Divorce & Remarriage: Talking with Elizabeth

• Posted on 26th January 2016
• in celebrity books, divorce & remarriage, Entertainment, entertainment books, Hollywood books, Hollywood memoirs, Love Story
• by Ben

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As you know if you’ve read my

Divorce & Remarriage

book, Waiting for Elizabeth, Ms Hepburn and I have been together – with a brief interruption that felt like a lifetime – for well over forty eight years.

By the way, the book’s title was inspired by a conversation I had with my friend Don about actually waiting for Elizabeth.

Excerpt from Waiting for Elizabeth “Openers”:

One evening in 2003 or 2004 Elizabeth (often abbreviated as EH) was meeting me at a subway stop downtown to go see a show. I got there five or ten minutes before the appointed time and stood on the sidewalk having a smoke and watching the people. EH arrived a few minutes later and while I was waiting I got to thinking about the act of waiting for her. We’d been together by then for thirty-six or seven years and, while punctual to a fault when it came to gigs, in some situations she could be a tad (to use one of her contextually-defined words) “wifty” about time. It seemed always to take her longer than anticipated to complete her final preparations when we were going somewhere together so I spent a fair amount of time at our front door inquiring, “Should I push the elevator button?” Not only that but once we got where we were going and it was time to leave I dubbed her the “Goodbye Girl” because while I’d go to the door, wave my hand and say, “Goodnight everybody!”, she would have a short conversation with almost everyone in the place as though she were going to Patagonia the next day.

Anyhow in my mind I began to guesstimate how many hours a week I spent waiting for my beloved. It’s been nine or ten years since I did this little exercise and it was done in my not-very-mathematical head so don’t expect a lot of accuracy but it was an amazing amount of time over nearly forty years. Figure (wild guess encompassing over three decades) two hours an average week which is 104 hours a year times 37 years is almost 23 weeks!  And you know what? It was worth it.

So after I shared this with Don he said, “make a good title for your third book.” And so it was.

Anyhow this piece is not about the waiting, it’s about the talking.

I’ve often heard it said that people who’ve been married for a long time don’t talk to one another much. I’ve seen senior couples in restaurants eating silently, not speaking a word for half an hour or more. This may be common but it sure doesn’t apply to us.

There is no one on the planet I’d rather talk with than Elizabeth. She has been my best friend since a week or so after I met her and my wise counsellor and Spiritual teacher for over forty years. I have talked with her more than I have with any other human. And I’m a better man for it.

Over the years we have developed some verbal shorthand, a lot of which is from musicals; lyrics and dialogue. For example when one of us asks “What do you want?” before giving the real answer the other often replies, “Indescribable bliss.” (Company) There are many of these which I’ll not enumerate here but a recently developed favorite is “Morty Dubin”. During my producer/assistant director period Morty was my favorite Executive Producer and he liked short conversations. He’d often say “You’ve made the sale. Close your briefcase and get out of my office.” Whenever either of us begins a long, unnecessary explanation or description the other will often say, “Morty Dubin”, and the other will laugh and stop talking.

There was a line I heard recently on a TV show which says all that’s necessary to describe my feelings toward my twice wife: “I love you not only for who you are but for who I am with you.”

Click here to get Waiting for Elizabeth

Tags: Elizabeth Hepburn