We organized people into groups of visitors, to keep Amy from being overwhelmed at any given time. We had a “Krouse Night” with her parents and three siblings. They sang their family song, and weak as she was, Amy joined in. On a separate night, loving, loyal, lifelong friends of Amy’s came and regaled us with stories about her and us, from her high school years to her nervous anticipation about my calling her after our first date.
Amy and I had always shared an almost rabid love of music, and we had a variety of musicians come to our house and play for her. World-renowned blues guitarist and friend Dave Specter performed a stunning rendition of George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” Classical musicians serenaded her with stringed-instrument arrangements. A pianist with an angelic voice came every week, having learned the words and music of favorite songs I’d requested. Every one of these performances was weighted with meaning—not just for us but unexpectedly for the performers as well. Every one of those generous, gifted people told me later that performing for us was one of the most meaningful gigs they’d ever played.
For some reason, I became insistent that our home and lives be infused with candles. Their glow is ethereal, obviously, filling a room with an alive, flickering light that’s always changing. Candles of various sizes also seemed to me to represent the uniqueness of the human form. The different shapes, sizes, fragrances, wicks burning with their own unique intensities, the inevitability of their burning out, all became icons of humanity and its frailty. Yes, I was witnessing this frailty every minute of every day, right before my eyes, but the candles gave it a certain grace and elegance that spoke to me. Being at home for long stretches of time, I started making candles of my own. Soon our family room and living room became a Rosenthal chandlery. Any container would do—an old soup can stripped of its label, a mason jar, an old jelly jar, existing candleholders that had burned all the way down—you name it, it was a candidate for the next homemade candle. It became a creative outlet in an otherwise dark time, something I could do when it felt as if there were so many things I couldn’t, no matter how desperately I wanted to.
Then along came Valentine’s Day. To celebrate us, and all that “us” meant, on this Hallmark-manufactured day, I peppered the house with love notes. I took blank sheets of music paper, filled pages of it with the lyrics to some well-known as well as favorite love songs, and posted them all over the house. I know her perception of what was going on around her was getting dim, but I’m still certain Amy saw them all and felt them in that infinite part of her that understood everything.
9
I’m That Guy
There were signs and signals,
even if they couldn’t read them yet.
Perhaps three years ago
or just last Tuesday
a certain leaf fluttered
from one shoulder to another?
Something was dropped and then picked up.
Who knows, maybe the ball that vanished
into childhood’s thicket?
—Wisława Szymborska
Of course, I knew Amy had been spending a lot of time writing on her laptop, and I knew that whatever it was, she was fiercely determined to finish it. But in my wildest dreams, I never imagined this, published in the March 3, 2017, issue of the New York Times:
You May Want to Marry My Husband
by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
I have been trying to write this for a while, but the morphine and lack of juicy cheeseburgers (what has it been now, five weeks without real food?) have drained my energy and interfered with whatever prose prowess remains. Additionally, the intermittent micronaps that keep whisking me away midsentence are clearly not propelling my work forward as quickly as I would like. But they are, admittedly, a bit of trippy fun.
Illustration by Brian Rea.
Still, I have to stick with it, because I’m facing a deadline, in this case, a pressing one. I need to say this (and say it right) while I have a) your attention, and b) a pulse.
I have been married to the most extraordinary man for 26 years. I was planning on at least another 26 together.
Want to hear a sick joke? A husband and wife walk into the emergency room in the late evening on Sept. 5, 2015. A few hours and tests later, the doctor clarifies that the unusual pain the wife is feeling on her right side isn’t the no-biggie appendicitis they suspected but rather ovarian cancer.
As the couple head home in the early morning of Sept. 6, somehow through the foggy shock of it all, they make the connection that today, the day they learned what had been festering, is also the day they would have officially kicked off their empty-nesting. The youngest of their three children had just left for college.
So many plans instantly went poof.
No trip with my husband and parents to South Africa. No reason, now, to apply for the Harvard Loeb Fellowship. No dream tour of Asia with my mother. No writers’ residencies at those wonderful schools in India, Vancouver, Jakarta.
No wonder the word cancer and cancel look so similar.
This is when we entered what I came to think of as Plan “Be,” existing only in the present. As for the future, allow me to introduce you to the gentleman of this article, Jason Brian Rosenthal.
He is an easy man to fall in love with. I did it in one day.
Let me explain: My father’s best friend since summer camp, “Uncle” John, had known Jason and me separately our whole lives, but Jason and I had never met. I went to college out east and took my first job in California. When I moved back home to Chicago, John—who thought Jason and I were perfect for each other—set us up on a blind date.
It was 1989. We were only 24. I had precisely zero expectations about this going anywhere. But when he knocked on the door of my little frame house, I thought, “Uh-oh, there is something highly likable about this person.”
By the end of dinner, I knew I wanted to marry him.
Jason? He knew a year later.
I have never been on Tinder, Bumble or eHarmony, but I’m going to create a general profile for Jason right here, based on my experience of coexisting in the same house with him for, like, 9,490 days.
First, the basics: He is 5-foot-10, 160 pounds, with salt-and-pepper hair and hazel eyes.
The following list of attributes is in no particular order because everything feels important to me in some way.
He is a sharp dresser. Our young adult sons, Justin and Miles, often borrow his clothes. Those who know him—or just happen to glance down at the gap between his dress slacks and dress shoes—know that he has a flair for fabulous socks. He is fit and enjoys keeping in shape.
If our home could speak, it would add that Jason is uncannily handy. On the subject of food—man, can he cook. After a long day, there is no sweeter joy than seeing him walk in the door, plop a grocery bag down on the counter, and woo me with olives and some yummy cheese he has procured before he gets to work on the evening’s meal.
Jason loves listening to live music; it’s our favorite thing to do together. I should also add that our 19-year-old daughter, Paris, would rather go to a concert with him than anyone else.
When I was working on my first memoir, I kept circling sections my editor wanted me to expand upon. She would say, “I’d like to see more of this character.”