End? No, the journey doesn’t end here. Death is just another path. One that we all must take.
—J. R. R. TOLKIEN
Ken called me from the car as he was driving away from Thom’s house. He sounded shaken, his voice unsteady. He told me Thom was gone.
I had to pause a moment to comprehend.
“What?” I asked.
Ken told me Thom had died in his sleep, and that Amy Pinto was there. The coroner thought Thom had died in the night. Pinto called for help at eleven that morning.
Ken added that Thom had been drinking heavily and Amy said he’d had some Valium.
“Oh my God, this is awful.” I was so shocked. “How are you handling it?” Ken said that at least Thom was in a better place now.
I couldn’t believe it. The Thom I knew, the boisterous Thom, the full-of-life Thom, came vividly to my mind. I asked Ken where Amy was. Ken told me that Amy was staying in the house. He couldn’t reach Nanette, who was in Australia. He also told me Amy had said she had a new will that Thom had written by hand that she would produce at a later time.
Ken asked me if I’d ever heard of Thom taking Valium, and I said I’d only heard Thom speak proudly of how he never took any pills. Ken was distraught about having to tell Nanette and expressed his regret that, despite trying for all those years, he wasn’t able to save him. “It’s shocking and sad. The whole thing. I’m so sorry,” I said.
In a broken voice, Ken said Thom had been his best friend.
“Keep me posted. Tell me if you need anything. Tell me how I can help,” I said.
I hung up, and felt helpless. It was hard to feel anything else. The shock was too great. I still couldn’t fathom the whole thing. But somewhere inside, lying just beneath the shock, was a feeling slowly waking in me. There was a first tinge of relief and closure. For how many years had we watched Thom drink to the point of being suicidal? The stories of Portofino, the hospital paralysis. He had been on a mission his whole life. Only recently it seemed that mission was to kill himself slowly.
Most of all I felt an empathic pang of the pain I knew he must have been in. He had loved life so much, and he loved what he did. He never complained about anything, always projected a positive attitude, and saw the good in everything. Losing his family had been the worst thing that could happen to Thom.
There was much wrong with Thom’s life in those last few years in which I hardly saw him. The rapid demise of the company must have hurt him deeply, to see all those dreams fizzle and slowly take everything he had. His alcoholism was so severe it affected his body, and his mind. How could he feel anything but bad about himself? But most of all, I know he was suffering deeply from his estrangement from his family. He couldn’t handle shame. Shame kept him from dealing with his problems. Shame kept him away from his friends, because he didn’t want them to see what he had become. Shame kept him from reaching out and embracing his family when they tried to save him from himself. It was heartbreaking. I understood that a part of him had to want to die. There was nothing else left for him. Once he lost his family, he was no longer the Painter of Light.
A week after Thom’s death, Nanette and the girls had returned to California and begun their grieving process. The girls had been estranged from their father for over a year. At their ages, twenty-four, twenty-one, seventeen, and fifteen, they were old enough to understand the complexity of his problems and the circumstances of his untimely death. But it was still a shock. After all, he had only been fifty-four years old. And they would miss their father, who had made things so magical for them, terribly.
A funeral was held five days after his death. Ken and Linda, and Nanette and the girls attended, with close friends and family. Thom’s sister, Kate, his mother, Mary Ann, his brother, Patrick, were all present to bury their brother and son. And Ken banned Amy Pinto from attending.
Days later, NBC news reported that the Kinkade Family Trust had obtained a restraining order against Amy Pinto for violating a confidentiality agreement she had signed when she first became involved with Thom. The news reports stated that Amy would not leave the house and ignored requests that she pay $12,500 a month in rent.
Amy Pinto then revealed the two handwritten wills, which she said Thom had written in the last months before his death. The wills were controversial because they were barely legible, written in a messy and shaky handwriting. They stated that Thom was leaving the main house, the studio, and $10 million to Amy, and that she should open a museum in his name and assume possession of the contents of the main house, which included nearly $100 million worth of art. After Thom’s death, no one knew what the value of the property and the paintings might end up being; it was anyone’s guess, and it was worth fighting for.
The battle over the estate went to court on June 12, 2012. During the hearing, the San Jose Mercury News reported that, “Pinto-Walsh clutched a heavy silver pendant in the form of what appeared to be a dragon. After the hearing, she declined a request for an interview and wouldn’t explain the symbolism of the pendant. But Pinto-Walsh, who is of Indian descent and raised in Kuwait, held the dragon in front of her throughout the hearing, as though it had special spiritual or sentimental value.”
The two handwritten wills were disclosed in the courtroom and showed none of Thom’s manual dexterity. If there was one thing Thom could do until the end, it was paint. The handwritten wills were scrawled almost illegibly. One will read: “I Thomas Kinkade, hereby bequeath to Amy Pinto-Walsh $10,000,000 in cash from my corporate policy and I give her the house at 16324 and 16342 Ridgecrest Avenue for her security.” The other specified that Amy Pinto-Walsh should be given another $10 million from the policy to establish the “Thomas Kinkade Museum” at the house, and also gave her administrative control over the estate’s invested assets of over $66 million. In court Amy stated that Thom had loved her; that they planned to marry in Fiji, and had been shopping for an engagement ring.
Meanwhile Nanette, who had been married to Thom for over thirty years and borne him four daughters, produced the will (actually their living trust) she and Thom had written up in the year 2000, in which he set out the terms of how his assets would be distributed among Nanette and the children.
By this time, the coroner’s report had determined that Thom died of a combination of a “lethal level of alcohol” and Valium.
Twenty-four-hour guards were stationed inside the gates of the Monte Sereno house to protect the furniture, paintings, and other valuables while Amy Pinto was living in the house. Four months after Thom’s death, and months into the court hearings, Amy still refused to move out. Daniel Casas, the lawyer for Nanette, spoke to the press and said Amy was holding the estate “hostage.” Nanette had to endure Amy’s living in the home in which her children were born and in which she raised her family for nearly twenty years. Meanwhile, Nanette’s daughters didn’t even have access to some of their belongings.
Amy Pinto finally paid $11,000 monthly in rent and remained ensconced in the home. The battle over the estate raged on for eight months, Amy and Nanette landing in court numerous times until finally on December 19, 2012, the two came to a settlement, rumored to be in the eight figures. For months, Amy had stated in the papers that she would clear her name of accusations of being a gold digger, and show herself to have been Thom’s soul mate. Before she could, she accepted a deal in the settlement of the estate.
Nanette and Amy issued a statement: “Putting Mr. Kinkade’s message of love, spirituality, and optimism at the forefront, the parties are pleased that they have honored Mr. Kinkade by resolving their differences amicably.” Nanette paid a high price once again to be able to return to her life and ensure security for her daughters.
The three nobodies were now only one. With Rick gone from the company, Ken was the sole survivor. He had experienced staggering success, endured being removed from his own company, and felt the trauma of the death of his best buddy. He was still standing in the end, as the one who actually made it.
I’ve thought about my time with Thomas Kinkade many times since his passing. I’ve wondered how things could have gone so wrong. I’ve wondered how a Christian company could have fought the people who were their lifeblood with such vehemence, so as to contradict their own purported mission statement to do good in the world, and to spread the light of God. I’ve wondered whether it all cost Thomas Kinkade his life, and if anyone saw the irony in the fact that he realized his worst fear in the end: he died penniless, his life mortgaged to the hilt, and his assets tied up in real estate.
I can only imagine the personal toll that year took on Nanette. Battling Thom’s mistress, who occupied the family home, keeping her and the girls away, must have been a living nightmare for her. When did she have a chance to grieve?
The cost of Thom’s sickness was ultimately astronomical. It took away a father from his daughters, and ended a genuinely special marriage of thirty years. The Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher from Placerville were torn apart.
The disease took away a friend from all of us who knew and loved him, and cost a beloved painter to the many fans who believed in him and stood by him through it all. The disease took away a special light that shone on this planet, a light of hope and love and peace.
Most of all, Thom’s sickness cost him his life.
Thomas Kinkade was an artist, a true artist in every sense. He devoted his entire life to his craft. From the boy who could draw, to the man who spent hundreds of hours painting a single masterful work, he had a vision for what his art meant in the world, and what he was expressing with it from deep inside himself. There was no choice for Thom but to be an artist. He was put on this earth for one purpose, and he knew it.
I spent sixteen years in friendship with Thom. I sat for hours and hours listening to him talk about his life and his art. I can say that he was deeply genuine in his desire to serve God by his gift, and to be a messenger of hope and comfort for people who looked at and enjoyed his art. There was nothing cynical about it. It came from a deep well inside him, a deep, sincere need. Perhaps it was his own need for hope and comfort. Perhaps his early life struggles, when his own young world was always on the brink of survival, made him so deeply aware of the need to feel safe and secure.
His enthusiasm for life was unmatched. There is no one I know who takes in life with as much passion and open-hearted joy as he did. Sometimes we call people who live closer to the spiritual reality of life “crazy.” But for Thom, life was a spiritual experience. We’ve been trained to believe that anything religious or spiritual takes place inside the defining walls of a church, or in a contemplative, or silent, or serious mode. Thom got up every day and threw the shutters open wide, and opened his arms to the world. He took in the glory of nature, which he saw as synonymous with the glory of God. He saw God in the world around him, and he never took it for granted. He was truly a joyful man, and he wanted to impart some of that spiritual sense of the world to the people who saw his images. At his core, Thom was a man who served God in the best way he knew how, with the gifts given to him.
Perhaps there was a part of Thom that knew he had to die in order to take care of his family, when his mortal shell couldn’t do it anymore. Was it poetic justice or God’s grace that the love of Thom’s life, Nanette, inherited the real estate, the company, the original paintings, and the benefits of a life insurance policy the company had taken out on Thom, reputed to be valued at $60 million.
Thom had to die to become the artist whose legacy would live on, separating the person and his personal habits from the work itself. Now the work can stand alone. Now the work remains in the world, with only its pure meaning and its intentions.
I separate the business of Thomas Kinkade from the work of Thomas Kinkade. He wasn’t a businessman in any way, and he didn’t understand much of what the business was doing. This is not to say that he wasn’t responsible for what happened to the people who invested in his art and his galleries. He was responsible and culpable by default, and by his own weakness and avoidance. He wanted to see the good, but he ignored the bad. He wanted to live in the light, but the shadow followed him. The story of the man ended tragically, but the story of his legacy is triumphant. Thom’s light will forever be in the world.
Since his passing I have missed my friend, and I miss him to this day. I know that his suffering has ended, and in a sad way, I feel good about that.
Nanette now carries on his work, and Ken is once again involved in the Thomas Kinkade business. Which waters Rick Barnett is sailing these days, I don’t know, but surely he must have felt regret when Thom died.
Since my time with Thom, I’ve continued my branding business and continue to license products, and I have been lucky enough to be around to watch my children grow up. But there isn’t a day that I don’t think about, or am somehow reminded of, my friend Thomas Kinkade, the most colorful and talented person I have ever known.