Whatever

Whatever will be, will be.
That was the musical advice given to me by Doris Day. If you were to believe her, that was what her mother said to her. In Spanish. Which is as ethnically confusing as can be imagined, but no matter. All advice is to be taken with a grain of salt.
I grew up in a world where Doris Day was more a concept than a person. She of the animal rights before there were such things and the chaste and pure life while all around her seemed to be anxious to make her fall.
Whatever will be, will be.
Cary Grant, James Garner, and Rock Hudson all took their swings. And still all that sunny disposition kept smiling through. The television show she found herself in during the late sixties and early seventies was the lead in on CBS for The Carol Burnett Show. While I watched, Doris was emerging from bankruptcy. With a smile and aplomb.
Whatever will be, will be.
It wasn't until I was in college and watched Alfred Hitchcock's remake of his own The Man Who Knew Too Much that I heard Doris sing her signature song as a plot device. Her voice saved her young son, the one she had with Jimmy Stewart on screen.
Whatever will be, will be.

In 1985, she asked her former co-star, Rock Hudson, to appear on a cable TV show about dogs. It was one of the first public appearances of Hudson after a rumored diagnosis of AIDS. That episode aired just a few days after Rock's death. Doris felt her relationship was far more important than any perceived stigma created by the disease.

Whatever will be, will be.

She lived to be a ripe old ninety-seven years old. She stomped on the Terra and made the world safe and happy for dogs and people of all shapes and sizes.

Aloha, Doris. Whatever will be, will be.