Dying of cancer, Warren Zevon visited David Letterman one last time.
On humor, grace, and enjoying every sandwich
“Our first guest tonight is a brilliant songwriter and musician who's been a friend of ours for 20 years and believe me, it's a thrill to have him here with us. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Warren Zevon.”
With that introduction, David Letterman began his late-night show that aired on Oct. 30, 2002. It would be Warren Zevon’s final appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman.
As Letterman introduces him, Zevon walks on stage, wearing a gray pinstripe suit and a white shirt, open at the collar with no tie revealing a small metal cross necklace. He sits down, and Letterman begins:
“I guess a couple of months ago we all learned that your life has changed radically, hasn't it?”
“You mean you heard about the flu?” Zevon says with a chuckle.
“Yeah, kind of about the flu.”
“Yeah, yeah. Well, it’s true.”
“How did you learn about it and what is it and how have things been since?
“What was the order of those questions again?”
“Entirely up to you, any way you want to field them.”
“How did I learn about it? Well, first of all, let me say that I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years.”
Zevon goes on to describe how he first brought up his shortness of breath to his dentist, who said it might be congestive heart failure and told him to seek additional medical attention immediately.
The interview continues.
Letterman says, “And it turned out not to be congestive heart failure.”
“Noooooooo. No.”
“And what was the diagnosis?”
“It's a, it’s a—lung cancer that's spread.”
“That's tough.”
“Well, it means you better get your dry cleaning done on special.”
They go back and forth, with the tone oscillating quickly between gravely serious and humorous. Zevon shares that he’s continuing to work on his music, and Letterman asks:
“And how is that work now under this circumstance, living with this diagnosis? How is the work now compared to when you assumed you were healthy?”
“I'm working harder, and you know, you put more value on every minute you do live. I mean, I always thought I kind of did that. I really always enjoyed myself. But it's more valuable now. You're reminded to enjoy every sandwich and every minute of it, playing with the guys and being with the kids and everything.”
Enjoy every sandwich.
In a way, Zevon’s reflections on mortality are nothing new. They’re the stuff of countless stories and myths and parables across the millennia.
Yet for some reason, we humans are a forgetful lot.
We fail, time and time again, to remember the limits of our time on this planet. And so maybe these continual reminders are always worthwhile.
One thing that seems to be true is that people listen a bit more to other people who are dying. What they say and do seems to take on more weight, more importance given that they know and we know that their days among the living are numbered.
And yet the inconvenient truth is that we’re all dying, we’re all living numbered days. The human mortality rate is—and always has been—100 percent. Some of us just have a better idea than others regarding how many days we have left.
So the idea of “enjoying every sandwich” is one that captures the essence of what it means to be present, to experience joy in the little moments of life. It’s a reminder to live with enhanced clarity about what really matters.
The trick, though, is to do all of this well before mortality hits us in the face. And that’s hard. Hence the need for continual reminders, even if one of those reminders comes from a musician who otherwise lived a broken, troubled life.
Humor and Grace
As I’ve written elsewhere, humor is an important part of how we communicate and make sense of life both individually and with each other. It’s something that comes out right away in Zevon’s interview, yet there’s something more that’s worth highlighting.
It’s that he doesn’t seem angry—at all.
That could be due to the fact that he was a guest on a popular television show that would be viewed by millions of people, of course. Such a reality might make one think hard about how to present oneself.
Yet Zevon’s music isn’t shy or self-conscious or overly concerned with fitting into a certain mold. His lyrics over the years often painted weird pictures: a headless mercenary with a machine gun, a werewolf (with perfect hair) drinking a piña colada, an “excitable boy” who turns out to be a violent criminal. His personal life, moreover, was for many decades a train wreck. He doesn’t seem to be one who was prone to put on airs.
Additionally, the type of cancer Zevon had was mesothelioma. That’s a cancer that’s caused in about 80 percent of cases by exposure to asbestos. There’s something extra unfair about that.
So it wouldn’t be altogether unreasonable or unexpected for him to express at least some anger publicly.
But he didn’t. Instead, he said,
“I think that I chose a certain path and lived like Jim Morrison [lead singer of the Doors] and then lived 30 more years.”
Keep Me in Your Heart
Not long after learning of his cancer diagnosis, Warren Zevon wrote and recorded one final album, The Wind. The final song is titled, “Keep Me in Your Heart.” It begins:
Shadows are fallin' and I'm runnin' out of breath
Keep me in your heart for a while
If I leave you it doesn't mean I love you any less
Keep me in your heart for a while
The Wind released in August 2003. Two weeks later on Sept. 7, Zevon died at the age of 56.
It was about ten months after his final appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, a few minutes when he provided us with a small example of facing mortality upright—and a clever reminder to enjoy every moment.
Beautifully written. Thank you.