The two women had known each other for 17 years, since Gilbert was recommended to Elias for a hair makeover.

I couldn't let it happen so everything, the whole life I had created, had to change accordingly.' 'I saw a vision of her in the last moments of life,' she tells me, 'I imagined her dying without knowing how much I loved her.

When Elias's cancer was diagnosed, Gilbert left her husband of nine years, Jose Nunes, whom she met during the writing of Eat, Pray, Love, to be with her. How has she reconciled herself to the loss? 'What got me through the grief, and continues to do so, is a tremendous pride in knowing what I did, what I sacrificed, what I gave up.' She is just off a flight from New York, looking pale and nursing a chest cold with ginger and honey. 'I honour Rayya by telling stories about her,' says Gilbert when we meet. I imagined her dying without knowing how much I loved her. On Twitter and Instagram, in Ted talks and the Moth hour, she memorialises her 'epic, magnificent, rebellious' friend and lover Rayya Elias – ex-addict, ex-con, punk artist, hairdresser, who got clean for 20 years then died of pancreatic cancer, nursed by Gilbert. 'Dear Ones,' she addresses her Facebook friends, 'May your heart have mercy today on your poor, tired mind.

Since the publication of her bestselling, post-divorce memoir Eat, Pray, Love and subsequent books – a treatise on marriage, a self help manual, a novel about a 19th century female plant hunter - she has had millions of fans and followers hanging on her every word. I guessed she had run out of sympathetic listeners closer to home. It's what grief compels us to do – to rehearse the disaster over and over, to tell stories, to keep the flame burning.Ī friend I hadn't seen for 20 years once tracked me down and spent an hour on the phone giving a detailed account of her husband's illness and eventual death. Fifteen months later she still loves to talk about her, invoking the name of her beloved at every opportunity. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text sizeĮlizabeth Gilbert's partner died in 2018 at the dawn of the new year.

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