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Happy New Year, y'all. For lots of people, the New Year's soundtrack includes the famous song with a haunting line, should old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind. I love that. Stories are such a great way of honoring and remembering the people we've lost touch with or lost altogether. Through stories, I've been introduced to a lot of remarkable people who I never got to meet in person. People live on through the stories their loved ones tell about them. They're brought back to life, if only for a moment. I recently got to know someone remarkable when her partner, Elizabeth Gilbert took the Moth stage to tell a story Elizabeth told this just a few weeks ago at an evening we called First Light. This was our annual show for Moth members, which took place at the gorgeous St. Anne's Church in Brooklyn Heights. Here's Elizabeth Gilbert live at the Moth.

Elizabeth Gilbert (3:00)

Last summer, I was walking down the street in New York City in the East Village, and it was a glorious day and the sun was bright and I had the love of my life on my arm. And she was dying, really dying. She had advanced pancreatic and liver cancer, and the tumors had grown and they had spread. And she had recently discontinued all chemo and medical treatment because it was hopeless. And all she wanted at this point in her life was to try to find small ways to enjoy whatever was remaining to her. And what that meant on this day was that she wanted to try to mobilize, to get herself out of the house and walk to Tompkins Square park and get a soft serve ice cream cone. Now, Tompkins Square park was four blocks from where we lived, but it truly might as well have been Kilimanjaro for the amount of effort that it took her to do it on this day. And she was on her cane and she's leaning her full weight against me, what's left of her full weight, because she's gotten so thin. And I've got my arm around her and I can feel her little bones through her sweater. And my heart is breaking because this day signifies a turning point in her illness that I had known was coming and I had dreaded was coming. And now it is here. And it is the day where she has now gotten so frail and so weak that we can officially say that this once formidable person is now completely dependent on me. And the reason that's so particularly heartbreaking, it would be heartbreaking for anybody, but the reason it was so painful in this case is what you got to know about my girl is that for the 17 years that I knew Raya Elias, I never once saw that woman walk into a room. That she was not the most powerful person in that space. Never once. Didn't matter what she was. So tough, so strong, so hot. She was a Syrian born, Detroit raised, glamour, butch, lesbian, punk rock, ex heroin addict, ex felon, rock and roll music star, artist, filmmaker, hairdresser, writer, phenomenon of a human being. And in the circles that we rolled in, Rayya was legend. Not just because she was so tough and so street smart, but also because she had this enormous, capacious, generous heart. And she was ferociously protective of anybody who she cared about. If you were lucky enough to Be one of the people who Rhea loved. She would just tuck you under her arm and name you as one of her little cubbies. Like we were all the little wolf cubs and she was the mama wolf and she would just take you through the world and you were never in danger when Rhea was there. I have never experienced a feeling like it. And that's exactly why I fell in love with her and why I blew up my entire life. To be with her was precisely and expressly because of that power. But now she's powerless. And as we're inching along the sidewalk on Avenue A, I'm feeling that for the first time. And I'm feeling how the tables have turned because I've got her tucked under my arm. And now it's my job to protect her from a world that she used to dominate effortlessly. And I don't know if you've ever taken care of somebody who's sick and dying, but when somebody who you love is very fragile, one of the things that happens is the entire world starts to feel incredibly perilous. You know, every crack on the sidewalk is something that could trip her and she could hurt herself. Every kid on a skateboard, every big dog could knock her over. So it's my job to keep her safe. And I've got her bundled up and I'm navigating her down this world and it's so terrible to watch her decline. But the one consoling thought that I'm having in that moment is, thank God she has me. Like, thank God or what would we do? Like, who would protect her if I wasn't here? And at that moment, this super sketchy guy on a bicycle comes terrassing up the sidewalk super fast. He's like this gross, meth head looking, crusty, bearded, nasty guy and he's got a furious face and he's tearing so fast up the sidewalk, careening into pedestrians, and he's coming right at us and he almost plows us over. And I manage just at the last minute to grab Rhea and pull her out of the way for safety. But he clips her. He hits her on the arm with his bike handlebar as he goes by. And I'm like, oh my God, my baby. At which point Rhea turns on her heels and says, get the fuck off the fucking sidewalk, motherfucker. And the guy screeches to a halt, drops his bike, grabs his crotch and goes, suck my dick, bitch. And Ray goes, if you had a dick, you'd be driving a car, not a bicycle, like a fucking loser. And I'M like, whoa, kids, I'm from Connecticut and I need everybody to just take it down a notch. But I'm also looking at her and I'm thinking, what are you literally backing this up with? Like, she weighs 87 and a half pounds at this point. And I'm thinking, what are you going to do, Rayya, if this guy comes at you? And then I see it and he's not going to come at her because she's locked eyes with him. And she has communicated to him very clearly that she is the alpha and he is the mutt. And everybody can see it. Him most of all. He drops his eyes, grabs his bike and scuttles off. And Rhea keeps on inching down the sidewalk with her cane, gets her soft serve, finds herself a nice little sunny spot in the park, smiles up at me and says, today's a good day, babe. So, yeah, this story that I had in my head when Rhea got sick about how helpless and dependent she was going to become, that never actually happened because somehow, despite the advances of the disease, Rhea managed to remain the apex predator in every situation that she came into and every plan that I had made. Because, you know, I made plans to take care of her. Every plan I made based on my perceived idea of her helplessness. That all blew up too. And my whole planning had been based on this idea that I was powerless to stop her from dying. But by God, I was going to make sure that she had the gentlest, the safest, the most Zen, the most enlightened, the most cushioned death that a human being could possibly have. But she didn't want any of that that I was providing, as it turned out, because Ray didn't want gentle. That's not how she rolled. So she didn't want to talk to the bereavement counselor that I brought to her house. She wanted to watch football that afternoon with her nephews. And. And I made her all this beautiful organic food to keep her as healthy as we could keep her. And she didn't want it. She wanted to live on Oreos and cigarettes and did live almost exclusively on Oreos and cigarettes for a solid year past her original expiration date, as she called it. And of course, I got her signed up with hospice because I wanted to make sure that she had the best and safest quality home care. And then Raya got kicked out of hospice because she wouldn't let the nurses in when they came to check on her. So they'd come for their weekly check ins and she didn't send them away. She didn't want to deal with them. Didn't want to look at their faces. Didn't want to deal. So hospice threw her out, which causes me to beg of you and of the universe. Who the hell gets kicked out of hospice? Like, how is that a thing? But that's what happened. And I went through all this trouble to rent and create this beautiful apartment for her to spend her last months in with everything that I could imagine that she could possibly need. A doorman building and an elevator and wide hallways for the inevitable wheelchair that would be coming and an extra room for a caregiver if we needed a night nurse toward the end, everything that you could possibly imagine, this beautiful, soft, sunny space. And then two weeks or sorry. Two months before she died, Rhea decided that she didn't want to be in New York, that she wanted to move to Detroit. She wanted to go back home to be with her family and to, like, party with her friends from 30 years ago. So she moved. My fragile, terminal cancer patient moved to another city. And what did I do? I did what I'd always done with Raya. I followed. I scampered after her like the little cub that I had always been and blew up my life once again just to try to keep up with the she wolf. So even Rayya, not even Rayya, tough as she is, of course, was tough enough to withstand pancreatic cancer. And the disease continued to eat at her. And by November of last year, the doctor said it's anytime now. She's on borrowed time already, but it could be at any moment. And knowing that she was so close to the end, Rayya called in her ex wife, Gigi, who she'd been married to 10 years earlier, and asked her to come and help take care of her. And she had also already called in her ex girlfriend, Stacy, from 20 years ago. And she had me. So now what Ray has got is a hot blonde from every decade of her life waiting on her hand and foot with devotional love, which is Rhea Elias version, of course, of hospice. And that totally worked for her. The Charlie's Angels way of being taken care of. And we did it. We did it because we were crazy about her, because she was that mack Daddy, and she still was. She managed to live till Christmas. I don't know how, but she pulled it off. It was important to her. And on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, she couldn't get off the couch. And she was in and out of awareness. But she knew that we were there, and she knew that we were loving on her. And she was happy. And at midnight on Christmas night, we put her to sleep. And at 4:00 in the morning, I had to wake her up to give her her pain medication. And I couldn't rouse her. And this was the first time that had ever happened. So I just laid with her for an hour and waited for another hour and I tried again. I couldn't get any response from her. Another hour, no response. And by the time that the light of dawn was breaking through the snowstorm outside, I could hear that her breathing was ragged and her lips and her hands were turning blue. And I knew that's it. So I went and I got Stacy and Gigi and I said, it's now, you know, Come. And what happened next was so exquisite. It was so, so beautiful. It was like the three of us, these three women who had loved her so passionately for her whole life, we just knew what to do. Like it had been scripted or that we were born to it. We just came into the bedroom and Gigi put on sacred music and Stacy lit a candle. And then the three of us, as one, got on the bed and we wrapped our bodies around her body and we took turns telling her all the last things that she needed to know if she could still hear us. That we loved her, that she was incredible. What a grand and stellar life that she had lived. That we would never be the same for having loved her and been loved by her. That she had forged our hearts in the furnace of her power. That we would always love her and that we would never stop telling the world her name. And then it was like this silence descended and it was like this portal opened from some distant, uncharted part of the universe. And this river of the infinite entered into that space. And we could feel it, that it was taking her very gently from us. And that's when Rhea opened her eyes and said, what the fuck are you guys doing? And we're like, nothing. Nothing. She's like, what's going on? I'm like, definitely not a bedside death watch. Like, no, that's not. We're like, wiping sheets of tears from our eyes. She goes, babe, why are Stacy and Gigi in our bed? I'm like, they're not. They're just dropping off some mail, you know, like, kicking them out of bed. Gigi's running to turn off the music. Ray is like, why does it smell like a fire fucking candle in here stays. Like, it doesn't. We're just not. It's my shampoo. And Ray's like, You guys are weird. She sits up in bed, lights a cigarette, looks at me and goes, babe, what's today's date? I said, It's December 26, my love. She said, cool. I want to hit that 60% off sale today at Lululemon. So that's what we did. A couple hours later we're all at Lululemon. There's Rhea in the dressing room surrounded by her attendants, trying on athleisure wear for some future that she's still very much intending to have. Somebody once told me, and I wish to God that I had got it sooner, that there is no such thing as a dying person. There are living people and there are dead people. And as long as somebody is alive, as long as they have any sentience or sense about them, you have to expect and allow them to be who they have always been. Never more important than at the end of somebody's life that they get to be who they are and who they always were. And I think that goes a long way toward explaining why Rhea was so resistant, why she was so stubbornly oppositional to every story that I had in my mind about what her death might be or should be. Just wasn't having it. From the beginning of her diagnosis till the end of her life, she was like, I'm not your story, whore. Like, you don't get to script this. I'm ray of fucking Elias. My life, my death. I'm doing it my way. You don't write this one. I'm doing this one. So it was just a handful of days after Christmas when she did die. And hers was not a gentle death. I'm sure you will be shocked to hear. She went down fighting. And it was rough. And even there at the end, I still had stories in my head about what I wanted it to be and how I wanted it to go. And I had this very airy, dreamy, romantic idea about what Rhea's last words would be to me. That she would gaze up at me from a soft pillow and say, I love you or thank you for everything you did for me. You're getting the idea, Rhea. Elias last words to me were no, baby, no. As I was trying to walk her from the bathroom to what would be her deathbed. No, baby, no. It was the last steps that she was ever going to take in her remarkable life. No, baby, no. Her legs didn't even work anymore. No, baby, no. I got this. And what I got, but I only got it at the very end, was that Rhea didn't want my help. She didn't want my pity. She didn't want my planning. She certainly didn't want my story. The only thing that Rhea wanted from me was that thing which I had always so effortlessly and naturally given her, which was my devotion and my awe. She just wanted me there in the room, in love with her and bearing witness as she took that last ride. She just wanted me standing back in amazement and horror, but mostly amazement, watching as she went down, as she came out of this earth, not gently, but like a ship going down in a storm at sea, like the force of nature that she was. And in the end, the only thing that I could do for her in those last harrowing hours was nothing. Was nothing except to surrender to my powerlessness and to have to let her go and to have to watch her go. And she went down swinging and battling to the last awful breath. And it was brutal and it was beautiful and she was brave and I howled like a wolf when she was gone. And I will never stop telling the world her name. Thank you ladies and gentlemen, Elizabeth Gilbert.