Brody - The last kiss: a true story of love, joy and loss

The Last Kiss

A true story of love, joy and loss

Leslie Brody

A true story of love, joy and loss

Leslie Brody

The Last Kiss

A true story of love, joy and loss

Copyright 2012 Leslie Brody

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part, by any means whatsoever, except for passages excerpted for the purposes of review, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information, or to order additional copies, please contact:

TitleTown Publishing, LLC
P.O. Box 12093 Green Bay, WI 54307-12093
920.737.8051 | titletownpublishing.com

Editor: Amanda Bindel
Front cover photo and design: Susie McKeown, susiemckeownphotography.com
Back cover and interior layout and design: Erika L. Block
Author photo: David Adornato

PUBLISHERS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

Brody, Leslie, 1961

The last kiss : a true story of love, joy and loss / Leslie Brody. -- 1st ed. --Green Bay, WI : TitleTown Publishing, 2012.

p. ; cm.
ISBN: 978-0-9852478-6-7

Summary: Six years after their wedding, Elliot was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Told with heart, humor and compelling immediacy, this is a love story about a passionate marriage, the importance of loyal friends, and the resilience of children coping with the illness and death of a father.--Publisher.

1. Pinsley, Elliot Alan, 1951-2008--Death. 2. Cancer--Patients--United States--Biography. 3. Terminally ill--Family relationships. 4. Spouses--Death. 5. Children of cancer patients--Psychological aspects. 6. Bereavement--Psychological aspects. I. Title.

RC265.6.P5 B76 2012
362.19699/40092--dc23 1210

Printed in the USA
first edition printed on recycled paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

to Elliot
and Alex, Devon, Max, Kate and Aaron
with love and gratitude

Elliot in Captiva, Winter 2008

That place where you are is the best place Ive ever been.
Letter from Elliot

I never bought a video camera when my kids were little for fear it would be a curse. It was my one and only superstition. As a newspaper reporter I had met too many anguished couples who peered desperately into home movies of their children as if sheer desire could make their lost babies spring back to life. Those heartbroken parents gave me the vague premonition that if I started shooting videos myself, a day would come when I would pore over them in grief.

Then I decided I was being silly and we were missing out on all the giggly oohs and aahs of revisiting our holidays on the screen. A house like mine and Elliots, with five kids from two first marriages, could be complicated. I thought filming our good times together would give us proof that we had finally become a family.

My first impulse turned out to be right. I was just wrong about who would be taken from me. Almost as soon as I started making home movies, we learned my husband was going to die. There was an inoperable tumor in his pancreas, an organ I couldnt even locate. Doctors said if we were lucky, Elliot would live for a year or two.

Of course I cant blame the damn camera. The timing simply turned out to be one of those cruel ironies: At the height of our happiest days, we were forced to learn how to live in the face of unbearable loss.

That quiet grey video camera quickly became my ally, my tool for saving tender little scraps of the life I wished I could save for real. Still photos would never do justice to Elliot, whose face iswasconstantly in motion, expressive, animated with warmth and love and humor. His dark brown eyes were infinitely deep.

I saved all his emails too. Fortunately he ignored my cautious warnings not to send personal messages from his desk at Bloomberg News.

HEY YOU, he wrote me a few months before he died, when pain searing down one thigh signaled the cancer was spreading. I just want you to know Im thoroughly consumed with amorous thoughts.

Determined to remember as many details as possible, I saved love notes, my endless to-do lists, the kids handmade get-well cards and instructions for administering antibiotics through a home IV. That sheet has crinkled spots from drops of saline. Another page has ink blurred by tears. I also scribbled down funny moments that made me smile, hoarding them like a squirrel that would depend on them later for sustenance.

Honey, Im on the way to the store, I said over my shoulder one day as I hunted for my car keys. Do you need anything besides methadone?

Elliot burst out laughing. It sounded like I was just running out to pick up some milk, not heavy duty painkillers. There were months when living with terminal illness began to feel almost routine.

More often, though, it was wildly emotionalwhen we raced to the emergency room yet again or kissed one last time before nurses wheeled Elliot off on a gurney through thick operating room doors for yet another risky procedureand I wondered, ashamed, if my days felt richer and more fascinating because of all this drama. When this ordeal was over, would normal life seem flat? Like when Dorothy comes home at the end of The Wizard of Oz and the movie switches from color to black and white?

Maybe, but I had bigger things to worry about. I had to memorize our marriage.

The camera captured the ordinary moments: Elliot relaxing on the couch to watch a Mets game, ranting about something outrageous in The New York Times, or regaling the kids with tales of a gigantic food fight back when he was a troublemaker at Hebrew school (Matzoh balls were flying!). I was careful not to train the lens solely on Elliot for long. I didnt want him to know I was engaged in such a morbid project as recording his life for a future without him.

But documenting what matters is what we did for a livingwed even met in a newsroomand I wanted to keep him with me this way. There was no real hope hed get better. Two specialists at the top of their field gave him the same prognosis and a quick check of statistics showed why. Only six percent of pancreatic cancer patients lived five years. Most didnt last nine months. The best chance for survival was catching the disease early enough for surgery. In Elliots case, it was too late.

So we didnt waste precious time shopping for another doctor who would say what we wanted to hear, or scouring the Internet for a cure, or buying into the quack who argued for an enema made out of coffee. Elliot hunkered down to endure whatever his doctor advised so he could stay with us as long as he could. And I tried to figure out how to do my best for the first man I truly loved, the first to truly love me.

Here was the knife. I didnt know how to deal with my conviction that by leaning on each other through this unwanted odyssey we would get to know each other even better, and come to love each other even more, and then his death would be even harder to bear. Should I protect myself by backing away?

I finally found the right man and now Im going to lose him, I cried on a social workers couch about a week after Elliots diagnosis. Id gone there in search of a guide to keep me from collapsing. How am I supposed to take care of him knowing were going to get ripped apart?