I grew up the son of a therapist. My sister eventually got her degree in counseling psychology. My entire life I was surrounded by the reminders of “feelings,” and how important it was to access them. It became almost a joke as I got older. I remember one Hanukkah my mom getting a gag gift. It was a psychotherapist doll that said on repeat, “And how did that make you feel?” With that upbringing, one would think that I had experience with psychoanalysis myself, but I had not.
My sister and my mom had encouraged me to seek out a good therapist while Amy was going through her illness, but I was not ready until after Amy died—I was simply too focused on her. Eventually, though, the point came when I knew I needed to work on myself to find a safe space to talk about issues I could not discuss with my family and kids. I wanted to talk about the complexities of being single, of single parenting, and of wanting to do something meaningful with my work life.
I found a good therapy match after a couple of stumbles, and can’t imagine not having found that private time, even up to the current day.
And then there was my mother-in-law. Ann is like no other human I know on this planet. If you’re looking for the cliché contentious son-in-law/mother-in-law relationship, don’t waste your time looking here. Ann has made me feel like her son since the day I entered the Krouse family, and our connection has only deepened over the almost three decades we’ve been in each other’s lives. She was there for almost every one of Amy’s doctors’ appointments, taking copious notes, asking the right questions, and holding Amy’s hand. She was there for the most intimate caretaking moments of home hospice, and she never left the house without taking the time to assure me that everything I was doing for Amy was exactly the right way to approach the end of her life. She didn’t need to be told how much I needed to hear it. She just knew.
She’s been nothing but supportive and comforting since we lost Amy, and she continues to encourage me to keep telling my story. As difficult as it must be sometimes for her to hear me talk about her daughter, her work, her spirit, and our love story, Ann has been a smart, honest, enthusiastic sounding board for me and her grandchildren, no matter what we need to discuss. She even knows when to give advice and when to simply let us figure it out for ourselves. She also enjoys pointing out how ironic it is that she’s Amy’s mom because of their tremendously different approaches to fashion, fiction, and fun. Ann knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything about our relationship is reciprocal.
During long walks, lingering dinners, and extended visits, there’s nothing we can’t talk about, nothing off-limits or too personal, speaking openly and at length about life and death. A long walk in Atlanta, in her neighborhood in the suburbs of Chicago, or near her home in Florida would always result in an overall check-in about both of our lives. At one dinner in particular in Chicago, there we were, sharing how we each felt about our current lots in life. We have so much in common yet are a generation apart in our experiences of loss. Ann took that time to remind me how much it meant to her and my father-in-law that I took such great care of their daughter during the darkest time of all of our lives. I knew she meant it deep down in her heart, and hearing it truly made me feel a sense of reassurance that I’d done the right thing by taking care of Amy in home hospice. In our multilayered conversations, I tried to share my experience with the darkness of grief and, as she was experiencing her own loss, to reassure her that time itself does mysterious things, advice I received from others who had experienced intense loss.
Not to be outdone, every single one of our siblings, their spouses, and their children were extraordinary, the perfect combination of emotional connection, healthy space, and unconditional love in endless supply toward me and the kids. They all promised Amy that they would look after us, and they’ve kept that promise flawlessly, even while navigating the depth of their own loss. We shared so much joy as our kids were growing up together—the Sunday gatherings, the Shabbat dinners, the family trips, celebrating large and small milestones, just hanging out. That we could share sorrow with the same loving, unedited closeness is a gift I’ll never take for granted.
My in-laws lived for years in a home built for family. We often had family dinners there, sometimes all twenty-three of us, sitting around laughing and eating and sharing stories. Each and every dinner started with a toast from our patriarch, Amy’s dad, Paul. This tradition carried on after Amy died, even if the table was not quite full of all of our family members (kids in other cities working, or off to college). I remember clearly one such dinner in June 2017. There we were, cousins ranging in age from two to twenty-four, going around the table and sharing stories. I was in my new “crying” phase, where I could not get through talking about Amy without shedding a tear. The sense of family was deep. The love in the room radiated, a feeling I am so grateful for—one I know many people are not so lucky to have.
Of course, family isn’t always blood; and leading the pack of close, true friends who were there to see the kids and me through the darkest times and walk me toward the light again were Jeff and Dave, who’ve been my sidekicks for over fifty years.
I met Jeff in a parochial nursery school in Chicago. Dave made his entrance a year later, in kindergarten. We have been best friends ever since. Dave was my best man at Amy’s and my wedding, and Jeff was the contractor when Amy and I built our dream house. Our wives became friends and shared mad mutual respect. Jeff’s wife became one of Amy’s closest friends, and our daughters are close in age and have a special bond. Dave’s son is very much my nephew. Over our five decades together, “my boys” and I have been through births, bar mitzvahs, wins and losses, successes and failures, marriages, and, ultimately, loss together. The support I felt and continue to feel from these two guys and their families is difficult to describe, beyond saying that they were and are just there for me, plain and simple, and it means everything.
Courtesy of Brooke Hummer
The three of us know that we can say anything to one another with zero judgment. Over the course of our lives, that has morphed from childhood silliness to girls in high school to issues relating to long-term marriages and raising children. After I lost Amy, they found ways to connect with me on a deeper level, whether that was more meaningful phone conversations about how I was feeling—yes, guys do have the capacity to talk about emotions—or spontaneous texts about a moment that reminded them of Amy. These guys, along with several other of my good friends, were excellent at distracting me as well. Our tradition of seeing our favorite blues artist, our childhood friend Dave Specter, became a welcome distraction from the depths of grief. This process was new for all of us, and even though they too were grieving the loss of their dear friend, they figured out how to be there in a perfect way for me.
This quote from a Friends episode takes on new meaning for me as I think about all of these guys: “Friends don’t let friends suffer from jellyfish stings.”
And then there were the kids.
They were on my mind every minute, and I was frightened. Not about them. They’re amazing young adults, and I’m so proud of them. They’d been Herculean every step of the way, from their mom’s initial diagnosis to her death to her memorial service. They comforted me every bit as much as I comforted them.