Caitlin Thomas - Later Life

Later Life

After Dylan's death in 1953, Thomas returned to Laugharne, but she was desperate to leave the village, referring to it as a "permanently festering wound". Thomas spent less and less time in Wales, and made several journeys to Ireland and Italy. She spent an increasing amount of time in Italy, staying on Procida, until, in 1957, she decided to relocate to the country. She left Britain with her children in September 1957, and moved to Rome with a Welsh actor and writer, Cliff Gordon. Gordon was homosexual, and his main purpose in Rome appears to have been as a drinking partner for Thomas. Towards the end of 1957, while eating at a restaurant on Via Margutta she met Giuseppe Fazio, a Sicilian 'director's assistant'. The couple began a relationship soon after, which lasted until Thomas' death. Although they never married, they had a son together, Francesco, who was born on 29 March 1963 when Thomas was 49. In 1963, while in Italy, she wrote her second book, Not Quite Posthumous Letters to My Daughter.

By her own account, after the death of Thomas she experienced severe emotional and psychological distress, and was treated in clinics and asylums in London, Rome and Catania. She began to attend Alcoholics Anonymous in 1973, aged 60. In 1982 she and Fazio left Rome and moved to Catania, Sicily, eventually moving into a house left by Fazio's mother.

Caitlin Thomas died in Catania on 31 July 1994 following a long illness, aged 80. She was buried next to Dylan in Laugharne, though the burial request came as a surprise to her family, with her daughter believing that she would have preferred to have been buried in Italy after spending so much of her later life there.