from the blog

Dear Amy Krouse Rosenthal

Dear Amy Krouse Rosenthal-

I read your essay last night, the one looking for a new wife for your husband because you are terribly sick.

I had avoided it for two days. I saw it there in the New York Times, titled “You May Want to Marry My Husband,” and I intentionally kept turning the pages. I had a feeling I knew where it was headed, and I didn’t want to go there. But for two days I saw repeated mentions of it, and finally I broke down and read it.

And then I broke down for real.

First of all, you are far more gracious than I am. For years I have tried to get my husband to agree to mourn my loss for years if I die early. Isn’t that the right thing to do? The thing you do if the raddest person ever, the center of your world, makes an untimely exit? I think so. After all, men can be kind of bad at acknowledging women’s importance during life, so at our untimely deaths it seems like the right thing to do to spend years wishing you’d shown her how much she really meant (though you couldn’t see it or admit it at the time).

But you clearly do not agree. So with what may have been your last essay published by the New York Times, you tried to find a suitable next wife for your husband. And you incredibly graciously left the end of the page blank “as a way of giving [them] the fresh start [they] deserve.”

Um, what? Incredible!! You are really making my plan for years of posthumous worship and self-imposed alone time for my husband look super-selfish (which, okay, it probably is, but. . . well. . . I was feeling pretty fine with that until now.).

After reading and feeling really affected by your essay, I went and read some of your previous writing. I found a piece you wrote for Oprah’s magazine talking about how much you appreciated your life and sort of worrying (at age 40) how many more times you’d get to do even mundane things in life.

It’s like you knew. You knew, didn’t you? (In a cosmic sense, that is.) And that makes me feel all kind of weird. Because I don’t know you, but I want you to stay. I don’t want you to go. I don’t want your husband to have another wife (and not just out of solidarity with my lonely husband if I am ever to leave prematurely). I want him (and us) to have you. Your gifts of putting things into words so perfectly. Your reminders about how important life is. Even the small things.

If that is not possible (or even if it is), there is a lesson here, right? Enjoy the little things. Enjoy all the days. Because you were sad when you were 40 and you thought you only had 40 more years left. When, in fact, you had a lot less than that. You only had eleven years. Which means your calculations were off by a lot. And those days were even more precious. Is that possible? That a day is worth more when you have less of them? Maybe, right?

Well, Amy, I want to say thank you. For your essay. For using your power with words to connect to the rest of us. For living your life out loud and wanting more days (when so many of us, myself included, sometimes take our days for granted, assuming we’ll have a million more of them).

I am grateful for you and your words. I wish you a million more days.

And, if anyone deserves worship (posthumous or otherwise), it’s you.

Comments
  • Alice

    Agreed, what a beautiful article and response!