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Posted by Louise Bialik I just wished that I had reached him on Saturday... Roger, whereever you are, you are loved. I love you, man.
on May 31, 2001, 12:15 am
Debra, I've been really thinking a lot about you today. Since Roger's death on Sunday, and finding out about just yesterday, it's all so fresh and frightening. So many of theatre friends have checked out and I just have to wonder about what gifts we've been blessed with to, as the HOLE album is entitled, LIVE THROUGH THIS. I happen to be in town, around Burbank for the next week, and check this out-- while I'm driving by Forest Lawn, I say real loud, "Hi Tracy, hi Craig!" and then a song comes on called "The Great One Is Dead" and just as I look up into the sky to laugh about the weird eeriness, there are skywritten letters that spell D-E-A-T-H. The synchronicities are so profound, but then when I get to my destination, I am greated by my colleagues who are fashionably dressed in black suits with black shirts. Someone says, "it looks like we're going to a funeral." In the meantime, my little head is spinning, I can see as plain as day the word DEATH skywritten over Burbank and hear the lyrics repeating "the great one is dead, the great one is dead" just as I drove by Forest Lawn. I guess I'm stressing out. Rightly so. Some strange things have been happening around trying to get more information on Roger. Terry Cuzort last received an email from Roger a few days ago, just a day or two before he died. There is still an autopsy in progress but it may be the case the Roger was depressed and quite physically sick, so you can imagine what the combination created -- well, Roger was still enthusiastic about tomorrow and wrote Terry of plans for a vacation, he had also stayed up late the night before, talking to his mother all night long. There wasn't any indication of Roger being in trouble or sick, other than he mentioned having heartburn and was tired and wanting to rest off the aching feeling. Well, his mother knew he wasn't feeling well and let him sleep in late but when it passed the noon hour, she decided to bring him breakfast, what she found was her boy dead in bed. It was awful for her. She hasn't been able to eat or sleep for three days. We can all pray for Susan. What's remarkable about my reaching Susan is that Terry gave me a phone number to her home but when I dialed it, the Mortuary answered. I asked if this was the residence of Roger Berry and the receptionist laughed, "well, we do have a Roger Berry here. He is being embalmed." I thought I was getting some sick relative on the phone but as it turned out, the phone number I dialed somehow forwarded to the mortuary and Susan doesn't have callforwarding. My read in that is that it's Roger's way of saying HELLO. Another thing that happened was that the day after Roger died, a friend of mine came by a nightclub with my 1982 yearbook. It had been missing for 12 years and I hadn't a clue where it went. My friend heard that i would be in town and thought it was my book so she brought it. Well, the first thing I did was read Roger's inscription and I thought, "what a neat guy. I will have to look you up this week" and then I looked at his senior portrait in the white suit. He looks stunning, as usual, one of the better dressers. Well, after I got home from the club, I turned in for the night and woke up to Terry's email telling me about Roger passing on. I was frozen in my seat. It felt like such a betrayl. Another funny incident that happened is that after I talked to Roger's mom, she asked me to call her the next day, so I promised and tried to pull up my email with her phone number but then as I looked at the page, it got all scrambled up and became this funky code. I made a copy and paste of it, and once I saved the coded text, the message returned back to normal. My husband says that my email application shouldn't do such a thing, but being the skeptic he is, says that it's possible (although unusual for Linux). My view on this one is that it's Roger's way of saying HELLO one more time. He also said HELLO to his mother and uncle-in-law the otherday when they left their home with all the lights off, to return a few hours later and find Roger's bedroom light on. There was no timer on the light and you had to manually switch it to make it come on. It was a red light. I guess I am about to say the dreaded thing that I am avoiding in this longwinded rap session-- it may be the case that Roger took his own life-- he was pos and starting to get sick and afraid of the future, and also feeling like crudolla to be without Tracy. He told his mom the night before he died, "all my friends are dead."
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