Lucy and Desi spoke once more in the final days before his death on December 2, 1986. As Lucie remembers, “I got on the phone with my mother and said, ‘He is barely speaking. He didn’t eat any of the dinner we fixed. He hasn’t eaten in three days. I don’t even know if he’ll understand what you’re saying, but I’ll put the phone up to his ear.’ She said, ‘Oh, okay.’ She was always trying to be so brave. You could hear her voice cracking. I put the phone up to dad’s ear in the bed. And he gave me a look that said, ‘Who is it?’ And I said, ‘It’s the redhead.’ He just listened, and I heard what she said. She just said the same thing over and over again. It was muffled, but you could clearly make out it was the same thing over and over again.
It was, ‘I love you. I love you. Desi, I love you.’ You could even hear the intonations of the voice change, how she meant each one, the interpretation. And I just sat there, trying not to show him I was listening, because I had to hold the phone. I couldn’t get out of the room. He couldn’t hold the phone. And he said, ‘I love you, too, honey. Good luck with your show.’ I had told him in passing, ‘Mom’s going to be on a variety show tonight, she’s going to give somebody an award.’ I’m sure he didn’t realize what show it was, it was just important for him to say that. I couldn’t say anything to her. I just said, ‘I’ll talk to you later.’ And I hung up the phone. Really, my mother was the last person he talked to, because he died about forty-eight hours later.
“Until I went back to my little diary”, concludes Lucie, “I never put it together that the date this happened was November 30 - the same date as their wedding anniversary.”
- Desilu: The story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz
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(Source: heckyeahlucydesi)