Life Is Not a Reality Show (11 page)

I started laughing. “Mom, you can’t do that! You’re getting married!” She was just one of the funniest women you’d ever want to meet. Right to the very end, even though she was terrified of dying and hadn’t accepted it at all. She fought it all the way, and it was very painful for us to watch, but she never lost her sense of humor.

We had insisted on taking her from the hospice so she could spend her last days with us. After a ridiculous amount of red tape, we finally brought her to Kim’s house where we set up a hospital bed for her. One day we were trying to bathe her and she started to fall off the bed. Kim shouted, “Kyle! Kyle!” and we struggled, and it was kind of hilarious. My mom couldn’t even move, but she started laughing so hard! I said, “Kim! Kim! Get the leg!” Here we were, all of us laughing, with my mom just days away from dying!

Mom’s best friend, Diane, joined us in those last days. The two of them loved to eat and always teased each other about it. But at this point my mom wasn’t eating anything and wasn’t really able to talk anymore either. Finally the doctors told us to stop giving her Ensure or even water, because we were prolonging her passing. God, when you’re told to cut your mom off from water, that is so, so difficult.

We did have some swabs that we would soak in water and then put in her mouth to ease the dryness. One day we gave her a swab and she just clamped on to it, gripping it with all her might. Diane said, “Darling, relax. It’s not a chicken bone!”

My mom immediately burst out laughing, and the two of them laughed so hard and so long that even Diane couldn’t talk! That was Mom’s last amazing laugh. And maybe her last living lesson to me—a reminder that attitude counts for so much. Even in the most painful times, you can laugh, and you should, because it can lighten your heart and maybe even give you a bit of extra strength.

Then at the very end, she communicated loud and clear without using words.

I had been laying by mom’s side the night before she died, but the hospice nurse said, “Honey, your mom’s not going to let go if you’re there right beside her.” I didn’t want to miss her final moments, but the nurse said she would come and get me.

At about 5:00 in the morning, Kim woke me up and said, “It’s time.”

We had put on a CD with sounds of the ocean to make everything as peaceful as possible for her, and we were soothing her, telling her, “It’s okay, Mom, you can go.”

Suddenly we heard loud clattering sounds in the kitchen. I figured it was Mauricio, and I thought,
If he knows my mom’s dying, why doesn’t he come in here? And what is he doing with the silverware anyway?

“I’m sorry, I don’t know why he’s in there making noise,” I said.

The hospice nurse said, “I’ll go get him.” She left, and when she came back she just stood in the doorway, wide-eyed.

“What?” I said.

“There’s no one there,” she said. But we could still hear the noise. “It’s your mom.”

I’ve heard stories about things like that but I’d never experienced anything like it firsthand. We all looked at each other and nobody could believe it.

Then the noises stopped. And in the very next moment, hand to God, my mom made a sound like she was gasping for air, and that was it. She took her very last breath, and then she was gone. I swear on my life.

And then all of a sudden the door to my sister’s room slammed shut! I ran to look into my room, but my husband was sound asleep with the kids. How could the door have slammed shut on its own? Maybe it didn’t. I know that was Mom on her way out.

Her body now looked so different, so not like her, that it almost scared me. I realized Mom was saying to me in my mind, “I’m not in there honey, don’t worry. I’m not in there, I’m out
here
now.” It was the most incredible experience I’ve ever had, and it brought me so much peace.

The hospice nurse said she had seen similar things happen at the very end, especially when the person dying had a very strong personality. She told us, “That’s your mom saying good-bye.”

I know a lot of people won’t believe the story—some just aren’t open to that kind of thing at all—but I can tell it to you with confidence because so many people witnessed it. I’m so glad that I
was
open to the meaning of it all, because the experience made me feel so much better. I know it was Mom trying to make me feel better, just like always.

Before I finish my chapter about my mom, Big Kathy, I want to tell you the last part of the story about the ring. Mom gave it to me shortly before she died, partly because she knew Kathy and Kim had a lot of jewelry and I didn’t have as much. Kathy and Kim each have an incredible jewelry collection. But she also wanted me to have it because she felt I was always so responsible. I was always the nervous Nellie, worrying and wanting things to be right, even as a little girl, and my mom always said I was ridiculously mature for my age. She used to joke, “You know, Kyle was changing her own diapers and making her own bottles when she was one year old—and scheduling her own dental appointments at eleven!”

I’m not embarrassed to say it: I believe that people can communicate with us from other realms and that some individuals here on Earth have a special gift for tuning them in and helping us understand our lives. But I was very puzzled during an episode of season 1 when we went to Camille Grammer’s house for a dinner party with a friend of hers who was a psychic. The psychic and I got into a disagreement, and she said some pretty harsh things about me and to me. As usual, I spoke quite directly to her. She told me I didn’t get along with women, which was completely off-base because I love the women in my life. I grew up in a house with all women. Are you kidding? I’m a girl’s girl through and through, just like my mom. She loved having her girlfriends over all the time, and they’d cook in the kitchen and laugh hysterically together.

So we had another psychic to dinner for season 2, and this time she got things so right it was almost scary.

I invited all the girls from the show to dinner at my house, and after dinner we all sat around the table and had a séance. (This psychic was also a medium.)

Yes, you can call me the Shirley MacLaine of
Real Housewives
! Ha-ha!

So the psychic was going around the table, and in the middle of talking to someone she all of a sudden stopped. “Wait, hold on one second!” she said. “Kyle, your mom is here. She’s really interrupting a lot. Okay, she wants me to let you know she’s here. But she is also saying that she wants all the girls to have their turns first!”

Everyone started laughing, including me, but I was getting shivers too. I’m having goose bumps just telling you about it now—because that’s something that my mom always used to say! She always had this thing about making sure that everyone got their turn and no one was excluded. My sister Kathy told this story of when she was a kid and some boys and girls were in her room playing spin the bottle. My mom walked in and saw a plain-Jane type of girl just sitting there in the circle and immediately said, “Now, is everyone getting their turn? How about you, sweetheart?” Here Kathy thought they’d be in trouble for playing spin the bottle, but my mom was only concerned that “plain Jane” would be left out by the boys.

So you see why I was freaked out, but also pleased, and kind of excited. My mom was there with us that night in my dining room, watching out for all her girls. Just like always.

When she gave me her ring, she told me to change the setting, because she’d never been wild about it. So I took it to Loree Rodkin, a well-known jewelry designer in L.A., and asked for something simple. I have small hands so I didn’t want it to be crazy big. It already made my own wedding ring look like a toe ring when it I wore it on the other hand. I would joke and put my wedding ring on my toe and show my husband. “You like my toe ring?” Ha-ha!

Plus I didn’t want it to cost a fortune. So I asked for simple, but simple was not what I got! Mauricio picked it up from Loree and called me and said, “I can’t believe this. I feel like I’m carrying a Lamborghini in a box.” If you haven’t seen it, it’s quite big, antique or maybe gothic style, with swords on the side and cognac diamonds mixed in with the regular diamonds. I have it on my right hand in the cover photo. It looks like it would be clunky, but it’s
so
smooth on the inside. It’s perfect! I wear it all the time, every single day.

People have asked me, “Don’t you worry walking around with that? Aren’t you afraid someone will try to take it?”

“I dare anyone to try to get this off my finger!” I tell them. “I will take them out, believe me! This is not coming off my finger unless you take my whole arm!” Ha-ha!

Hmm. That sounds like something my mother might have said!

Of all the questions I’m asked, this one is my favorite: How do you juggle a baby and the kids and the show and everything else in your life?

The reason I like that question so much is that it means people see me as a real mom, completely involved in raising my kids. Because I am! I’ve never had a nanny. And that, my friends, is highly unusual where I live.

Being a good mother is the most important thing in the world to me. I’m a hands-on mom—like most moms outside the rarified world I live in—and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Moms everywhere are juggling and struggling to do the very best they can for their kids. I’d love to tell you how I do it.

A lot of people have said to me, “Oh, your kids—how did they turn out so nice?” I believe you get out of kids what you put into them.

I always wanted a traditional upbringing for my children, and that’s why they’re not actors. They don’t want to be actors. No, I want a family sitting down together at dinner every night. Well, almost every night. Mauricio and I get a lot of invitations, but we have a rule: we have to be home more nights than we’re out. So in a crazy-busy week that would be three nights out, tops. I believe children need their parents’ presence.

Here in Beverly Hills, a lot of women let nannies raise the children and the drivers take the kids everywhere. There’s too much of that, and it’s very sad to me. Even outside of Beverly Hills, I’ve noticed some moms make their social life a priority and leave their kids with babysitters or their older children. Children crave your attention. They soak it up like a sponge.

If there’s one overall piece of advice I could give to parents, it’s this: be there. Simply be there
with
your children and
for
your children as much as you can. You get out of your children what you put into them.

I see my children as such an incredible gift. They’re my favorite people in the world to spend time with and I don’t want to miss a moment. With my crazy schedule, I’m always scared that I will, especially with the baby. I’m so fortunate to be doing a reality show, because it allows her to be with me while I work.

These are the things I believe and try to do to raise good, happy children—and not go completely bonkers in the process!

One reason that I like to do things for myself, like my hair and nails, is that I really don’t want to leave my children for several hours. By the time I go to a salon and get my hair washed, done, and come back, four hours have gone by and I’ve just lost a huge chunk of time with my kids.

I admit that I might be a little extreme about not leaving my children. I’ve never let them go away for more than a few days for a school trip. It’s very hard for me to be apart from them; I have separation anxiety. I feel so much for women who have to go to work and don’t have a choice; they have to spend a big part of their day away from their children. They work so hard and then come home and have to do the laundry and the cooking and make a house look nice. I admire their hard work so much, and I feel they don’t get enough credit for it. I just love that about women—being able to do it all. I dare any man to try to keep up with us! Ha-ha!

I do have a housekeeper, as I’ve mentioned. And it’s wonderful to have her help. But just because there’s someone there to do things for me doesn’t mean she should be doing
everything
for me—especially when it comes to the kids.

For example, I learned the hard way that I have to pack my kids’ lunches myself. My mom always told me, “Honey, if you’re lucky enough to have a housekeeper, never let her make your kids’ lunch. You need to be in charge of what they’re being fed.” Okay, so for a long time I never let the housekeeper pack the lunches.