Out Like a Lion The death of Billy Boyle
By Wickham Boyle
It is rumored that if March comes in like a lamb, it will exit like a lion.
My father William James Boyle was born on March 30, 1915. I don’t know if he began life as a mild infant, but I can attest to the last 56 years of his life, the ones I shared with him. He was fierce, unforgiving, funny, generous, crude, boisterous, cruel, glamorous, sweet, romantic and so smart and quick his reactions could twist time.
He was less than easy on all who surrounded him. An early version of the most politically correct man alive, he treated everyone as equals. Billy Boyle was vicious to everyone he worked with at NBC News for 30 years: interns, on-air super stars, and the executives whom he disparagingly referred to as “rabbits” holed up in their fancy offices rather than braving the field.
 |
|
|
Elizabeth and William Boyle
|
|
 |
|
|
|
When I was little I would see him far afield reporting on TV, and then run to find his whereabouts on the lighted globe in my room. “This is William James Boyle — Tizi Ouzou, Algiers, Tel Aviv, Wagadugu, La Paz, Sydney, London, Paris, Singapore, Los Angeles.” He was at the Hotel Dan in Jerusalem when it was attacked during the Six Day War. And in the Ambassador Hotel when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. He rode the funeral train with Ethel, and bought her a charm bracelet from all the news crew, detailing the stops in the campaign. This was similar to the keepsake he began for Elizabeth -- my mother -- to track where they lived and the stops he made without her.
My mother’s passing predated my father’s by seven years. He remained angry that she left him with only, in his parlance, “the tea cups to talk to.” His response to most things was anger, and I am fearful I carry that legacy, as well as his sky-blue eyes. I learned from him to have no patience when things do not happen fast, furious, and on point. I have spent the past 35 years attempting to unplug that programming. My family, coworkers, and friends can attest to my spotty success, but at least I have chosen the path of trying.
My father never wavered from his growling, unspiritual, forward-fast life and the unfettered expression of it. After my mother died there was never another birthday or Christmas card. He never called. When I called, he said: “It was great to talk to you, ducks.” Once I asked: “Why don’t you call, don’t you think about me?” His reply was vintage Boyle: “What a crock of horseshit. We talk.” My son says: “If grandpa was young today, he would be a rapper, cause then he could swear for work.”
His decline was difficult. Despite his smoking and drinking heavily and not subscribing to healthful, well, anything, he had no major maladies. In his words he just wore out, but it was not peaceful, Billy did not go quietly anywhere. He was down-graded from his home to assisted living, and finally to a nursing home. This was a stormy two years. Although my father swore at everyone, he still managed to endear himself to many of the staff. If you loved edgy, hell, he invented it and dosed it out.
I spoke to him the day before he went. I had been away on a press trip to Belize, and the day I returned his friend Rose called me. My father used to call her “a redneck whadda bottom.” She returned the favor by calling him “Butthead” — and only Butthead.
On the phone Rose said: “Butthead is doing poorly.” She is a Tar Heel from North Carolina.
I spoke to him, he had pneumonia, and they wanted him to wear an oxygen mask. He didn’t want it. “Well, what do you want, daddy? Do you want me to drive down?”
“Hell no!!! I want to get the fuck outta here. You get me, don’t you?” he growled. “But are we okay?” I stammered.
“Hell yes, we are okay I love you, just leave me the fuck alone so I can roll over and hug the bed.”
I went to sleep very late that Saturday, unpacking and thinking about my dad. I wondered if I should have jumped into the car driven off into the dark, icy night to North Carolina the way I had for years. But I didn’t. I listened to my dad.
As soon as I went to sleep the dream began. I was being chased. Unseen evil was pursuing me, and I was thwarted in finding my way out from any route I took. I was finally in the backyard of my childhood home. I was running up and down the grassy bank, trying to unhook the recalcitrant gate to the neighbor’s yard and losing my footing at every turn.
I finally made myself wake up. I drank water and went right back into the same dream. I nudged my husband and made him talk to me, hug me. Yet I fell back into the same scenario as if it were a movie playing on my internal VCR. Finally the phone rang, right before dawn. It was Rose. “Butthead is gone.” She was crying. We both said together that we hoped he was finally at peace. And then I told her about my dream, what could only have been his frantic passing. I know it was my father, my old man, who espoused that there was nothing after death, and spiritual practices were for idiots. That same curmudgeon allowed me to travel with him as he frantically found his way out of this world and into whatever grassy fields lay beyond.
I felt honored to have taken the last wild run with him, and hope he’s not giving my mother too much grief. If the sky looks bluer this spring, it is a combination of his eyes and the blue phrases he’s tossing around up in the clouds.
