jack and rhonda lunsford are gone.
we were just getting to know this couple. we met him at the tulsa flea market, and purchased quite a few items from him. he did mostly mosaics made from hand cut images, painstakingly etched out with a blade knife, and then glued to a backboard. he did beautiful work. rhonda did glass work, stained glass and objects as well. i only met her once, but she seemed nice. they didnt live far from us.
last valentines day they left for europe for a two month tour. they sold everything, including the house, saying they were getting a loft downtown when they came back. didnt want to have the responsibility of a house, and were retiring from the professional side of the art world. they were both well known in both the art and the entertainment world, i believe. i thought it odd they gave away their beloved chihuahuas, but i figured they just didnt want to take care of anything anymore.
no one knew they only bought one way tickets to italy.
so he had diabetes and arthritis, and she had arthritis. yet both were still mobile and independent. she was very into ghost hunting and past lives, and he was some kind of fatalist buddhist. his answer to me when i mentioned to him my grief over the haitian tragedy was ‘i dont feel any compassion or sympathy for them. they chose to live there’. that made me sick. i really didnt expect something like that from someone i thought was such a caring person. he also didnt really take care of his diabetes, and was very overweight. im sure he had high blood pressure, and likely clogged arteries. their diets were really bad. she was equally overweight. you cant eat like they did all the time and expect to be healthy, or overcome problems, or even manage them well.
yet this was why, according to their letter, they ended their lives in a hotel room in italy. that and stating they had no one, so they were going to ‘step over to the other side’.
never mind the trauma to the person who had to discover their dead bodies. never mind the mess that people make when they die, and lose their bowels and their urine all over. never mind the people here who were close to them, who were devastated by this.
never mind the people – including the young children right here in oklahoma who have had multiple amputations due to the recent meningitis infections lately – who have it much worse and still fight to live.
as long as jack and rhonda are comfortable, thats all that really matters.
i hope they like where they are.
