Our final meeting with Richard Pryor took place on Monday, September 9, 2002, the day after our grandmother, Edna Haltiwanger Derrick, died at age ninety-three.
Jennifer Lee Pryor threw open the door before we even rang the bell. With a cigarette poised aloft in one hand, she greeted us each with hugs. She was asking us a question. Maybe something about if we had any trouble finding the place, but our attention was fixed on the slumped figure with his back to us parked in a wheelchair in the center of the room.
His caregiver, a motherly Hispanic woman with an easy smile, stood by at her post with a plastic tub of supplies: soft washcloths and medical-looking devices of uncertain purpose. Jennifer placed her hand on Richard’s shoulder, her voice going up half an octave and a few decibels whenever she spoke to him. “These are the guys who are writing about you,” she reminded him. The project we had come to discuss that day was a screenplay based on his life.
His hands were flopping in his lap. The ravages of multiple sclerosis. He summoned up the effort to suck back some drool and said a simple hello.
We told Richard about our grandmother, about how she had taught her Ladies’ Bible Class at Thrift United Methodist Church in Paw Creek, North Carolina, just the previous Sunday, as she had done most every week for the past half century or so. He, having no choice, listened with rapt attention.
We got a laugh from Richard when Joe—we forget how the subject came up—quoted what our mother had said to him as he was approaching his fortieth birthday. “You know that midlife crisis you’re supposed to have?” she had said to him. “Well, I have some advice for you—skip it.”
Richard Pryor laughed. A sharp, guttural bark but clearly a laugh.
“Midlife crises . . .” Jennifer repeated. “We know all about those, don’t we, Richard?” and she gave his head a playful rub. When she took her hand away, Richard’s caregiver, ever on duty to wipe away his drool, leaned down and pressed her face in his thinned gray hair and bestowed upon the crown of his head a kiss.
He was tired. His grunted replies were growing softer, the spark in his eyes dimming. We said our good-byes with a squeezing of hands amid talk of big plans and assurances of good things ahead. Neither of us saw him again save once, in a vision, through a glass darkly, on his way out.