would be in the house in the morning so I could make her a special morning meal. There would always be a large bouquet of streaming balloons tied to the birthday girl’s chair and some wrapped presents waiting for her on the table. The most important thing was to spend some special time with Liza so she knew I wasn’t abandoning her or placing greater value on work than on her.

Those birthday breakfasts must have had a lasting impact, because to this day, Liza still celebrates all of the wonderful occasions in her life by starting the morning off with a special family breakfast. So even though I couldn’t always be there exactly as I wished in the early years, something good came out of making the time to be with my daughter.

Many years later, Liza wrote a poem for her honors English class that spoke about all of the times I came home and snuck into her room while she was sleeping. I was stunned to read her incredible words because I never knew that she was aware I was there. Her poem spoke to all of those nights I didn’t take a hotel room or stay in New York City when it might have been easier for me to do so. We never had an apartment in the city while the children were young because we didn’t want to be tempted not to come home. I wanted to see my children, even if they didn’t see me. I would always be there when they woke up in the morning or had a nightmare in the middle of the night. Knowing this made me feel good, but it also meant that my children grew up with a sense of security that they were always my number one priority.

My Mother

She rises like an early bird

And flutters down the stairs like a ballerina

To catch just a glimpse of the morning sun

Rising like a budding flower

As she inaudibly flies back up the stairs

The radiant light of the budding sun

Bursts through the windows and illuminates

The domain like a temple

She then proceeds to put on her clothing

Her chestnut hair shines in the light, like a star

After dressing, she glides down the hallway

As if she were an ice-skater, so as not to wake us

I sense her presence as she enters my

Room full of dreams and kisses me on my

Forehead. And I know it is my mother about

To descend upon her daily journey to her studio

In the city.

Liza Victoria Huber

Christmas 1990

Although Helmut planned the most romantic and wonderful surprise for me in Vienna, I have to take credit for doing what most people would consider pulling off the impossible: I was able to successfully organize and execute a surprise seventieth birthday celebration for my husband without him ever having a clue about it!

Helmut is the type of man who sees everything and misses nothing. He is always acutely aware of what’s happening around him, so to fool him was going to take a precise and well-thought-out plan—and a village. I enlisted our personal assistant, Helene, and my good friend Mike Cohen, the head of ABC daytime publicity for All My Children, as my partners in crime. I needed Mike to help me because I wanted the party to be portrayed as an official ABC affiliate event. This was the only way I could think of to keep Helmut out of the loop while requiring him to accompany me.

Mike had only one invitation printed up, but he made it look like any number of ABC invitations I’d received over the years. My picture was featured because I was listed as the mistress of ceremonies. The plan was to have Mike phone me at home and break the news that the network had planned a special affiliate event for a weekend in October, “coincidentally” the same weekend as Helmut’s birthday. Of course, when Mike called, we had planned that I would tell him there was no way I could attend the event. I kindly explained that it was my husband’s birthday and we had an agreement to always be together for happy occasions and holidays. I pretended to be very upset and emphatic in saying there was no way I would consider doing the event.

When the invitation arrived in the mail, Helmut could see that I was the featured person. He also understood that this was an official black-tie event for the network to meet the affiliates at the Rainbow Room, a gorgeous space high above midtown Manhattan at the very top of Rockefeller Center. I could tell Helmut was rethinking my “decision,” maybe giving in just this once and making an exception about mixing my personal and professional commitments. Still, I refused. I told Helmut that I wouldn’t work on his birthday. It was a very big birthday and I simply couldn’t see myself giving it up for anything.

“You have to go,” he said.

And, of course, had this been a real event, he would have been absolutely right. Still, I called Mike one more time to tell him “I was out.”

A few days later, Mike called Helmut to apologize about the timing. He explained that he and I had spoken six months earlier without realizing there would be a conflict.

“If you and Susan could just come, give us a few minutes to make some opening remarks, and say a quick hello to everyone, I am sure we can get you out of there within half an hour so you and your family and friends can get on with your night and private celebration.” Mike was pleading with Helmut.

When they hung up, my husband gallantly came to me and pitched the idea. I remained very reluctant.

“I will only do it if you are absolutely sure we can be out of there in half an hour because there is no way I am spending your birthday at that event,” I said. If I hadn’t already won that Emmy, I sure deserved it for this performance.

Meanwhile, Mike, Helene, and I were like little elves pulling every string and dealing with every last detail. I went to the Rainbow Room to meet with the executive chef, who just happened to be from Austria! When I explained that my husband is Austrian, too, he and I planned the perfect menu, consisting of all of Helmut’s favorite foods and wines. I snuck out of the house one day in the guise of getting a manicure and met with the Hank Lane Orchestra, my very favorite in New York. Some of my most fun times in Manhattan have been dancing to the wonderful music of this orchestra. I handpicked what they were to play that night, making sure each and every song was meaningful to my husband without being “cheesy.” My children have rolled their eyes at me on more than one occasion, and so I had a very vivid picture of their faces if they were to catch me being cheesy on this special night. I remembered Steven Spielberg once saying in an interview that his kids rolled their eyes at him. If his kids could feel that way, I guess I’m in good company.

I had thought of every last detail, just in case Helmut managed to get someone else to slip up. Helene was mission control, keeping track of all of the RSVPs. I even had everyone at All My Children in on the secret. One day, I told Helmut I was going to a costume fitting at the studio before work but was really going to the Rainbow Room to check on last-minute details. I had put the entire studio on red alert, just in case Helmut called. Sure enough, out of the blue, he phoned the wardrobe department looking for me. This was a little unusual, and thankfully, the crew there knew how to handle the situation in my absence. Mark Klein, who took over as head of wardrobe after No-No left, immediately took Helmut’s call and lied through his teeth.

“Susan’s just finishing up her fitting. I will have her call you as soon as she comes out,” he very convincingly said.

Michael Woll, the amazing assistant to the head of wardrobe, picked up his cell and immediately called to alert me that Helmut was on the loose and looking for me.