What will be next for you, Naomi?
The question I asked myself devastated me. One pesky question followed another. What will you do with yourself tomorrow? What will your days hold next month? What about the rest of your life? Is your time of striving for a career goal completely over? As a harmony singer, becoming a solo act isn’t what I want to pursue.
The era of performing before thousands of people has come to a close. There are no more tours set up for the future. There will be no more music publishers knocking on your door for the next song you’ve written, no fabulous gowns to design, no awards shows to attend, no spotlight shining on the complete joy you feel while onstage. Even your offstage life will never be the same. Your daughters are adults with careers of their own. They don’t need you. The grandchildren have grown up and have lives of their own. They don’t need you. Your husband is still traveling with his vocal group and is often away. You are on your own now. What in the world are you going to do? Do you have anything to do tomorrow? I tried to shake the questions from my head. I tried to laugh them off as a mock restaurant hostess: “Ms. Judd, pity party of one. Please follow me to your table by the door of doom.”
What should have been a welcome home celebration from a successful tour in 2011 felt more like a slow forced march into a bleak future. I was becoming afraid it was the beginning of a descent into darkness I had heard about from other troubled souls who had shared their plight with me.
I had friends who had spoken of being shocked and overwhelmed by similar feelings, women who had dedicated their lives to raising children who were now grown and had moved away. I’ve known career women who had been laid off or forced to retire before they were ready, or who had husbands whose companies had downsized rapidly. Friends and fans had often told me stories of feeling happy-go-lucky one week and completely unsure and even devastated the next. A friend of mine who works in my town told me that she watched her husband get up every morning and head out the door for his job, as usual. One afternoon, he was spotted alone, reading on a park bench when he should have been at work. This forced him to confess that he had been fired weeks before and was too humiliated to tell his family.
“When you put a lifetime of effort into a career or avocation, what do you do when that focus is gone?” fans and friends would ask me. I could see the fear and uncertainty in their eyes. I listened with sympathy, but I couldn’t empathize. I always had the next goal ready to go. The phone continued to ring with more opportunities, so I never slowed down.
I have talked to many women who lost their husbands through death, divorce, or betrayal and were feeling abandoned and alone after giving their best years to a relationship that was now gone. They would tell me that they had fallen into a depression or suffered bouts of anxiety about their futures, confiding that they had no idea who they were now, since they had identified themselves for so many years as a wife, mother, or employee. I’d never seen that as possible in my own future, even though I witnessed as it happened to Mother when Daddy left us.
When my tour bus arrived two days later, wending its way onto our property and to my front door, my only wish was to get on it and be driven away, back to the life I loved and away from the gathering clouds of my darkening mood. Even though the tour had been filled with challenges, every day brought a new city, a different crowd, maybe some unpredictable dilemma or a delightful surprise or two. As long as it was interesting, I felt fully alive and engaged. After all, as a former ICU nurse and with all I’ve been through, I’m at my best in emergencies.
I couldn’t re-create these vibrant feelings anymore since returning home. I tried to take a “back to nature” walk in the valley, something that always refreshed my outlook on life in the past. However, this time the trees seemed looming and threatening.
I attempted to cook a big family meal, which has always brought me pleasure, a connection to my family, evoking a feeling of warmth in the past. This time, though, I had no desire for food. Nothing appealed to me and I began to lose weight. I felt drained of all desires to do anything at all. My mind was repeatedly nudging me, taunting me like a bully: “What’s the point, Naomi? Is the rest of your life going to be another walk in the woods, another homemade meal that is eaten and forgotten in twenty minutes? Is that all your future will be?”
The bus driver took my hand to help me climb the steps into the coach. I gave him a hug and smiled, resisting my impulse to say, “Start the engine. We’re out of here. I’m not ready to stop. I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts.” However, “my” bus hadn’t arrived to take me somewhere new; it was there to leave me behind. It was time for me to clean out my personal belongings. There would be another touring country singer who would soon be leasing this bus and crisscrossing the country. It was no longer my traveling home.
I made my way to the back of the bus, to my cozy bedroom where I had slept soundly for eleven months. The hum of the massive tires on the highway beneath me and the soft pull of forward motion would lull me to sleep quickly. If I didn’t feel especially tired following a concert and a meet-and-greet, after the OWN camera people had called it quits for the day I would make a bag of microwave popcorn and sit in the big captain’s chair next to the bus driver and we’d talk and look out at the starry night, like pilgrims on a journey into uncharted territory. There is something so simply relaxing about knowing that your only goal for the next ten or twelve hours is to let the driver take you to the next city on the tour.
Since the mid-1980s, when Wynonna and I went on our first national tour, I have always been most “at home” on a tour bus. I’m happy having a zip code–free life. We would arrive in a city, park in back of the venue near the stage door, do a sound check, have dinner with the crew, do a two-hour show, meet with our fans for hours after the performance, then get on our bus and watch a movie, tell funny stories, share a homemade cake or treats from a fan, and eat bag after bag of microwave popcorn.
When we first started out, it was a more intimate setting, with the band in bunks near the front of the bus and Wynonna and me with small bedrooms in the back. It was like having a close-knit family without the complications of actually being family. We would go to bed at two in the morning in the Black Hills of South Dakota and wake up nine hours later at the Red Rocks amphitheater in Colorado.
After so many years of struggling along as a single mother, trying to piece together a way to support my children while living in a series of dilapidated apartment buildings, broken-down cabins, roach-infested hotel rooms, and drafty rented houses, I welcomed the chance to live in our clean, comfortable little house on wheels. Even though I now own a lovely home, the tour bus life still holds its charm.
For the Encore tour, Wy and I each had our own bus, and the band had a bus, too, which seemed like quite a luxury compared to our past. We would travel caravan-style, along with six more buses carrying the crew, band, instruments, and stage set, winding our way across the United States. I was completely content, and proud of our visible success.
There are certain items I take with me on every road trip or tour to make myself feel at home. I always look forward to arranging them around me in any new situation. Now it was time to pack them up.
I tugged my favorite quilt from the top of the bed, folding it into a box along with my most comfortable flannel pj’s with the monkey faces design that Wynonna had given me. On my bedside stand were the framed photos I always keep nearby, both of family. Next to that was my little box with my trusty earplugs and eyedrops, alongside a bottle of eucalyptus oil that I always keep nearby for aromatherapy. I had left some of my favorite books on the bus, a few of the gifts the fans had given me, and my cosmetics bag, all of which I put in the box. On the shelf near the door was where I had placed a beautiful natural violet and blue crystal geode stone, about the size of a grapefruit, an amethyst, given to me by a Native American friend, who always regales me with fascinating stories of natural healings. Amethyst stones have been treasured for centuries and are believed to have a calming and positive effect. I use it as a meditative stone for emotional balance and peaceful thoughts. I told him that I would take it on the tour as my “altar.” Whenever I needed to “alter” my frame of mind to be more positive, I would gaze at that geode.
I opened the closet door to my gorgeous stage costumes. A reporter once asked me why I didn’t dress more casual country and wear jeans and cowgirl boots for the shows. I gave her a double answer. First, I’ve never owned cowgirl boots or a pair of blue jeans; they’re not my style. Second, I’ve always wanted the audience to have a “wow” experience both musically and visually. I knew that it was expensive for many of them to buy tickets, pay for babysitters, drive into the city, and park, all to see our show. I knew that our concert was a two-hour vacation they could take away from their own worries and troubles. If I could fit more sparkle and bling, another rhinestone or dyed feather on my gowns, it would certainly be there. It made me feel glamorous and I passed that good feeling of self-confidence on to the audience.
As I took the dresses off the hangers, I wondered if I should just put them in a bag and give them to someone who could use them. Or, perhaps the fans would like to have them. After all, I would never have the opportunity to wear them again. The concerts were behind me now. Still, it seemed inconceivable that I would never tour by bus again. The magical journey had ended. Someone had turned the spotlight out.
Now, as the empty tour bus turned to lumber back down our long driveway toward the main road, I stood alone, watching it go, as the bitterly cold wind lashed my hair across my face and rattled the cardboard box in my arms. I couldn’t even try to hold back the tears. I wasn’t sure I could make it back into the house. I felt as though the joy that the world had given me so much of through performing for the past year had evaporated before my eyes, leaving me a deflated woman without any sense of purpose. It’s said that when you leave Shangri-la, you turn old and gray. I had lost my identity.
When I finally made my way back inside, I crumbled onto the kitchen couch in the same way marathon runners sometimes collapse after the finish line. I was emotionally exhausted. I don’t know how long I sat there, except I remember it going from daylight outside to a pitch-black, moonless night. I didn’t turn on a light, but I did turn on the TV. I found an old episode of Law & Order. I scrolled through the cable guide and saw there was a nonstop string of Law & Order reruns all evening. Without even getting up for a drink of water, I put my feet up on the box I had packed on the bus and watched one episode after another until Larry got home from his rehearsal. He wanted to know why I was sitting in complete darkness. I would have answered him, but I had no explanation. So I muttered, “Shhh. Chief Dodd is telling Benson to expect changes. It doesn’t look good.”
Larry put on the kitchen lights so he could see my face. He looked at me in silence for a minute. It seemed as if the plot I had described might be playing out in my real life. Expect changes, Naomi Judd. And it doesn’t look good.
A few days later, I still didn’t have the energy or ambition to unpack. My costumes lay bunched up across the upstairs railing, my stage shoes were scattered on the floor, and I had kicked the cardboard box to the side of the kitchen couch. This was not like me at all. Larry called our longtime friend and part-time house manager, Angie, to come over and help to straighten up our disorganized home. She is a true southern gal. I could see the shock on her face when she saw me again. Angie took one look at me and proclaimed, “You are in a bad way, girlfriend.” I supervised what needed to happen from the couch, apologizing between my tears that I couldn’t help her. Angie gently hugged me and set a box of tissues nearby.
Larry encouraged me to have some social interaction, to meet up with a friend or two in our village at a café, hoping I would abandon my protective nest on the couch, but I had no interest in doing anything. I didn’t have enough energy to be out in public and I certainly didn’t want anyone to know I was sinking deeper day by day into despair.
From spending years on the road, the women I considered my friends were my fellow performers. I felt very fortunate to have been on the country music scene with a generation of women artists who were kind, funny, and generous enough to extend a hand of friendship to newcomers. The one-of-a-kind Dolly Parton became my friend. I share a bond with Reba McIntyre, and we have spent time at each other’s homes. Martina McBride and I developed a friendship and she also has visited me. In turn, I was thrilled to see the quality of upcoming talent like Carrie Underwood, who fell in love with the property where I live in Tennessee. I sold a few of my acres to her so she could build her own family home and become my neighbor.
Undoubtedly, my best friend in the country music world was Tammy Wynette. She and I shared a common small-town history: divorce, moving to Nashville with children in tow and not a penny to our names, having a golden opportunity to audition for a record producer in person, and then having preposterous dreams become a fabulous reality. We recognized our bond the day we met. After that, we would talk a few times a week on the phone at night, before she would go to bed at nine thirty. She had chronic pain from many health issues and more than twenty-six different surgeries and was addicted to strong painkillers, even though she had bravely sought treatment for the addiction at the Betty Ford Center.
I believe Tammy was a victim of the trust she placed in her last husband, George Richey, to take care of her and make sure her medications and dosages were correct. It seems her faith in her twenty-year marriage was misplaced and it cost Tammy her life.
On a chilly spring night, Richey called our house at 1 a.m. He told me that Tammy was in the ICU at Baptist Hospital in Nashville and was “really bad off.” She was asking to see me. Still in my pj’s, I broke the speed limit getting to the hospital that night. She could barely speak, but I lowered the bed rail and crawled in to lie beside her and hold her hand. Some days later, after returning home, she died on her own couch from an overdose of painkillers.
You can read for yourselves the public opinions of Tammy’s children and their suspicions about George Richey’s role in their mother’s death. Even though the lawsuit against him was eventually dropped, I stand by Tammy’s three girls. They knew their mother was in trouble but felt helpless because she was vulnerable to the will of her husband, who was infatuated with and then married Tammy’s “personal secretary,” a woman who had tried to befriend Wynonna and me, appearing by our tour bus after shows. I never liked her and always felt a deep suspicion about her motives.
Legendary Tammy Wynette left us at age fifty-five, but I feel, in my heart, she would be here still if she had been under someone else’s care. I often think of Tammy and wonder, if she had had more close friends watching out for her, whether her story would have ended so tragically. One of the most prophetic things Tammy said about her own life’s tribulations was “The sad part about happy endings is there’s nothing to write about.”
I still longed for my own happy ending. I saw the wisdom in Larry’s suggestion about social interaction. I agreed it would boost my chances to return to a happier life if I established a circle of women friends. My village is full of interesting and lively women and I decided it was time to make an effort to form friendships with some of them. I invited a number of likable women I had met in recent years to come over for an evening get-together. Two women are accomplished oil painters who sell very well; another runs the village newspaper. I invited a professional photographer and a backup singer, along with an interior decorator and a store owner. The small group also included women who owned a yoga studio and a landscaping business, and two wise women who have mastered life’s vicissitudes. I didn’t explain much about the gathering in the invitation, except I that I hoped to establish a group bond, like the one in the movie The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. I asked all of them to wear clothing that flowed and I dressed up in a Mother Nature costume with flowers and small branches and leaves in my hair.
We gathered in the “great room” of my house, where I had a roaring fire in the massive stone fireplace and finger food snacks. Besides asking them to dress a certain way, the only other thing I requested was for each woman to bring a picture of herself at age ten. We sat in a circle and I asked each of them to share with the rest of the group what their hopes and dreams were at age ten and what they felt about those dreams today. There were quite a few laughs and even some tears as the women recalled their ambitions and their disappointments.