Kerstin Pilz was eyeing up the canapés at a book launch when her attention was caught by something far more intriguing.
A green-eyed gentleman was gazing at her across the room.
‘He was the most unusual person there,’ Kerstin, now 61, tells me.
‘He wore a pink cashmere jumper paired with an orange blazer and matching pants. He loved colour.’
His name was Gianni and he was originally from Rome. Ironically, Kerstin had just booked a three-week research trip there for work.
‘We started chatting and I thought “Wow, he’s got an energy I’d like to meet again,”‘ she says.
It was the start of a whirlwind romance.
‘When we met, I was head over heels in love with my job and career, but it didn’t love me back,’ Kerstin says.
Kerstin Pilz (left) met her ‘Italian Romeo’ Gianni (right) in late 2006 after spotting him across the room at a book launch
So she allowed herself to get ‘happily blindsided by love’.
‘We had this accelerated love affair where suddenly he was texting me all the time. Nobody had ever paid this much attention to me.’
After a couple of spectacular dates, Kerstin flew to Rome for her research trip as planned, but Gianni was never far from her mind and the pair texted constantly.
‘It was like I had him in my pocket all the time talking to me. It was very romantic and electrifying how I was being seduced by this Italian Romeo.’
When Kerstin flew home, Gianni insisted on picking her up from the airport. Within a month, they had moved in together.
The couple were blissfully happy until a year later, when Kerstin noticed a suspicious-looking mole on Gianni’s head.
It turned out to be melanoma. ‘He got it operated on and he was grateful I found it,’ Kerstin says.
A year later, Gianni presented her with a huge diamond ring – but it wasn’t a proposal. Instead, it was a thank-you for saving his life.
Little did she know her Italian Romeo had several lovers throughout their relationship and marriage. She only found out when he was in hospital dying from cancer
However, another year on, he asked for her hand in marriage. The couple then wed aboard a cruise ship near the coast of West Africa in March 2008.
In January 2009, Gianni noticed a lump behind his ear, which needed major surgery. Doctors discovered his melanoma had returned and spread to his lungs.
Thankfully, after several successful operations, Gianni made a full recovery.
But in 2010, his hands started to shake and his legs collapsed underneath him. Kerstin rushed him to the hospital.
Doctors feared his cancer may have come back, but needed access to recent scans that were stored on a laptop he ‘always kept very private’.
At the time, Gianni had little to no motor function, but Kerstin didn’t know the password to his laptop or mobile phone.
‘He closely guarded his passwords – in hindsight, that should’ve been a red flag,’ she says.
‘Eventually he told me so I could retrieve the files. I raced home to get them. As I was sifting through the files, something caught my eye and alarm bells started to ring.’
While searching Gianni’s inbox, Kerstin had noticed an email with the subject line ‘Che Bella Donna’ – meaning ‘what a beautiful woman’ in Italian.
While she was curious, she didn’t open it. She had no time to waste and had to rush back to the hospital to give the files to doctors.
Naturally, the suspicious email played on her mind, but she compartmentalised it while doctors worked to diagnose Gianni.
‘I was taking care of him, visiting him every day, cooking for him, all while on long-service leave. It was a very hard time. My whole life revolved around him,’ she says.
Eventually, new scans revealed Gianni had a tumour the size of a golf ball growing in his brain.
It was stage four cancer. The melanoma had returned and spread.
He needed immediate surgery to remove it – so, once again, Kerstin pushed what she had found to the back of her mind.
After Gianni’s surgery, curiosity finally got the better of her, and she opened the email.
Her stomach dropped.
Gianni was cheating on her. The ‘Bella Donna’ referred to in the subject line was his lover in Rome.
And there were more.
He had a woman in Tuscany – and others dotted all over Italy. Some of them – like him – were married. Others believed they were in an exclusive relationship.
In some emails, he shared erotic fantasies; in others, he complained about Kerstin.
Kerstin scoured the emails for dates and timestamps. To her horror, she discovered Gianni had been emailing several lovers on their wedding night and had met up with another while on a trip to Rome to ‘see his parents’.
The absolute scale of the deception was jaw-dropping.
‘It was a complete shock and I couldn’t believe he had done this to me. I didn’t know if I could forgive him,’ she says.
‘I discovered within the same week that he was serially unfaithful and terminally ill.’
Kerstin’s first instinct was to run away – to leave Gianni. But could she really do that when he was lying helpless in hospital?
‘The next day, I went to see him and he was excited because the tumour had been removed and he was ready to go home,’ she says.
‘I was quiet now that I knew his terrible secret.
‘He told me, “What’s the matter with you? Why aren’t you happy about this?” Then the cycle from hell started after I confronted him about his lies.’
Rather than apologising, Gianni blamed Kerstin for his infidelity and said he’d only cheated because he was ‘bored’ and ‘wanted some freedom’.
Kerstin drove Gianni home in silence, then retreated to the spare room to consider her next move.
Gianni still had to undergo a month of radiotherapy and wasn’t able to drive.
So the couple agreed to get through treatment first, then discuss their future.
‘I discovered he was serially unfaithful and terminally ill within the same week,’ Kerstin says
‘I self-medicated with red wine and took up running but knew it wasn’t a long-term strategy,’ she says.
‘I went to see a counsellor but thought it would take years to recover from this. I needed something instant.’
So she booked a 10-day silent meditation retreat at a monastery in Thailand, where a monk encouraged her to learn about forgiveness. At the same time, Gianni, who had finished his radiotherapy, flew back to Rome.
‘One of the monks told me about the parable of the second arrow; it’s the first noble truth of Buddhism. We all experience suffering – it’s inevitable – that’s the first arrow. The second is how we react to that pain or suffering. We control that,’ she says.
‘I also wanted to keep my heart open and not turn into a bitter, lonely woman. I knew the alternative would be to leave him with a “screw him” mentality, but I didn’t want to be that person.’
The Thailand trip ultimately gave her a new perspective on forgiveness and her situation as a whole.
Even after the tumour was removed, doctors didn’t know how long Gianni had left. All they could do was manage the cancer.
‘When I arrived back in Australia, the more I spoke to specialists, the clearer it became how stage four melanoma is essentially a death sentence. It’s just a matter of how long you have left,’ she says.
Throughout it all, Gianni never apologised for his actions – not once. But Kerstin was able to forgive him and focused on the happy memories they’d shared.
Kerstin later wrote a book about her experience. One passage reads, ‘I’m still surprised by how easy it was to make peace… we both reached the same conclusion, that we were in this together, until the end.’
Gianni wanted to die at home at Mission Beach in far north Queensland, so Kerstin made the arrangements, including organising visits from family and friends.
At sunrise on New Year’s Day 2011, Gianni died peacefully with Kerstin holding his hand.
In the days that followed, she picked up the phone and personally called as many of his lovers as she could to let them know he was gone.
‘It was the right thing to do,’ Kerstin says.
‘I rang one in Rome and explained how I knew he meant a lot to her, and she was so grateful. Another told me I had taken a huge burden off of her – it was like we had taken each other’s pain away.’ Speaking to her, I felt my rage turn to tears.
All these years later, Kerstin is philosophical about the experience.
‘It helped me grow in a way I couldn’t have grown otherwise,’ she says.
‘I believe the people who hurt you most are your biggest teachers. I want to honour him for everything he gave me in life. We’re all flawed, and that was his flaw.’
Her message to others is to pick up a pen and write whenever you’re in a dark spot, and to ‘become your own best friend’.
Kerstin documented the story in a book titled ‘Loving my lying, dying, cheating husband’ as a way to grieve and forgive.
