Davey and I were featured in a two-page spread in The Calgary Herald and I spoke to a reporter at the funeral, telling her that I thought Vince felt badly because he was somewhat of a father figure to Owen and my dad was a father figure to Vince. When Bret read this he came positively unglued. He called me on the phone. "What's going on with you? What is the deal between you and Vince?"
I was puzzled. “What do you mean what's the deal between me and Vince?"
"Well, are you working for him, do you have a job?" he demanded.
I said, “Why? What are you talking about?"
"What's Davey doing right now?" he wanted to know.
I replied that Davey was vomiting over our deck railing. He had just had a CAT scan and the dye shot was making him sick. “Why are you screaming, Bret?"
Then he ranted about my quote in the newspaper. He said I was blowing this deal for Martha. “It's a $500-five hundred million dollar lawsuit that we are trying to file against WWF for negligence! Vince McMahon is a murderer."
I said, “Bret, all I said was that Vince McMahon thinks of Dad as a father figure and thought of Owen as one of his own sons."
This seemed to infuriate him more. "What was I then? What was I at Survivor Series?"
“Well I don't know, Bret," I shrugged. It seemed so ridiculous talking about what happened to him at Survivor Series compared to Owen's death. How did that relate to the quote I made about Vince at Owen's funeral? I don't know, maybe he needed somewhere to vent, but he just exploded.
“Listen, you bitch, if I see you, I'll kill you. If I see you walking across the street, I'll run you down with my car! I'm going to tear you and Davey to shreds, if I ever see you at Mom's house. If I ever see you two..." I kept holding the phone away from my ear, but his screaming could easily be heard from several feet away. Both Davey and Ellie were in the kitchen listening.
Bret has a newspaper column in The Calgary Sun and he used it to threaten us. "I am going to put in my column how Davey was in rehab for seven weeks, and how you tried to kill yourself. You need to see a shrink, you bitch. You’re nuts! Vince McMahon murdered my brother."
“He was my brother too, Bret," I interjected.
"Obviously he wasn't."
I didn't want to let Bret know that he was getting to me, hurting me, so I remained calm.
“Bret, Mom and Dad do not want to get into a lawsuit with Vince McMahon right now. It was an accident. Owen didn't do anything that he didn't want to do. And if anybody thought that it would have ended up the way it did, if we all had a gift to foresee the future, then Vince McMahon would never have allowed it. But Owen was capable of making his own decisions. He got strapped into the harness and got hoisted up above the ring on his own accord. He had done it before."
"He couldn't say no. He would have been fired. He would have lost his job," Bret yelled.
“No," I replied, “he wouldn't have, Bret."
He started reaming me out again so I put the phone next to the radio, just to aggravate him.
He called back about half an hour later. Ellie was still at the house with me. This time she got on the phone. Bret's started all over again. He said, “I just got off the phone with Mom and she told me to do whatever I want. So I'm going to make sure Mom and Dad file a lawsuit against Vince and the WWF."
Ellie sighed, “Vince didn't push Owen off a ladder, Bret, so why don't you just calm down?"
I got on the extension phone just as Bret started laying into Ellie. “You know what, Ellie? Owen thought you were a loser."
Ellie started to cry.
I tried to defend her, “Why are you saying this, Bret?"
“You shut up. Owen never even liked you anyway."
I said, “I don't think that's true, Bret. I had a relationship with Owen you would never understand."
“Really?" he sneered. “Martha told me Owen had no use for you. He didn't even like you."
Ellie interrupted. “Stop it, Bret! Diana and Owen were… I think that Owen's death out of everyone in the family will affect her and Ross and Bruce more than anyone."
“Well Martha didn't know Owen the way I did!" I cried.
Now that he could hear how upset I was, he sounded more self-assured, “If Owen liked you, Martha would have thanked you in her speech at the funeral. Who did she thank?" His voice started to escalate. “Who did she thank? Who did she thank?" He was yelling again. “She thanked me, and Alison and Ross. She didn't mention you at all. You were nothing to Owen!"
It was true. Martha had left me out of her thank-yous and it had hurt. I gulped, “Well, Bret, I have my own memories of Owen and a lot of my memories don't involve Martha, so whatever Martha and Owen have is their deal and I’ll treasure what I had with him."
Just before the funeral, Davey and I did an interview for Good Morning America. I was asked if Owen's death was staged just for ratings. “Absolutely not. Owen's match wasn't even the main event. No one knew he was coming down on a harness. How are they going to get ratings when it wasn't even publicized?" It was an absurd question.
This set Bret off again. He called a family meeting in our kitchen and gave us all our agenda. At first he was patronizing.
“Maybe Diana doesn't understand what's really going on. This wasn't an accident. Deep down, Vince always wanted to destroy the family. We have to band together to help Martha, Oje and Athena. We must support her in whatever she chooses to do. Dad, Diana and Davey are forbidden to speak in public about this accident any longer. You are going to blow this whole thing for Martha. You’ve got to think of her kids. This is what Owen would want."
“I never said anything wrong. Of course it was an accident," I defended myself. “And I don't think this is what Owen would want."
It wasn't an accident," he roared. “Can't you get that through your thick skull? You are so fucking stupid. Why are you trying to kiss McMahon’s ass?"
My dad interrupted, “That's enough, Bret. This thing is tragedy enough. It was just a tragic accident. I wish they had tested it before they put Owen in it. I am capable of doing my own gaddamn talking. I don’t want Bret, Diana, Ellie, your mother or Alison talking for me. Your poor mother can’t take much more."
My dad leaned over, picked a piece of buttered bread off the counter and tore pieces from it to feed to Bear, his German Shepherd cross. “Owen was a hell of a wrestler.”
Agitated, Bret left the room.
But what Bret had said started to eat at me. I decided to talk to Martha, to try to get her to understand that Davey would continue to work for the WWF – not because we didn't support her – but because we had to make a living. I thought Bret's threats of a lawsuit were just hot air. I felt sure she would want to wait to see what Vince was going to offer her first.
I drove to her and Owen's house later that night. Her Mom wouldn't let me in. She opened the door about half an inch and peeked her nose out. “Martha can't see you right now. Martha's not here."
I said, “Oh, I just wanted to know if she needed any help with anything. I just wanted to see how she is doing."
"I’ve got to go. Oje and Athena are in the bathtub. Martha is not here and she doesn't need anything from you." She closed the door.
I turned around and headed for my car just as Virginia's new husband George, the hockey coach, pulled up in Owen's teal metallic green Lumina van. I knew Owen couldn't stand him because of the affair he’d had with Virginia behind her husband's back, so I hated to see him driving Owen's new vehicle. And I felt even worse when I saw that Oje was with him. I knew right then and there that Martha was going to cut Owen's kids out of our lives.
I found out Bret spent the night after Owen died at Martha's house, consoling her. I know it was purely platonic, but the last words that she heard before she went to sleep and the first words she heard in the morning were that she had to sue Vince McMahon. She had to close him down, finish him off. She couldn't just let it go. Basically, as Martha put it at the funeral, "I have yet to have my day of reckoning."
Vince didn't even have a chance to offer a settlement to Martha.
That Bret Hart real heart warming good guy eh?