送交者: HunHunSheng 于 2005-12-06, 23:19:38:
EXCEPT
"Am I Dead Yet"
First Helen, then Audrey, tried repeatedly to get Ted to stop smoking. Fighting this ever losing battle, Ted resorted to bribes and trickery, going so far as to linger in the dining room after the other guests had left so he could sneak the cigarettes off the table, secreting them for later. Slipping friend Duke Johnson some money while out to dinner one night, asking him to get a pack of cigarettes, Duke refused. "I thought you were my friend," Ted snapped. "That's the point," said Duke, "I am."
The occasion of Ted's seventy-fifth birthday set off a round of interviews, exhibitions, and library celebrations. Smoking incessantly throughout the interviews, Ted nonetheless quickly snubbed out the cigarettes for photo sessions because, he said, "children's book authors never smoke." As little as Ted cared to be around children, he was still acutely aware of their observations and strove to maintain his naturally nurturing and avuncular appearance for them.
The year 1975 saw the start of a five-year battle with glaucoma, cataracts, and transient blindness as the condition waxed and waned and Ted underwent numerous surgeries. His prior years of intense involvement in the publishing of his books stood him in good stead. Though he could no longer see, he was still able to be quite specific about the colors to be used in the illustrations of the book waiting to be published: he had long ago memorized the color charts and so could specify color numbers and the modifications made to the colors to attain the exact hues and tones he wanted.
In the summer of 1981, as Ted began work on Bunches of Hunches, Ted and Audry attended a dinner party. Audry had previously arranged with their hostess to ban smoking at the table. Ted picked up the no smoking card from his table, set it afire, and sent it to the hostess on a tray.
The next day he awoke with indigestion. Audry, a former nurse, checked his blood pressure. When he complained of the same ill feeling the next day, she had him admitted to the hospital where he was found to have had a minor heart attack. Always healthy and fit, Ted's doctor made only one recommendation for reform in Ted's lifestyle: no more smoking.
Ted resurrected his old pipe, filled it with radish seeds and sphagnum moss, and whenever he wanted a cigarette, he watered his pipe with an eyedropper. The most difficult time, he said, was not being able to light up a cigarette when he answered the phone, thus having no crutch with which "to ease the embarrassment of talking to someone."
In 1983, during a routine dental appointment, a small lesion was found at the base of his tongue; it was later confirmed to be a malignancy of a type linked to smoking and drinking. Thus began a series of surgeries to remove great masses of tongue, tissue and muscle following a sickening course of chemo- and radiation therapy. Typical of Ted, very few in the inner circle of friends and associates knew about what was happening for some time. Thus began years of surgeries, illness, and waning strength.
On Sept 24, 1991, Ted died at home in his studio, steps away from his drawing board and color charts, stubs of pencils and pots of ink and his closet full of hats, Audrey and Theophrastus by his side.