My Eulogy for Doug

OK; so let’s see if I can get all these words to come out of my face hole before I completely lose what little composure I’ve got, shall we?

Many of you are here today because you’ve done shows with Doug over the years; and while Doug’s kindness, compassion, humor, and gentle nature were evident to ANYONE who spent more than a few moments in his presence, there are likely quite a few of you who don’t know – at a deep, personal, intimate level – the man behind all that talent. As his wife, it’s my responsibility, and my honor, to make one final gift to him, and I think the best way I can do that is to tell you our story – a story in which so many of you played a role –  so that you can know the Doug Allen I love so very much. Get comfy, folks; this is gonna take a while.

I met Doug when I attended a performance of Inebriated Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing in July 2015; he played Don Juan (THE BASTARD). I thought he was terribly cute, and uproariously funny. And I happened to be seated at the table next to his designated driver. We got to chatting, and when I presumed that they were a couple, she made it clear they were not. So I asked, “is he single?” Yes. “Is he straight?” Yes again. “Might he be interested in a chubby, sarcastic woman with the vocabulary of a well-educated sailor?” “Oh, most definitely!!”

We were introduced after the show by mutual friends, chatted amiably for a few moments, and that was that.

About a month later, we ran into each other at an audition, chatted again, and became Facebook friends. We interacted frequently on Facebook, liking and commenting on each other’s posts. This went on for a couple of months, until we both had a horrendous week: he was dealing with severe headaches that turned out to be related to his high blood pressure – he needed to adjust his meds – and I’d lost out on a bucket list role for which I’d had a phenomenal audition – it was my third or fourth rejection in a row, and it hit hard.

Doug asked if I’d like to meet up for a cocktail to commiserate. 

On October 16, 2015, we met up at Flip Flops, in Antioch, at 6:30 PM. We sat and talked, and we were REALLY vibing with each other. A couple hours in, I was getting frustrated because I could NOT get a read on Doug: he was asking the sorts of questions one would typically ask on a first date, but he wasn’t at all touchy feely. Now, those of you who know me well, know that I do not care for ambiguity. So I just point blank asked him, “is this a date?” He turned as white as a ghost and stammered, “Absolutely not!”, which was perfectly fine: I was happy to have a new friend, and I knew that we ABSOLUTELY would be great friends. 

We ended up closing the joint, and he asked if I’d like to go to his place to continue the conversation. Pretty sure by then that he was NOT a serial killer who wanted to make a girl suit out of my skin, I said “sure!” Now, I know what you’re thinking, you filthy-minded people, but no: he was a perfect gentleman. I met his cats, Houdini and Prowler, and we sat and talked until 4:00 AM. Impressive, considering he had someplace to be at 9 that morning. And so, October 16 became known as our First Not-a-Date.

Three days later, I received a text from him: “Really enjoyed our evening. Hope we can do it again.” I replied, saying that I felt much the same. So he asked me out on our first real date, to go see The Foreigner, directed by Clay Hillwig, at Pull-Tight theatre in Franklin.

On the day of the big event, I drove to Doug’s place (as he lived closer to Franklin than I), he gave me a big hug (he gave SUCH good hugs), told me I looked great, and he drove us out to Franklin. The show was wonderful, but I sat there the whole time wondering when this dude was gonna reach over and hold my hand. I mean, this was DEFINITELY a date, so what the hell? He never did. We went out for a bite to eat afterwards, had more great conversation, and then headed back.

When we got to his place, he invited me in. Now, I had planned for this; I wanted to make sure there was a liplock in my future, so I said, “Are you going to be a perfect gentleman again?” He hesitated for a second and said, “probably not,” and I said, “Well, thank God. Because if the answer was yes, I'm outta here.” We went inside, and just as we stepped in the door, he turned and kissed me, and YOWZA. Fireworks. Again, we stayed up talking most of the night – this time until 5:00 AM.

We were pretty much inseparable from that point on; our romance sprang into life like a tulip in early Spring. But allowing ourselves to trust, and to care deeply for each other? That came steadily but very slowly; we’d both had multiple failed marriages and plenty of failed relationships in between, and we were like caged tigers: very, very interested in each other, but very, VERY cautious. Each of us broken in our own way, we found that we healed, and challenged, and complemented each other: I being boisterous and bawdy and VERY willing to share my VERY strong opinions with anyone whether they wanted to hear them or not; he being grounded and calm and considerably more circumspect (although he could be damn boisterous and bawdy as well).

Of course, we had some hiccups along the way; every couple does. At one point, about seven months in, we very nearly broke up, and I mean VERY nearly. But even after such a short time together, we loved each other too much to let go, and I’m so glad we stuck it out.

We told each other our stories: he talked about his daughter, Missy – who’s actually his step-daughter, but he never saw her that way – her brother Rene, and her children Olivia, Andrew, and William. And he talked about his brother, Robbie, and Robbie’s children, Katie and Mallorie. He loved you all so, so much. And I talked about my son, Andrew, and my brother, David, my sister, Peggy, and her kids Tricia, Jay, and Katie. It takes a very special man to love another man’s children as his own (I’m looking at you, Dan O’Harra). 

The reason I divorced my second husband (whom I refer to as Thing Two) was his inability to love my wonderful son, and that quality that Doug had is one of the many things I loved about him. Indeed, that may have been the key to me falling in love with him.

He told me about his childhood; I told him about mine. We talked about our previous marriages, and why they’d gone wrong. We talked, and we talked, and we talked; that, along with laughter, was the defining characteristic of our relationship: we could, and did, talk about EVERYTHING. We were also both ABSOLUTELY adamant that we would NEVER marry again.

In early January 2016, my older brother, David, was diagnosed with terminal cancer and went home to my sister, Peggy’s, under hospice care. On my way back from visiting them in South Carolina, I realized that I didn’t want to be alone that evening. But, as you’ve all probably noticed in the past week and two days, I tend to be PATHOLOGICALLY unwilling to ask for help. So I called Doug and casually asked him if he could swing by before his rehearsal that night. He kinda hemmed and hawed and said he REALLY needed to work on his lines. More than a little miffed, I rushed him off the phone and called my bestie, James Bealor, and asked him to come over, which he did.

A few hours later, Doug texted to ask how I was doing, and I sent a terse response that I was fine; that James had come over because HE understood that I didn’t want to be alone. (Yes, I CAN be a stone cold bitch sometimes. Thank you for asking.)

At 11:30 that night, when I still hadn’t heard from Doug (we talked every evening before going to bed), I texted him: “No goodnight call?” He replied that he wasn’t interested in talking to me if I was going to punish him for not doing something I didn’t even tell him I needed in the first place. In hindsight, that was my favorite quality of Doug’s: I can be difficult. I’m opinionated, and often judgemental, and – in romantic relationships – I find myself looking for reasons to say “AHA! There’s that red flag! I’ve been waiting for that. Begone, loser!” And Doug wasn’t having any of that. He called me on my shit, every time. That’s why we were so good together: we held each other accountable for our baggage, and we made each other the best POSSIBLE versions of ourselves.

Now, I'm sure it's hard to imagine, since I’m such a delicate flower, but I have a temper. And when I read that text, that temper flared RIGHT on up. But then, thank the gods, before I could fire off a SCATHING response (and people, I can construct a verbal takedown that could make Gordon Ramsey cry, TRUST), I realized two things: first, that Doug was absolutely right: I didn’t tell him what I needed, but I was punishing him for not giving it to me; second, that I was in love, for real, for the first time in my fifty years, because for the first time EVER, I didn’t care about winning the argument; I only cared about fixing us. So I called him, and we talked it out and moved on. That was another one of our great strengths as a couple: we’d have issues, but we’d talk them through and fix them, and then we moved on. We knew that bringing up old stuff in a new argument is a recipe for a breakup. 

Over the next year and a bit, our relationship grew into itself. We established ground rules that never failed us: 

• No arguing under the influence of alcohol.
• No having serious relationship discussions under the influence of alcohol.
• Too angry, and about to say something one of us might regret? Mandatory twenty-minute break.
• Talk every night before bed, and text every morning.
• NEVER go to bed angry at each other.

We also developed inside jokes: 

• If Doug went out of his way to pay for something, I’d say, “I owe you,” and he’d say, “that’s going in the ledger”; that worked in reverse, too. Funny, we never did audit the damn thing, so I have no idea how the books actually tally up. 
• On the weekends, we’d take turns whose fault it was, “it” being anything that went wrong or right. After we moved in together, that became a daily routine: every day it was either his fault or mine. The day we married was my fault; the day of his surgery was his; the day of his death was mine. Funny enough, neither of us EVER took advantage of this routine to start some shit and blame the other because it was their fault. It was just part of our playful way of doing life together.
• When talking to Doug’s cats, I was referred to as Not-the-Mama; when talking to my cat and dog, Doug was Not-the-Daddy, until we moved in together, at which point it became Almost The Mama and Almost The Daddy. And then we got married, and… well, you’re bright people; you can figure it out.

Doug introduced me to college football (prior to meeting him, I’d only watched the pros), and made me fall in love with the Vols very much against my will. He also introduced me to college basketball. Many, many hours over our four years together were spent watching and screaming at televisions broadcasting a Vols game (key phrase: RUN, YA BASTARD!). We shared an uncanny ability to catch the most obscure sexual innuendo from any sports broadcaster (I mean, c’mon: penetration? nice reacharound? GOOD BALL HANDLING?). He even got me to enjoy watching golf, and that may be the ONE thing for which I can NEVER forgive him.

In turn, I introduced Doug to The Handmaid’s Tale, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Korean horror films. If you had told me, twenty years ago, that I would someday find a man who enjoyed theatre, was straight, loved to read, loved sports, was willing to watch foreign films and documentaries with me, AND had a twisted sense of humor to match my own, I would have replied that you had a very rich fantasy life indeed and you should share whatever drugs you’re taking. And yet, that was Doug. And as it turns out, he was better than any fantasy anyone could dream up.

Theatre was an enormous part of our lives. We did four shows together: All My Sons, in which he played Joe Keller and I played his wife, Kate – and in which I had to slap him; To Kill a Mockingbird, in which he played the violently racist Bob Ewell and I played the adult Jean Louise – it’s a testament to Doug’s incredible gift as an actor that a man as warm, and loving, and kind as he could convincingly play a monster. In The Obituary Club, a comedy written by local playwright and our friend, Misty Embry. Doug’s role was small, but he made the most of it and then some, and he was hilarious. Our final show together was Lips Together, Teeth Apart, a heart-wrenching drama in which we once again played spouses who didn’t particularly like each other. No slapping this time, but he did have to endure me kissing Bowd Beal on stage every Friday and Saturday for three weekends, and honestly? I think he would’ve preferred a slap. I loved sharing the stage with Doug nearly as much as I loved sharing my life with him.

By the time March of 2017 rolled around, I told Doug that, while I still had absolutely zero desire to be married in the abstract, I very much wanted to be married TO HIM. Luckily, he felt the same way about me. And that was that: we were spending the rest of our lives together, never expecting how little time that would be.

In June of 2018, Doug moved into the house I’d bought when I divorced Thing Two. We settled into cohabiting much more easily than I would have expected, although I wished that he’d purged more of his stuff before moving into our very small house. He had – and still has – a storage unit full of memories that couldn’t fit; we’d planned to sell this place and build our dream home together after he recovered.  

We loved our days together; I work from home, so I’d see him throughout the day whenever I needed to grab a cup of coffee, or a bite to eat. I would cook dinner; he would clean up. I loved cooking for Doug, and even serving him the first helping, because he never expected it or took it for granted. He made me WANT to do things for him just because I loved him. 

Our combined pet family of three cats and one dog slowly adjusted to each other, even though Prowler – our 18-year-old, crochety cat – bullies our 50-lb dog Kellogg to this day. Life was good. We talked about getting married; about what kind of engagement ring I’d want (sapphire, thank you very much, and the proposal better include a flowery romantic speech and getting down on one knee). We talked about what kind of wedding we’d want, but there was never any pressure about it, because really, we were married from the moment we realized we were in love.

In October 2018, Doug took me to his family’s beach house in Sunset Beach, North Carolina. I had a sneaking suspicion that a proposal might be in the offing, because that place meant so much to him, and because our trip coincided with the anniversary of our first not-a-date. But October 16 came and went with no proposal. I wasn’t concerned; we loved each other, and we were in it forever, so the proposal and marriage were just a formality. But it turned out  that he just wanted the proposal to have its own anniversary. And so, on October 17, three years and one day after our First Not-a-Date, we walked down to the beach as the sun was setting. He pulled me close, told me that, from the night we first sat in that little bar on the marina in Antioch, he knew that I was someone who needed to be in his life. And then I got that flowery, romantic speech I wanted. And then he got down on one knee and said, “will you spend the rest of your life with me?” 

Harkening back to our first evening together when I asked if we were on a date, I said, “we already established THAT. Are you asking me to marry you? SAY THE WORDS, MAN! SAY THE WORDS!” And so he did. 

My love for Doug was, is, and will forever be unwavering and unshakeable, as was his for me. Never in my life have I been loved so tenderly, so completely, and so genuinely. He knew the best of me, the worst of me, and everything in between, and he loved me without reservation. 

To be clear: this wasn't a case of two older people who liked each other and got married for companionship; this was a true, real, deep, passionate love affair.

Being loved by Doug was like bathing in a warm ray of sunshine. He loved me fiercely and completely, as I love him, and that’s a magic that I didn’t believe existed, because I’d never experienced it before. And I surely never will again.

Our wedding and honeymoon, in Kauai and Maui, were everything we’d dreamed and more. Those two weeks, almost completely unplugged and focused only on each other to the exclusion of everyone and everything else, in one of the most beautiful places in the world? Those were EVERYTHING to us. Time stopped for those two weeks. I will treasure those memories, as I treasure all my memories of my beloved husband.

I’m not going to recount his last days; I’ve already done that on Facebook, at great length. I will only say that Doug went into this surgery because he wanted to be well, for me, so that we could travel the world together and wring every drop of joy we could out of the twenty years that we’d made a deal we'd have before one of us left this earth. I started the week of February 17 anxious, but optimistic that all would be well. All is not well. All will never be well. 

My husband, one of the two great loves of my life – the other being my son – is gone. And life no longer makes sense. I do not know how to fill the Doug-shaped hole in my heart; I don’t WANT to fill it. I want to feel this pain, I want to sit with it, I want to DROWN in it, and I want to shout it from the rooftops. Because that pain is proof of what an extraordinary man Doug was, and what an extraordinary love we had. Our friend Thomas Horton pointed that out to me, and what a lovely gift, to give me that perspective. Doug and I may not have spent a lifetime together, or even the twenty years we hoped for, but we surely shared MANY lifetimes of love in the time that we were given.

I’m not religious. At all. If there is a God, He is horribly cruel for giving me this beautiful man for such a short time, and then stealing him away from me just as we were beginning our life together. But if I’ve learned nothing else in the past nine days, I've learned that I am surrounded by SO MUCH LOVE – from our family, from our friends, from my colleagues, from every single person who participated in Doug’s care, and even from strangers who’ve extended me more grace than I probably deserve. And because everyone in this room is suffering the pain of losing Doug, I’d like to take a cue from an experience that the lovely LaToya Gardner told me she had when she attended a memorial for a friend’s son shortly after losing her own beloved JR Smallwood all too soon: I would like you all to stand up, and turn to the person on your right (if there’s no one on your right, find someone), and when I start this timer, I want you to hug that person with all your might for one full minute, until the timer goes off. 

(hug)

Now, I want you to take that feeling you have right now, and carry it with you. Share it with the people you love, with the people you like, and even with the people who piss you off. Share it with strangers. Doug was love personified, and we should all strive to be the same.

When we leave here this afternoon, for most of you, this chapter will be closed. Sure, you’ll have the odd times when you’ll think of Doug wistfully and have a few moments of sadness, but you’ll return to your regularly scheduled lives, which is perfectly normal, and I don't begrudge you that. But for our family, and for our closest friends, and for me… the world is a much darker and sadder and smaller place without Douglas Cunningham Allen in it, and it will always be so. I now wear Doug's wedding ring on my right middle finger, which is fitting, as I was often fond of jokingly saying, “You’re Number One, sweetie!”; it's inscribed, “You’ll always be my forever.” And he will. I don’t know how to go on without him; I don’t know that I want to. But as I told my friend Kendall last week: NO love story gets a happy ending. Either you break up and one of you is miserable, or you share a love for the ages, and then one of you dies, leaving the other destroyed. 

Five minutes of loving and being loved by Doug was more love and beauty and joy than many people EVER get; an eternity of loving and being loved by Doug would never be enough. He was my love; he kept me grounded; he changed me in ways I could never have imagined, turning me from a crunchy-on-the-outside yet screamy-on-the-inside, guarded woman afraid to admit she even HAD feelings, let alone show them, into the woman I am now: willing to share my deepest pain and greatest joy with the whole  world so that they can know what an incredible man he was.

I could talk about Doug forever – and it probably feels like I have – because I haven’t even scratched the surface of who he was and what he meant to me; I don’t think sufficient words exist. And as long as I’m talking about him, I can pretend that he’s standing right here beside me, with my hand in his, smiling that smile that was only for me, and that melted my heart EVERY DAMN TIME.

Paradoxically, in this awful, horrible, heartbreaking experience, I’ve also found so much beauty. My relationship with my new, expanded family is so beautiful that it makes me cry. The love we’ve been shown by so many people is beautiful. Even our pain is exquisitely beautiful in its own way, because it forces us to focus on helping each other heal.

And speaking of beauty: Missy and Olivia had asked me to pull some pictures of Doug and me for them so that they could get them blown up. Sadly, I don’t have a ton of them, because I’ve never been particularly happy with the way I look, and so I avoid the camera. And even now, looking at pictures of myself, alone? My reaction is considerably less than charitable. But, taking a second look at the pictures of me with Doug… THAT woman is beautiful. The gleam in her eyes, and the smile that Doug loved so much. With him, I WAS beautiful. His love MADE me beautiful.

In our wedding vows, I told Doug that we’d both decided, before we met, that we would NEVER settle for anything less than the best of the fairy tale and the best of reality. Our love was both of those, and so much more.

At long last, it’s time to thank many, MANY people, and then I’ll FINALLY shut up for a hot minute so we can wrap up:

Thank you to Mike Welch, Doug’s closest friend; Mike was there for Missy and me all week at the hospital, and even though I know his heart was breaking too, his only concern was for us. Thank you to Doug’s little bro Matt Smith and our dear friends, Memory Strong-Smith, Kate Kramer, and Tanya Grisham, who came to the hospital on Thursday, Doug’s last day with us, unasked, just to be there for us in case we needed them.

Thank you to Olivia, Andrew, William, and Nancy; you have welcomed my son and me into your family as one of your own, and your support this week has been one of the few things that has kept me going. Thank you to Katie, Doug's niece, who has been a joy to get to know, and I'm so glad to be part of her family. Thank you to MY son, Andrew, who couldn't get to the hospital on Thursday, and was so worried about me on Doug’s last day that he kept calling my sister asking what he could do, and who has been available to me any hour, day or night, ever since. I don’t know what I did to deserve him, but I’m so grateful for him. And Missy… there are no words. You are a MAGNIFICENT woman, and the past nine days have made it even clearer why Doug loved you so. Your presence every day at the hospital, and our multiple phone calls and texts every day since, have been an enormous gift. I truly could not have made it to today without you. And I love you so very much.

Thank you, Asa and Freddie, for allowing us to honor Doug here today, for taking care of so many details so we wouldn’t have to do so, and for being so kind and loving to us. I’ve thought the world of you both since we first met. But man… I love you both so much right now, and that will never go away. 

Thank you to Dr Billy Kim, who performed Doug’s very complex surgery and was there for Missy, Mike and me every time we needed him. Thank you to Joe, the nurse who cared for Doug on Tuesday and kept him alive against all odds during those long hours when we were waiting for a dialysis machine. Thank you to Corey, who cared for Doug on Wednesday and stabilized him enough to give me just ONE day of peace and the hope that Doug would be able to come back to me. Thank you to Kaylee, who cared for Doug each night. Thank you to Dr. Saadia Khan, Doug’s nephrologist, who did her best to get Doug out of his downward spiral. 

Thank you, so very, VERY much, to Dr Toby Smith, and to Lindsay, the nurse who cared for Doug on his last day: You gave me an INCREDIBLE gift by allowing me to be present in Doug’s final minutes, when you were working so heroically and tirelessly to save his life. Watching that well-choreographed dance was excruciatingly painful and raw and primal and ugly, but it too was beautiful in that it showed the humanity of everyone in that room. Because there can be no doubt that EVERYONE participating in that code did everything humanly possible, for far longer than I had any right to expect, to try and save my husband so that he could come home to me. 

And to all of you here today: Thank you for allowing me to share Doug’s and my story with you. Thank you for wrapping me in your warm and loving embrace during this worst time of my life. Most of all, thank you for loving Doug.

Doug, in the words of Christina Perri: I have died every day waiting for you. I have loved you for a thousand years; I’ll love you for a thousand more.

Baby, you’ve taken your final bow. Please, PLEASE, be waiting in the wings for me when it’s my cue.