And this wizard will display constant kindness, peerless positivity, and will consistently err on the side of generosity toward said apprentice. That is an actual thing. It’s possible. I’ve witnessed it. I experienced it.
Nick is a virtuoso on the piano, but he can also sing, play the mandolin, and compose music with the best of them. I would often hear Amy, as she stood at her computer, where she was known to work in our house, listening to clip after clip of some composition Nick had created for this or that project. Our family had the added bonus of appreciating Nick’s creativity with a birthday song or video created just for the occasion. These were always silly and funny but also brilliant and original works of art. For his part, Nick talked to the crowd gathered for Amy’s memorial service and discussed the unique nature of his working relationship with Amy:
What really set her apart as an art partner was that you got the sense that she wanted to work with you because she was a fan of yours. She loved you and wanted to make something cool with you. She didn’t hire you to be a cog. She wanted you to do your thing. In that sense, she didn’t treat you how she wanted to be treated. She treated you how you wanted to be treated. And therein, she wanted you to succeed.
As Nick concluded his remarks that day, the throngs that were gathered could hear Amy’s voice begin to echo through the synagogue sound system, singing her and Nick’s song “Wanna.” I was the one who’d planned the service, so, of course, I’d known this was coming. Still, it was impossible not to be utterly devastated by the sound of her voice. But almost immediately everyone in the sanctuary was smiling through the tears as her incredible genius for wordplay winked at us through her lyrics:
Wanna roast a marshmallow
lightly charred
Wanna rhyme this with
Jean-Luc Godard
Wanna be like a battery
A total diehard but if my time is up
I know I lived and loved hard
Nick shared with us the evolution of that song:
One of the last projects we collaborated on was a challenge that I issued to her last September. She had always been the initiator prior to this. I said, we should write a song together, Amy. You do the lyrics; I’ll write the music. But you gotta sing it. She was hesitant about singing for fear of singing, but I said, if you don’t sing, deal’s off. A week later she had written five poems and was talking about doing an entire album!
As part of the creative process, Nick described an interaction they had after he presented some music to her as part of their collaboration. It is a microcosm of a typical AKR interaction. What Nick describes here is commonplace to anyone who had any sort of working relationship with Amy. That it came at the end of Amy’s life is what makes this exchange worth including here. It says so much about Amy:
“Are you trying to score a movie? Is that harp? No. Sounds like pearly gates. None of that.” I would have been insulted if she wasn’t right and, also, it was just so badass. Even at the end, with a breathing tube and sapped of energy, artistic integrity and humor coursed through her veins, and she pushed me to a higher standard. Then and always.
To this day Nick has a special relationship with each of our kids, and he’s part of a very close group that we now call family. He had a powerful impact on Amy’s life. It was so moving to hear at the service that she had an equally powerful impact on his.
Then there was Ruby, who brought her intelligence, her humor, and her jack-of-all-trades skill set into our lives to help Amy through the completion of many, many projects and never missed a beat in the day-to-day responsibilities of working for a successful author. She was there throughout Amy’s end-of-life struggles and watched her vitality slip away, but she did it with enormous poise and always kept her tears to herself as best she could. Ruby has a special place at the Rosenthal table and always will.
Ruby shared with us that she found the job on Craigslist. The copy for the job listing included free lunch, which appealed to Ruby immediately. Ruby did such an elegant job of sharing with us the depth of her relationship with Amy as a woman, an artist, a friend, a boss, and a mentor.
Amy wasn’t just brilliant and creative. She had a true, raw love of her work. It is a palpable, contagious, precious thing she carried.
Amy seized on Ruby’s brilliance and they collaborated on Amy’s last memoir, Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal. There they would be, spending countless amounts of time debating a comma here or arguing over a semicolon versus ellipses there, and would pepper the house with pages from the book. But the biggest impact Ruby wanted to convey to those gathered for Amy that day was to share how much Amy meant to her as a person. Amy got to know Ruby so well, a side effect of working side by side with someone every day. She shared that Amy once wrote her a birthday card that said, “I hope today is filled with all your favorite things: Trees, friends, hummus, and crying.” Each of these activities was illustrated in stick figure form. Of course, anyone who spends even a brief amount of time with Amy was gifted with her ingenious creativity:
Once, I showed up at work in a dreadfully sad mood. After attempting normal conversation for a bit, she gave up and sat down next to me. “Are you feeling a little purple today?” She explained that if a ruby were a bit blue, it would be purple.
It is not difficult to see how Ruby remains a dear friend to our family. Her ongoing relationship with the kids will last a lifetime. And lucky for me, as I have embarked on a more creative version of myself, I have the good fortune of leaning on Ruby for all things relating to words and images.
Brian, a self-described “manny-slash–Marty Poppins,” did such an extraordinary job in his eulogy of introducing himself and explaining why the kids and I consider him a Rosenthal for life. He, too, came from Appleton and was with our family from the time the kids were eleven, thirteen, and fifteen to sixteen, eighteen, and twenty. Consistent with what others shared about their time with Amy, Brian shared how Amy impacted his life:
She led by example. She showed me how to do the big things: practice kindness, be true to yourself—both as an artist and as a person—and what it takes to be an incredible parent and loving partner. And also the small, yet equally important stuff: How to admit a mistake. How to express gratitude. How to show you care about someone with a yellow Post-it note or loose-leaf homemade sign.
Of course, the theme of Amy’s enthusiasm for life was present in Brian’s remarks as well. Sitting in the audience, overwhelmed with grief and barely able to hold my head up, I was filled with warmth hearing Brian talk about an average day with Amy.
I’d show up for work and she’d ask how my morning was. “Um, fine . . . I ate a peanut butter and banana sandwich.” And she’d be like: “No way! They were just talking on NPR how Elvis ate a peanut butter and banana sandwich every morning. We should totally listen to Elvis this afternoon while we work.”
It was impossible not to smile through the tears listening to this very Amy moment. Like most things in her life, it was not the big moments that mattered. Instead it was times like this that made Amy the person we all think back on today.
It was our instinct to have these brilliant friends and collaborators talk with us about Amy’s impact on their lives. When it came down to it, they each exceeded my expectations with their stories, their sincerity, and their humor. Oh, and did I mention that they all have Amy tattoos. Literally. I would challenge any group of former employees anywhere to see if their former employers made a permanent mark on their employees like Amy did here.