Columnist Susan Snyder: Devoted pal comforts dying LV man

Sunday, Jan. 30, 2000 | 9:58 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at snyder@vegas.com or 259-4082.

Gil Cardinal Myer's apartment showed a life stopped abruptly.

Breakfast dishes remained on the table. The bed was unmade. Laundry littered the dining room chairs.

The stereo was on -- for two months.

Myer won't be back. The 49-year-old buffet server for the Venetian has been lying in Loma Linda University Hospital since Nov. 30.

He was struck by a car in Barstow, Calif. But physicians also discovered Myer has a disorder that robs him of brain function. They say he has only a couple of months to live.

Hospital nurse Susan Parker was determined Myer would not spend those months alone. She crossed ethical lines by speaking out in a recent column to find a relative, a friend -- someone to sit with him.

Myer's brain deteriorates more each day, rendering him unable to recall much of anything. He didn't know why he was in Barstow or remember the accident.

He didn't remember his friends' names -- except for one.

"Makiko."

He said it over and over while speaking fluent Japanese. With Parker's help, Myer's Las Vegas apartment manager found "Makiko" in Japan.

Last week Makiko Emoto arrived at Myer's bedside. Speaking through an interpreter, she said she took the first flight out of Tokyo when she heard Myer was hospitalized.

Emoto left the hospital Tuesday and came to Las Vegas, where she spent two days sifting through the remnants of her friend's life.

Silk flower arrangements she made for him adorned every room. A framed photograph taken when they visited in San Francisco three years ago sat atop the mantel.

She gently lifted a hankerchief from his desk and fingered the brushes he once used to paint murals.

Each item brought a smile of remembrance and tears of sorrow.

Emoto met Myer 20 years ago when he moved to Japan to teach English. They were neighbors and became close friends.

They weren't romantically involved. Emoto married someone else.

But after Myer moved to the United States six years ago, Emoto and her husband visited often. Three albums are filled with photographs taken during those trips.

Emoto says Myer was born in Canada. His parents died when he was 5, and he lived in an orphanage until being adopted when he was 9. He never warmed up to his adoptive family, she said.

Emoto's family became his.

Myer can't remember what day it is, but he remembered Emoto when she walked into his hospital room, she said.

He called her name. He said he missed her. She showed him photos of her mother feeding a squirrel back in Japan.

"He said, 'Mama,' " Emoto recalled.

The apartment's disarray shows Myer's mind had been failing for a while, Emoto said.

She suspects he didn't tell her because her husband died of cancer in August. He wouldn't have wanted her to worry.

Emoto said leaving Myer's hospital room was hard. He didn't understand they were saying goodbye forever.

But she'll be back. Emoto says she is going to bury Myer's cremated remains in Japan, just as he always wanted. She will lay him to rest in her family's plot.

And he'll never be alone.