Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Jul 1929)

90 Six Montks to Live! ''I thought first, of course, of my family. I wished that I had managed things a little more wisely, so I could have left them in better circumstances. I was a little sorry for certain extravagances. "I was sorry for the grief I should cause them — and I got a little chuckle from the thought of the people who would not really be sorry, but who would be put to the inconvenience of acting as if they were. "I wasn't afraid. I was sorry my life was to be cut off so soon. I had loved every moment of it, and it seemed too bad to stop just when things were so interesting— like stopping in the middle of a good book. "I wondered what to do with the portion of time which remained to me. Should I try to crowd it with experience? Should I try to cram the emotions of a normal lifetime into that short space? If any one had asked me — before — that is probably what I should have thought I would do. But somehow, face to face with the actuality, I didn't want to. "There was religion, of course. But I didn't want to be any more religious than I had always been. It is fear that makes people turn to religion when death faces them. I wasn't afraid. "I decided that I would simply carry on just as I had. I would get things in order as best I could. I would work as long as possible. If I had to go out. I would go out as just Bebe. "There were things I had wanted to do in that vague future that always stretches so far ahead of us. Especially there were books I had thought I would read — some time. I rushed down and bought dozens of them. "It is a strange feeling, to be deprived of your future. My career ! Just at its beginning and filled with promise. Strange that it should stop after all my work and planning. My house which I had never had time to enjoy, trips that I had planned, a thousand things to which I had always looked forward— all erased, counted out." Bebe's escape from death creased her devotion to mother and grandmother, Eva Griffin. Following her program of carrying on as usual, and urged by her company, she entered a milk sanitarium to rest, and see if she could put on some weight so she might continue in pictures. "I lay there on my back," she recalls. "I could not sleep for days at a time. Every half hour a bell rang, and they brought me a glass of milk. Each time that bell sounded it was like a knell. 'Thirty more minutes of my time has passed,' I would think, 'and I am lying here not doing anything!' "I read my books, though, avidly and hurriedly. There were so many of them. "The biggest feeling I had about the whole thing was that death was so inconvenient! "The details of living became inexpressibly dear. The sun, the wind in the trees, small things in the hodgepodge of life — eating — drinking — little comforts. I loved every bit of it. Never, since that time, have I passed by the small pleasures, unthinkingly. I know how important it is to be happy to-day! "I used to look at people who came to see me and think, 'They look strong, yet they may die before I do. They may be killed on the way home from here.' It became a sort of race in my mind — looking at people, and wondering which of us would die first. "And always that bell would ring. Thirty minutes gone ! "I stayed in the sanitarium for two months and gained some weight — enough so that they thought I could work again. Then came my next struggle. "They cast me in a Zane Grey picture, with two months' location work in Arizona ! " 'This,' I thought, 'is the end. It will hasten it, and my time will be less than the doctors have allowed me.' Location trips, you know, are always strenuous and fatiguing. The food is likely to be bad, and living conditions are hard. And to spend two whole months of my precious time out there, cut off from my friends, away from home — could I do it? "I had told myself that I would carry on as usual. To tell any one now, and to cringe from this thing, would be too big a defeat. I went. "I had a strange set-apart feeling. I was different from other people. I had lost something which they had. It was my future. Funny how dear one's future is. I went through the same motions they did. I worked and slept and ate and rode and ghed. But I was different. Four more months. Then three months. I began to count it in weeks and days and hours. I would be gone, and all these people would still be here. "I didn't pity myself, or -i \ grieve. I just felt strange. Sometimes I was tempted to tell them, just to see the / Continued on pase 107 m her Mrs.