Elizabeth Gilbert, the best-selling author of Eat Pray Love, shares a touching window into her world. She writes movingly about their love, loss, and war with terminal illness, which she fought with her late wife Rayya Elias. In 2016, Elias was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given just six months to live. Yet impossibly, she beat the odds and battled for more than 15 months. Her journey is one of resilience, enduring friendship, and the bittersweet highs and lows of fighting against addiction and the reality of death’s presence.
Despite the consequent Hollywood success, Rayya Elias went through tremendous hardship in her last years. After Gigi abandoned her to marry European royalty, she was left broke and bereft. As a survival mechanism, she moved into a church-turned-housing unit in New Jersey, in which she paid just for utilities. This contract allowed her the flexibility to remain as long as she chose. Yet it provided a much-valued anchor of stability in her otherwise turbulent life.
So, despite her scary diagnosis, Elias didn’t want to go down the dark path. Her history was fraught with an opioid addiction and the last addiction she had, she loved her cocaine habit. But eventually, she fell into a deep paranoia, certain that the police were tracking her. These fights introduced a whole other level of stress to what was already an emotionally charged situation that comes with terminal illness.
Elias’s health was made even worse by her ongoing battle with hepatitis C, a disease that had tormented her for decades. She exposed herself to an exciting emerging treatment for her disease. This finding provided her with a ray of sunshine in an otherwise gloomy landscape. This finding motivated her to engage more in her own recovery. She celebrated each milestone in her sobriety with coins, representing each step she made on the path to recovery.
Her creative spirit emerged in full form in her memoir. She wrote it as a loving tribute to herself, her family and her people. Her accomplishment of this project proved her discipline and courage to face the battles of her life.
Through these challenges, Gilbert was frequently aligned with Elias. While navigating the technical side, she was faced with the emotional toll of what was happening. In a moment of reflection, someone close to Gilbert observed the intensity of their shared experience:
“What they say about the stages of grief is true – denial, anger, negotiation –all those things do happen. But they don’t happen in tidy order. They sometimes happen all at once.” – One of the people Gilbert called for help.
Elias’s defiant approach to living and dying was something to behold, and it was a powerful act of freedom. She faced her new world with a brazen creative fire. In one of her most memorable quotes, she declared:
“Let’s just live balls to the wall until I die!” – Rayya
This mantra summed up her goal to live life to the fullest in the face of death’s inevitable shadow. Her perspective on mortality was refreshingly candid. She expressed a sense of wonder about knowing how one would die:
“Everyone spends their lives wondering how they’re gonna die… and now I get to know? That’s amazing! It’s done, it’s settled. Why do I feel like this is such great news?” – Rayya
As Elias’s health declined, she expressed a deep desire for presence and continuity in her life. She urged Gilbert with heartfelt sincerity:
“Never let me wake and not find you here.” – Rayya
This bond between them grew even stronger as they spent Elias’s last chapters together. As they shared their last moments together, they didn’t just fight against death, but against love, fear, and the fragility of human connection.
Rayya Elias died on January 4, 2018, at the age of 57. Her journey and the questions it raises remind us to embrace the nuance that comes with navigating the intersection of life and death. Despite her challenges with addiction, Elias entirely reclaimed her life and was an inspiring warrior in her fight against cancer. Her indomitable strength has had a profound influence on St. Gilbert’s story that echoes strongly in Gilbert’s tale today.