How often do you get back to Venice?
Trapped here temporarily while my wife, Deborah Suzanne Leslie, died a slow agonizing death from Lupus. People would look at us unsure who was dying. It took everything out of me. Watching her 6' frame be reduced to 5' 2". and her once 2' long curly brown hair be reduced to large bald patches was too much to handle. I had practiced taking care of dying patient that I worked with and was once offered a job in Colorado Springs training Hospice personel in Existential Therapies. Nothing could really prepare me for the death of someone so close and so brilliant and so beautiful. She worked for Paul Newman making motion pictures, her name was in the credits of a major motion picture. She had a scholarship to Eckerd College for 12 years of piano and a masters in film from FSU. We only met a couple of times before we married. Our eyes met, we were both stricken as if having been bit by a viper and 30 years were gone in an instant. I wound up in an inherited home by myself back in Venice. After cancer treatment and a huge blood clot I got out of Venice hospital in time to see her last week at hospice. 'If you are still alive your job on earth is not finished yet' ibid Illusions. I am still alive, a little cracked, and working on figuring it all out.
