The “Woman Who Couldn’t Stop Therapy” Incident

Dateline: Hilton World Headquarters Branch, San Francisco.

The Scene:  A writers’ conference, the ballroom of the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins Hotel…high on Nob Hill.  The room is magic.  The guest speaker is to be a woman whose memoir (The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less) was made into a movie starring Julianne Moore and Woody Harrelson.

As writers, we’re a thoroughly insecure lot…and before meeting the guest speaker, the room is electric with admiration and envy at the same time.  The writer’s wonderful and supportive agent, Amy Rennert introduces the movie from the stage. We still haven’t seen the writing star.    

The writer is Terry Ryan.   Returning to her family home after the death of her mother, she had gone through closets and chests, as all of us must at those times. While clearing the out her mother’s things, Terry came upon the jingles her mother had written to win prizes from companies like Proctor and Gamble, and Post Cereals…prizes which literally kept the family of a housewife, a working man with a serious drinking problem, and ten children…afloat.

We watch the movie. 

Terry Ryan had served in an advisory capacity for the film, Amy Rennert explains from the stage after the movie. Amy gives a signal. The huge ballroom crowded with would be storytellers…enjoying our wine and ready to praise the movie…wait.  Wondering why the woman living out our dreams doesn’t bounce in from the wings.

Instead, we follow as Amy’s eyes drop to the floor in front of the stage. Four men lift Terry Ryan’s wheelchair up on the platform.  Two men would have been plenty.  Terry is bald and so whispy, she looks as if ready to blow away at any moment. She is in the end stage of cancer.  She knows it.  We know it.

The microphone is situated to catch her slight voice. She smiles…and shares with each of us how much finding those jingles changed her life.  We’re thinking…well, yes…you’re the lucky woman whose story was made into a movie starring Julianne Moore and Woody Harrelson. 

But we’re wrong. Terry’s excitement comes from remembering the incredible positive face her mother put on every family fear and disappointment, and there were many. Her father was frequently unemployed….and did I mention?…10 kids….

Terry is here to share her mother’s strength with a bunch of people she doesn’t know. She hopes people who see the movie realize how powerful her mother was in her life and the lives of many others.  And we do.  Oh, how we do.  The night is magic and we know how privileged we are to hear this incredible, brave woman….We know her mother is with her now, speaking through her daughter’s beautiful face, taking time to pass on her wisdom to all of us fools in our ivory tower.

Fools?  Oh, yes.  Idiots.  Idiots thinking….I’m not so happy now….but when ____happens….when I get a great agent….when I lose thirty pounds…when I fall in love…when…when…when…yes…fools, all.

Ms. Rennert asks if Terry feels up to a few questions and she agrees.  The first questioner asks, “What about the movie-making process surprised you the most?”

Terry answers, “How many people are actually on the set for each shot…inches out of camera.  There are hundreds.”  Her genuineness comes through and we send her every healing vibe we can. “But the most fun was seeing things that actually happened come back to life.”  She smiled then, and shared a few mother stories that didn’t make the cut.  We laugh with the tiny fading woman on the stage.

She tells us how privileged she feels to have had the incredible childhood she had.   

Then the “Woman Who Couldn’t Stop Therapy” waving in the second row, is acknowledged by Ms. Rennert. 

The “Woman Who” clears her throat and asks Terry Ryan:  “I was wondering….Have you ever been able to forgive your father?”

The frail lady with the bald head and the shaky voice, tilted her face as if briefly confused. “Forgive him for what?” she asked.   

The “Woman Who Couldn’t Stop Therapy” stayed true to her name. (Sometimes you have to up the ante, have to shout or repeat yourself to get another person to see things the way you do.)  “But your father punched in a wall.  He came home drunk so many times!”

Terry Ryan peered from her sunken shoulders as if looking at a creature from another planet.  “I don’t know you, Ma’am (I’m paraphrasing, it’s been a while)…But I think you’re talking about how you see my life, not the way I see my life.  I haven’t spent any of my lifetime forgiving anyone.  I didn’t need to.”

Terry Alan died 5-17-2007 at 11:11:07 PDT.