Remembering Our Loved Ones Through Story: The Moth Radio Hour

0:00Hey Moth listeners, have you always wanted to tell your own story but you don't know where to start? My name is Emily Couch and I'm the producer of Special Projects and Radio at the Moth and one of the authors of the Moth's new guided journal called My Life in Stories. One thing I've learned through listening to thousands of two personal stories over the years is that stories are everywhere. Even seemingly small events in your life can shape you in unexpected ways. But it's not always easy to identify those moments. My life in stories is filled with prompts that will help you mine your memories and find those experiences big or small that have made you who you are. You believe everyone has a story worth telling. You can order My Life in Stories at the moth.org slash My Life in Stories. That's the moth.org slash My Life in Stories. Do you remember Blue Apron? The subscription meal service? Well, I have news. The new Blue Apron has just launched and they are totally subscription free. I love that I can order exactly what I want when I want with zero commitment. Blue Apron makes it easier to eat better without the stress of meal planning or defaulting to take out. Every meal is chef designed and informed by nutrition

1:02with options that have up to 40 grams of protein and a strong focus on fiber. Everything comes pre-portion so there's no guess where. On busy nights, their new assembly and bake meals are a life saver. Five minutes of prep. One pan. I'm done. And when I truly have no time, dish by Blue Apron meals are ready to heat and eat in minutes. That's less time than it takes to listen to one episode of your favorite podcasts. Same quality, way more convenient. Order now at Blue Apron.com. Get 50% off your first two orders plus free shipping with moth 50. Terms in conditions apply. Visit Blue Apron.com slash terms for more information. The all new 2026 Toyota RAV4 is here and it builds on everything drivers know and love about Toyota. With a redesigned look and modern tech that makes life behind the wheel easier than ever. The 26 RAV4 comes standard as a hybrid, providing smooth, efficient performance for both city streets and longer journeys. While the available all-wheel drive keeps you in command when conditions are unpredictable.

2:03The new RAV4 is designed around the way people actually use their SUV. From daily errands to weekend adventures, while the GR Sport model, coming soon, boasts a net combined 320 horsepower in a plug-in hybrid drivetrain with a GR-tune suspension for an even more responsive, exciting drive. No matter which RAV4 you choose, you'll enjoy the reliability Toyota is known for, coupled with the inspiring performance that's unique to Toyota. Shop more and find details at toyota.com. The all-new RAV4 from Toyota. Let's go places. This is the Moth Radio Hour and I'm Katherine Burns. I've worked at the Moth for more than 20 years and one of my favorite parts of my job is all the people I get to meet. The storytellers,

3:05of course, but also their friends and family. There are so many people who I'd never get to meet in real life, but who I've had the privilege of getting to know a little bit when their loved one tells a story about them. This is especially true when a storyteller is talking about someone who has died. Through our stories, we're able to keep the people we love alive long after they leave us. I think of comedian Mike Dostofano's wife, Franny. Two weeks later, they sent her out of the hospice because she started to get better. She was thrown at a hospice for not dying. And all these sheep could pull that off. She was a young Italian girl and she was not interested in suffering and dying. Like who is, but she was extra not fucking into it. Or Kate Teller's memory of her late mother, Lisa. We're laughing about this and she throws her head back like she does. I note the shape of her nose and that her head is so small, she buys

4:05her glasses in the children's section at Lenscrafters. And I can see this because in the candle light, I can see the side, the arm of the glasses where it says Harry Potter. To tell a story about someone who has died is to conjure them back to life if only for a few minutes and allow hundreds and thousands of people to meet them. This week's theme was actually inspired by Sharon Diorci, whose story about her mother Adrienne is the first step in this hour. I loved Adrienne and hope you will too. Sharon told this at the Houston Story Slam, Corey Partner with Houston Public Media. Here's Sharon Diorci, live at the mall. Shortly after my dad died, my mom moved in with me. There we were, two single ladies,

5:06one widowed, one divorced, separated by 23 years, but joined by 23 chromosomes and at least 23,000 memories. And that was the start of the adventures for my mother and I. My mother was smart, she was kind, resourceful, and feisty. She also was petite about the size of a chickadee. And she quickly determined that her favorite adventure was going to an expensive restaurant for dinner. And she would order two lemon drought martinis, a crab cake for an appetizer, an entree, and cream brulee. I was still working at the time, but sometimes I wanted

6:09to have some fun. So I would say to mom, pick out your clothes mom, we're going on an adventure. She liked it, we had fun, and she neither planned nor paid. But every outing that we had had a situation that made my list of things not to do. For example, I took her to an authentic 1880s Thanksgiving dinner in Plymouth, Massachusetts. My mother is the one who asked if her apple cider could be traded for a lemon drop martini. Then there was the first time that we went dog sledding

7:10along the Canadian border. Outside of the path, the snow was really deep, it was up over my knees, higher on my mom's body. And when we took a break to rest the dogs and relieve ourselves, my mother and all of her snow clothes, you know, kind of waddled into the woods to pee. However, she did not like to follow directions. So she failed to hold onto a tree branch. As a result, she fell backwards, her feet hopelessly tangled in her snow pants, and she froze her ass. She had the humiliation of having to call our guide Pierre to get her upright.

8:11Then there was the time I took her to the vagina monologues. She loved them. But about midway through, she kept going like this to the lady next to her. Like, did you get that? You know? And I'm thinking this is a problem. Well, before long, she whispered in a very loud voice to this stranger. I know all the nicknames for vagina. If you need any help, just ask me. My husband was a sailor. My last example was I took her to Reykjavik for a spa vacation for her February birthday.

9:14Besides not following directions, she never paid attention to her surroundings. So she went out the door of the spa and found herself in the hotel lobby. Locked out of the spa, wrapped only in a towel, where everyone else in the lobby was mirroring a parka. She did not speak Icelandic. Well, dementia finally ended my mom and I's adventures. I was her caregiver for the last six years of her life. And as she was dying, I was sitting next to her. I held her hand. And the hospice nurse said, she's ready to go. Tell her that she has your permission.

10:16And I said, mom, you can go now. You can go to heaven. But nothing happened. I tried another approach. I said, mom, do you know what St. Peter has waiting for you? Lemon dropped martinis, crab pigs, and cream brulee. And she died. And the hospice nurse said, the hospice nurse said, by God I've never seen that. And I said, I couldn't go with her on this adventure. But I sure hope that St. Peter remembered to go to specs and croakers. Or I'm going to catch hell. That was Sharon Diorci. Sharon moved to Texas for her first job after graduate school and has

11:16stayed for 50 years. She was a corporate engineer, an entrepreneur, an educator, a caregiver, and a writer. Periodically, Sharon and her friends gather to drink lemon drop martinis and tell Adrienne stories. To see stunning photos of Sharon and Adrienne, go to the moth.org. Coming up, a student chaplain at the nursing home gets schooled by her charges. That's when the moth radio hour continues. The moth radio hour is produced by Atlantic public media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. I live a weird little life where I have been gifted a bunch of corporate swag, and I tell you what, when it hits, it hits. Now that it's my turn to make it, I'm having a blast on vista print. There are so many ways to raise awareness for and gift the moth. Of course, they've got sweatshirts and hats, but they've also got so much more. Who among us does not need

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13:23price and participation may vary cannot be combined with any other offer single item at regular price. Why have I asked my electrician I found on Angie.com to bury my pet hamster? I was so moved by how carefully he buried my electrical wires. I knew I could trust him to bury my sweet nibbles after his untimely end. This is very strange. Angie, go and you trust to find them when she trust. Find pills for all your home projects at Angie.com. This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Catherine Burns. In this hour, we're talking about remembering those who have left this world by telling our favorite stories about them. Here is Adrian Lotson, live at the Hanover Theater in Worcester, Massachusetts. It was a magical night. I don't know what's shown brighter. The stars in the sky are those on the field at the conclusion of the Olympic Games. I was running all over the field in Atlanta, Georgia, congratulating all the athletes,

14:23marveling at their medals, giving them hugs that transcended language barriers. My friends thought that I lived such a glamorous life as a sports attorney, and yet what they didn't know was that I was miserable. I was that little kid. The one that wanted to make a difference in the world, you know, find a cure for cancer, bring about world peace, and this wasn't it. But I didn't know what would be it. And so that night, and for two more years, I struggled, and I tried to figure out what it would be. Now, I wasn't raised in a religious household, but I remembered clearly how a local church reached out to my family when my father passed away to give us comfort in our time of grief. And I also remembered that, particularly with the Black Church, it was a public square where political and economic engagement happened, and I wanted to be a part of that. So I decided to leave my very successful career in the law and go to seminary to go into ministry.

15:24And I happened to pick a seminary that was very social justice oriented and believed in experiential learning. So I found myself as a student chaplain at an assisted living center in Atlanta, Georgia. Now, this assisted living center was average age 80, overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly female, and 100% good southerners. So I show up my first day with my box, the senior chaplain meets me, shows me to my office, and she says, put your things down, get a little comfortable, but meet us down in the main meeting room for your first staff meeting in five minutes. She walks out the door and in walks Joni. Joni has a bouffant hairdo, a string of pearls, little platform heels, and she says, hi, I'm Joni, a long time resident here at the assisted living center. I play the piano every week at Bible study. Now, you're going to start Bible study

16:24reading the 23rd Psalm, and you're going to end it with a hymn called alone in the garden. Hi, Joni, how are you? Nice to meet you. Listen, Joni, I have a meeting I need to go to, so why don't you and I talk a little while after the meeting. Joni sits down and proceeds to tell me about everyone who lives in the living and assisted living center what all their problems are and how I should pray for them. Thanks, Joni. That's wonderful, but I really have to get to this meeting that I'm now 15 minutes late for. She says, don't worry, dear, you're going to make a fine chaplain. Off she goes, I run out to make it to the meeting and I see a guy sitting in the corner scowling out the window. He strikes me as rather odd. In the 20 minutes that I've been at the assisted living center, he's the first person I've seen with a full head of hair. And it's not great. Something's going on here. So I go to my meeting and I'm told what my duties are. I'm to go to the hospital to make hospital visits, visit some of the seniors who can't leave their homes, just be available for them. Just before I leave, they say, now listen, you may have noticed the guy sitting

17:27out there near the window looking really mean. His name is Jimmy. He's really mean. He's not happy. He hates it here. His kids dropped him off. They don't come visit him. He's from Brooklyn. Don't take it personally. I go straight to Jimmy. I said, so, Jimmy, they tell me that you think the best pizza in the world is from Brooklyn. And everybody knows the best pizza in the world is from Manhattan with queens playing a close second. He looks up at me, who were you? I said, hi, I'm Adrian. I'm the student chaplain. Is it anything I can do for you? Boos and broads. Boos and broads. Can you do that? No, Jimmy, I can't do that. But I'm the student chaplain. Is there anything else I can do for you? Gambling. Gambling. Can you do that? You know what, Jimmy? That I can do. I ran into the office. I pull out the deck of cards that I keep with me because

18:29you never know when you have to play a game of solitaire. And I come back and I say, Jimmy, I don't know how to play poker. I lie. Can you teach me how to play poker? And he says, yeah, okay. So we play a couple of hands of poker. I lose them miserably. And he throws the cards down. He says, this isn't gambling. There's no money. Give me a couple of days, Jimmy. I'll figure it out. I come back a couple of days later with a jar full of pennies. Sit down with my jar full of pennies. We get to playing. I start beating Jimmy ridiculously. And Jimmy says, hey, hey, hey, hey, I know when I've been hustled. I've been hustled here. And this is by the way, not gambling. These are pennies. I said, Jimmy, pennies of money. Money is gambling. We're gambling. Let's play. And he says, aren't you a minister? I said, yeah, and he goes, won't you get in trouble for gambling? Yeah, probably, but let's have some fun until that happens, shall we? He's like, okay. And Jimmy begins to tell me

19:29his story. And we play poker for pennies two times a week for several weeks. And he tells me that he's from Brooklyn, that he was adjacent to, but not in the mafia. That is... That his children convinced him to come down to Atlanta, but then moved him into the assistant living center and never come to see him. Jimmy was right about one thing. I got in trouble. I was called into the office and they said, you are the minister. You don't get to gamble. You don't get to gamble publicly. And I said, wait a minute. Jimmy's doing well. You said the guy didn't talk. He said he was mean. Look at him. He's laughing. He's having a ball. And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's all well and good. But you don't get to gamble. You're the minister. Okay, great. So I said, let's think about this. Tell you what we do. How about at the end of every game, I scoop up the pennies, put them in the jar, put the jar back in my office, and then technically, there's no gambling

20:31happening. They agree to that. And I said, ha, I got to use my lawyering skills. So this is good. This is good. So among other responsibilities I had was visiting the sick in the hospital. You know, you go, you get a list of the residents who are in the hospital, you go and see them tell them we once thinking about them and you pray with them. And one day I'm at the end of my rounds and I get on the elevator and there's a woman crying hysterically. And I said, hi, how are you? And she said, oh, I'm terrible. I said, okay, and got off the elevator. And so something said, get back on the elevator. You're the chaplain. Help this woman. So I back up. I get back on the elevator. I said, ma'am, is anything I can do to help you? And she said, yes. My boyfriend was in a really bad motorcycle accident. And they won't let me see him because he's an ICU. So could you go see him and pray for him? So I said, sure, I can do that. I can handle that. No problem. So I'm like, up, up, up. See as I go to ICU, I go see the ICU nurse, I show her my badge student chaplain. And I said, hi, I'm here to pray for the gentleman who was in the motorcycle accident.

21:32And she says, oh, roommate, I go to roommate and there's a group of doctors and nurses and technicians surrounding a bed. And as I walk in, one of the nurses moves one way, one of the doctors moves another way. And I see the person in the bed. There's no skin on his face. Half of his eye is hanging out of the socket. His teeth are a mangled mess. I leap back and scream, oh my god, what happened to you? The room freezes, the doctor turns around. He says, get out, get out now. And I say, hey, I'm the student chaplain. Get out. Go stand over there. And I'm shaken by this. And I go and I stand and I hang my head. And they do whatever they do. And the doctor comes out. He says, let me tell you something. You're supposed to be a professional. That man is on the brink of death. He does not need you to come in here and have the kind of reaction you had. Now get yourself together. Get yourself together. Go in there. Do what you're supposed to do. Be a professional

22:38and then leave. So I walk in and there's only one nurse left in the room by this time. And I said to her, is there any part of his body I can touch that won't cause him pain? She points to one hand. So I grab his hand and I say, sir, your girlfriend asked me to come and pray for you and his eyes well up with water. She wanted me to tell you that she loves you and she's not going to leave this hospital without you. I pray for you and I pray for him. And when I'm done, he's crying. And I walk out and I'm thinking, I don't know if it was my lack of professionalism being called out for my lack of professionalism, the tears that he had because I didn't know if I was causing him pain by touching him. But I felt like maybe I'm not really good at this. And I felt really, really awful. I got in the car and I was like, wow, you know, maybe I don't know. I know what I'll do. I know what I'll do. I'll get myself together and I will liven up Bible study. That's what I'll

23:40do because Bible study was deadly dull. And I said, I can get this right. I know I can get this right. So I show up at Bible study with new scriptures and new hymns because we're going to liven this thing up and we're going to have a good time. So I walk in, I pass out all the new hymns, I say to Joni, hey, Joni, here's some new music we're going to play. And Joni looks at me and I say, okay, here we go. And I start to sing, no one joins me and I'm singing and I hear this rustling noise and I look at all the ladies because only the ladies went to Bible study are getting up and they're grabbing their walkers and they're grabbing their canes and they're walking out all be it very, very slowly. I am in the middle of a full fledged Bible study revolt. I look over at Joni, Joni shakes her head and walks out and the only person left was the lady who slept in the front row every week during Bible study. I go back to my office and Joni's sitting

24:43there and Joni says, dear, let me explain something to you. We read the 23rd Psalm every week because Mrs. So-and-so read it to her husband every night before he died and so it has a lot of meaning to us. We sing alone in the garden every week because many of us have visual and memory issues and we can't learn new songs. I suggest that before you try and get people where you want them to be, you understand where they are and meet them there. And then she passed me on the back of my hand and she says, don't worry, you're going to make a fine chaplain someday. And such was my life at the assisted living center from one crisis to another. Setting off the sprinkler system when I tried to sneak a meal in the community kitchen because I didn't want to eat jello delight or the time that I allowed the blind ladies emotional support cats escape during a visit. Always followed by a reprimand in the front office which they called lovingly coaching and mentoring.

25:44Followed by Joni's visit, wish she would explain to me what I did wrong and how I could do better. Always leaving by patting my hand and saying, but don't worry dear, someday you're going to be a fine chaplain. I realized that I was not cut out for this. I have made a mistake and I just needed to get to the end of this experiential learning experience and get my life back together. So I'm wrapping up my responsibilities my last week of hospital visits. I go to the hospital and I see a man in a wheelchair being pushed to a car. And I said, he looks remotely familiar. I'm not sure where I know him. And then I see the woman pushing him. As she looks at me, she recognizes me. I instantly recognize her. It's the lady from the elevator. That's the guy from the motorcycle accident. Oh my goodness. He made it. He's alive. I did something right. I did something right.

26:47He survived the motorcycle accident. Wait till I tell Joni. Wait till I tell Joni. I did something right. So I go through my hospital visits. I can't wait. I get in the car. Wait till I tell Joni. I did something right. I get to my office as a note to come immediately to the front office. And I thought, whoa, some of the disaster happened. And I'm about to have my nice mentoring and coaching session. So let me just get ready for that. But I'm going to tell them the man lived. And I walk in. They tell me to have a seat. And I have a seat. And they said, Adrian, we just need to let you know that Joni died last night. She had a sudden heart attack in her sleep. And Joni died. Our family is going to hold the funeral here. And we would like for you to read the 23rd Psalm. You can do that, right? I said, yep. I can do that. I can do that for Joni. So we come to the funeral. I stand up to read the 23rd Psalm. I see Jimmy walking in a suit and tie. I didn't even know Jimmy owned a suit and tie. And there he was coming to Joni's funeral. And I open the Bible.

27:50And I say, the Lord is my shepherd. And I drop my head. And tears well up. And I begin to cry. And cries turn into sobs. And sobs turn into whaling. And I'm standing there in front of everyone whaling and heaving and crying and crying. And suddenly I see coming towards me Joni's son. And Joni's son comes and he puts his arms around me. And he's comforting me. It's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. And I'm thinking, I can't even get this right. I'm supposed to comfort the family. And I'm a mess. And I see out of the corner of my eyes, the senior chaplain just shake her head and hang it low. And I was like, this is a disaster. So we get through the funeral. A few days later, I'm there to pack up my belongings because I only have a couple of weeks left. So I said, well, I might as well get a start on that. And I get a note that I need to be seen in

28:52the office. And I think, well, they can't even wait the couple of weeks to the end of this thing. They're going to let me go today. They're going to say, you're not cut out for this. It was a nice experiment. But hey, we learned something. You, and I'm supposed to be a minister. Good luck. So I go in and they said, please have a seat. And I'm preparing myself for this. I said, we want to read you a letter that Joni's son just sent us. And I thought, oh, this is going to be a bad one. And he said, my family and I have always felt extreme guilt over moving our mother into an assisted living center. And we sat with that guilt for years. But when that lady chaplain broke down while reading our mother's favorite prayer, we realized that she was truly loved. And this was her home. And that she was cared for. And all of that guilt just lifted off of our shoulders. So as a thank you, we like to give you. And it turned out to be the largest gift by a private individual to this particular assisted

29:54living center. The senior chaplain gets up. She walks past me. She puts her hand on my shoulder. And she says, you've become a fine chaplain. Thank you. Dr. Adrienne R. Latson calls herself a Renaissance woman with a Peter Pan streak. She's a cultural anthropologist, administrative law judge, author, public speaker, minister, and performance artist. But she says her true passion is traveling the world sharing and hearing stories. For the Moth's 25th anniversary, five of our longtime story directors spit 18 months putting all our knowledge about storytelling into a book. It's called How to Tell a Story, the essential guide to memorable storytelling from the Moth. And it's full of tips on how to tell your own stories, whether that's on stage at the Moth or in a job interview or while giving a

30:57toast. But we wrote a lot about this topic of honoring our loved ones by telling stories about them. Telling stories is a way to make sure precious memories of beloved family members get passed on to future generations and cement them at our collective memories. Here is the Moth's Senior Curatorial Producer, Suzanne Rust, on how she honors her parents. This is excerpt did for the audiobook version of How to Tell a Story. I am forever weaving stories about my parents into conversations and my children, who never got the chance to meet my wonderful mother, often toss her stories back to me. And through them, they have a pretty good idea about her. Talking about my parents is like sprinkling a little handful of fairy dust that brings them back to life for a few moments. I'm a big believer in celebrating my parents birthdays every year. I make their favorite meal and pour them a drink, vodka and tonic for her, Roman Coke for him. But really, it's just another excuse to talk about them and have a good laugh

32:00or cry and repeat our favorite stories about them. That was my fellow radio host, Suzanne Rust. A final tip. If you're trying to capture stories of a loved one, especially someone who is elderly and perhaps suffering from memory loss, try recording them while they go through family photos. The pictures can trigger memories that might otherwise be lost. That's what the moths executive producer Sarah Austin Geneste did. Again, taken from our audiobook. My grandpa Jack was in the throes of dementia when I recorded him talking about his life. He had no short-term memory left, but with the help of photographs, my grandmother and I were shocked and delighted to know that his long-term memory was still intact. With each black and white photo we revealed to him, he was transported. He told us of his lake vacations in the summer as an only child and his doting parents. He said, my father was an insurance salesman. He cared so much about his few clients. He kept visiting and asking if they were all right and if they needed

33:06more insurance. They didn't need more insurance. He needed more clients. The photographs lit up not only detailed memories from the past, but also his dry sense of humor that we worried had vanished. That was Sarah Austin Geneste. Coming up, the writer Elizabeth Gilbert tries in vain to manage the illness of her headstrong wife. That's when the moth radio hour continues. The moth radio hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The all-new 2026 Toyota RAV4 is here, building on everything drivers know and love about Toyota. With a redesigned look and modern tech that makes life behind the wheel easier than ever, the new RAV4 comes standard as a hybrid, providing smooth, efficient performance for both

34:10city streets and longer journeys. Enjoy the legendary reliability Toyota is known for in the all-new 2026 RAV4. Learn and shop more at toyota.com. Toyota, let's go places. This episode is brought to you by Nespresso. Introducing Virtua Up, the latest and a long line of innovation from Nespresso. It's innovation you can touch, sense and taste in every single cup. With a three-second start, easy open lever and dedicated brew over ice button, it's even easier to enjoy your coffee your way. Zip for yourself. Shop Virtua Up exclusively at Nespresso.com. This is the moth radio hour, I'm Katherine Burns. In this hour, we've been talking about how people live on through the stories we tell about them. Peter O'Guerro wants hosted a show a new Bedford, Massachusetts. And after a teller shared a story about Luzia loved one, Peter reminded the audience how the simple act of hearing that story brought their memory to life.

35:15Man, it's a really beautiful thing. I get to, I'm very lucky. I get to hear lots of stories and they say that when we die, we really die twice. You die once when your body's gone, then you die again when your name is said for the last time. So when we tell stories about the people that we lost, they stay alive. So I implore you to please tell the stories about the people that you love that are gone, so they'll never be gone. You just say their name again, they're still alive. On the count of three, everybody say the name of someone that they love that isn't with us anymore. Just on the count of three, everybody all together. One, two, three. And they're still alive. They're still here with us. Thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That was Peter O'Guerro at a Moth in New Bedford. A few years back, I got to know someone truly remarkable. When her partner, Elizabeth Gilbert, took the Moth stage at St. Anne's Church in Brooklyn Heights. Here's Elizabeth, live at the Moth.

36:21Last 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 Tom Kinskler Park and get a self-serve ice cream cone. Now, Tom Kinskler 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 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

37:24heart 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 so particularly heartbreaking 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. It 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-fellon, rock and roll, music star artist, filmmaker, hairdresser, writer, phenomenon of a human being.

38:29And in the circles that we rolled in, Raya 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. And if you were lucky enough to be one of the people who Raya 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 Raya 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 now I've got her tucked under my arm and now it's my

39:30job 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 the super sketchy guy on a bicycle comes terracing 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

40:34and I managed just at the last minute to grab rea and pull her out of the way for safety but he clips her he hits her on the arm with his bike handle bar as he goes by and I'm like oh my god my baby at which point rea turns on her heels and says get the fuck off the fucking sidewalk mother fucker and the guy the guy screeches to a halt drops his bike grabs his crotch and goes so my dick bitch and rea goes if you had a dick he'd be driving a car not a bicycle like a fucking louver and I'm like whoa kids I'm from Connecticut and I need everybody to just take it down I know 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

41:36are you gonna do rea if this guy comes at you and then I see it he's not gonna come at her because she's locked eyes with him and she is 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 rea 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 rea got sick about how helpless and dependent she was going to become that never actually happened because somehow despite the advances of the disease rea 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 to and my whole planning had been

42:41based in this idea that I was powerless to stop her from dying but by god I was gonna 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 I 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 afternoon with her nephews 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 passed her original expiration date as she called it and of course I got her 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 rea got kicked out of hospice because she wouldn't let the nurses in when they came to check on her so they'd come

43:42for 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 throughout 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 and with everything that I could imagine that she could possibly need a dormant building and an elevator and wide hallways for the inevitable wheelchair that would be coming in 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 rea 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 thirty 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 rea I followed a scampered after her like the

44:45little cub that I'd always been and blew up my life once again just to try to keep up with the she wolf so even rea not even rea 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 that's she's on borrowed time already but it could be at any moment and knowing that she was so close to the end rea called in her ex-wife Gigi who she'd been married to ten 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 twenty years ago and she had me so now what rea's got is a hot blonde from every decade of her life waiting on her hand and foot with devotional love which is rea alias's 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 mac daddy and she still was she managed to live till Christmas I don't know how

45:53but 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 midnight on christmas night we put her to sleep and at four o'clock 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 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 snow storm outside I could hear that her breathing was ragged and her lips and her hands were turning blue and I knew it's it so I went and I got stacey and gg and I said it's now you know come and what happened next was so exquisite it was so beautiful it was like the three of us these three women who had loved her so passionately for her whole life we just

46:55knew what to do like it had been scripted or that we were born to it we just came into the bedroom and and gg put on sacred music and stacey little 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 is 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 Raya opened her eyes and said what the

48:00fuck are you guys doing? and we're like nothing nothing she's like what's going on? I'm like definitely not a bet's bet's her death watch like no that's not like wiping sheets of tears from our eyes she goes babe why are stacey and gg in her 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 Raya's like why is this not like a fucking candle in here? Stacey like it does in or just nuts my shampoo 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 26th 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 Raya

49:04in the dressing room surrounded by her attendants trying on at leisure wearer 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 they're living people and they're 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 Raya 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 she just wasn't having it from the beginning of a diagnosis till the end of her life she was like I'm not your story horror like you don't get to script this I'm Raya fucking Elias my life my death I'm doing it

50:07my 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'll 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 very dreamy romantic idea about Raya'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 Raya Elias's 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 gonna take in her remarkable life no baby no

51:11her 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 Raya 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 Raya wanted for 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 and those last harrowing hours was nothing was nothing except a surrender to my powerlessness and to have to let her go and to

52:17have 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 Elizabeth Gilbert is the best-selling author of nine books of fiction and nonfiction including Eat Pray Love and City of Girls. Elizabeth was raised on the small family Christmas tree farm in Connecticut but she currently lives in New York City and for those of you who aren't familiar with her Raya Elias was a Syrian-born writer musician hairdresser and filmmaker she was just 57

53:21when she died in her own book Harley-Loco a memoir of hard-living hair and post-pong was published in 2013 on the one-year anniversary of Raya's death Elizabeth sent me a link to a Neil Young song she wrote Raya S.B to ask you to play this song for her so so loud today we hope you'll be inspired by this hour to tell a story of your own baby about someone you love who's no longer with you that's it for this episode we hope you'll join us next time for the Moth Radio Hour this episode of the Moth Radio Hour was produced by me Jay Allison and Catherine

54:42Burns who also hosted and directed the stories in the show co-producer Vicki Merrick associate producer Emily Couch the rest of the Moss leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin, Janess Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Klucce, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Inga Bladowski, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Kaza audio courtesy of Random House Audio from How to Tell a Story by The Moth special thanks to Devon Sandeford and his series Unreeling Stories of Brooklyn-based organization providing a platform for people of color women and others who have been pushed to the margins of our culture most stories are true is remembered and affirmed by the storytellers our theme music is by the drift other music in this hour from blue dot sessions the swing growers and Neil Young we receive funding from the national endowment for the arts the Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic public media in Woods Hole Massachusetts special thanks to our friends at

55:44Odyssey including executive producer Leah Restennis for more about our podcast for information on pitching us your own story and everything else good or our website themoth.org