There’s nothing like a blank page
You get to start from scratch
It could be anything, man, there’s no catch
It’s a good place for a dreamer
A good place for a dreamer to dream away
A blank page.
I was making my way through my grief, albeit slowly. That blank space had some outlines on it, sketches of ideas. One thing I’d come to know for certain was that I didn’t want to look back on this time in my life someday and find that I wasn’t appreciating each day I had.
But of course, it’s often just as you begin to feel your equilibrium returning that the ground shifts beneath you. Or at least that’s how it happened for me.
Early in September 2017, after a summer spent reconnecting with the man I’d been, I decided to attend the wedding of some family friends with Miles. It seemed such an obvious choice at the time—I was saying yes to everything, why wouldn’t I go?
The wedding was unique because it was one of the firsts for a friend whose child was getting married. It was also special because the mother of the groom had been one of Amy’s close friends—mine as well, but they’d had a very special bond.
Still, though, what was I thinking?
There are so many triggers at weddings, as I learned from this experience. Seeing my friends walk in the beautiful sunlight to join their big family, their many friends, the wedding party, and these young, earnest, idealistic kids was wonderful. At the same time, I felt so deeply the permanent void in my own life. Amy would not be with me to see our children marry. We would never have that joyful moment of sending our kids off to their new life, to start their own family. Ugh, did that hit me hard in the gut. Such a juxtaposition between these two completely divergent emotions.
There was also the love emanating from the young couple getting married. They radiated everything that is good about thinking of the future of this planet—beautiful, smart, successful, emotional beings joining to make an impact. Would my own kids ever be so happy at their own weddings, I wondered, should they choose to marry? Or would this albatross hover over them always, prohibiting them from experiencing real joy for themselves? The emotional pain of thinking that way was very real.
I hadn’t given much thought to the dancing part of the wedding festivities, either—obviously. I was getting used to doing many things on my own at this point—family dinners, out with friends, even live music. However, dancing with anyone at this wedding was not a proposition I had any interest in entertaining. In my previous life I’d loved to dance at weddings, at a party, at a concert—anywhere, really. Amy would always boost my confidence by telling me what a good dancer I was. She considered herself rhythmically challenged and did not think she was a good dancer at all, but we had so much fun dancing together. We would always be the last to leave the dance floor. But now the idea of dancing was unpleasant, to put it kindly. Yet another spark to remind me what I had lost.
And then there was table placement. It was hard enough that Amy was not there for me to talk to. Truth be told, even though Amy was much more extroverted than I, in a setting like this, we would have simply appreciated the time to sit together and visit, to talk and reflect. Now I was at the singles table. The first conversation I had turned out to be with a widow who looked me right in the eye and said, “I lost my husband seventeen years ago, and it doesn’t get better.” She went on to say she’d gone through phases of trying to date and had a miserable time. Thank you. That is just exactly appropriate to share with a new widower, very useful information—and so sensitive.
The culmination of all these factors prompted my early exit. Like I said, what was I thinking?
The aftermath of the wedding was tough. In many ways, it wasn’t just the event that upset me, it was the fact that I hadn’t seen my reaction coming at all; I’d been completely unprepared. Hard as I tried to put it behind me and press on, and to appreciate each day as it came, for a while it felt like all the progress I’d been making had been wiped out in a weekend.
Being emotionally overtaken by an unexpected, seemingly innocuous comment was something I became quite familiar with. When someone close to you dies, there’s an assumption that the big events will be the hardest part—and they are indeed quite brutal. The first anniversary of Amy’s death. The one-year anniversary of her memorial service. Her birthday, of course. Family gatherings. Even events honoring Amy, well-intentioned and appreciated as they were, were harsh as hell.
But the thing about these big milestones is that at least you can see them coming and brace yourself, for all the good it does; the quieter moments—ambushes, as I’ve come to think of them—are a different story. I’ve had a much harder time with these surprises, which leap out at you with no warning when you’re just going about your day and seem to reopen every deep wound you’ve been trying so hard to heal.
I’m religious about my annual checkup, and when I went to my first one after losing Amy, the receptionist slid a form in front of me, as always, and asked if all the information was still accurate. Instinctively I was going to answer yes when I looked more closely at the form.
“Emergency contact.” No, that’s not still accurate. Not at all.
“Marital status.” Not that either. There’s no box for “widower,” by the way.
It was such a routine exercise, but it overwhelmed me with the sheer sadness of everything hiding beneath the surface, and the reality that I was alone now. I had a new life. A solitary life. There was even a moment of shock at the lack of tact, how thoughtless society can be when dealing with death.
Those days following that wedding were a dark time, one of the worst. Pick a random night from around then. Chances are, I was lying awake at some unreasonable hour. When people talk about the pain of grief, there’s so much that can’t be put into words, or even concrete feelings, just these flashes of emotion, powerful, gripping, blinding. Once they take hold, they are impossible to shake. Back when my insomnia used to keep me awake obsessing over little things before Amy got sick, in what felt like a previous life, it was often a snowball of anxiety. One thing I’d forgotten to do at the office became ten, building up momentum as I thought about all the other things I might have forgotten, until it was impossible to move my brain anywhere else. My sleeplessness in these days was different. Instead of having so many thoughts to juggle, I really had only two: missing Amy, and the vague fear that I wasn’t living the life that she’d want for me. I felt a renewed connection to being an insomniac.
Of course I did emerge from it.
As I moved further away from Amy’s death, that’s largely how it went. Things would be improving, I’d be feeling better; then something would come along and yank me backward. And yet I never lost my momentum completely. Arrested as I felt at times, I could feel myself moving to a different place inside, shifting my vision forward to the future in a way that I hadn’t been able to in months. That wedding with Miles had been a low point, perhaps the worst since Amy’s death, but it was just that: a single point in my healing. There would be other low points, and I would deal with them as they came. But if I’d learned one thing from my meditation practice, it was that I couldn’t spend time worrying about a future I couldn’t prevent. I would take those moments one at a time; in the meantime, I focused on where I was—for good or bad.
This was largely my state of mind in late February 2018, as I was packing for a trip to San Francisco to attend a creative conference called Matter. They’d created a scholarship in Amy’s name, and this would be the first annual award, presented to an artist whose work inspires a sense of community and connectedness. By total coincidence, the award presentation was on March 3, 2018, the day after what would have been our twenty-seventh anniversary.
As I was packing for my trip to California, I found myself poking around in the closet Amy and I shared in the dream house we’d designed and built together. We’d intentionally placed the closet between our bedroom and the bathroom, so that we could share the beginnings and ends of our days together getting dressed and undressed. Not long after Amy’s death though, I knew something had to change with that closet. Just walking through it had become impossibly hard. I have a family member who’s left her husband’s closet intact for years after his death. I didn’t want that. I didn’t need to be further reminded several times a day that Amy was gone.
The truth is, Amy never cared much for clothes. She would have been happy wearing a uniform every day—which she actually did, as a form of experimental art, for a while. But despite her relative lack of interest, after her death, her clothes had a way of catching my eye every time I walked past them, peripheral flashes of color accompanied by a requisite dose of painful reality. The cute long-sleeved shirt with the French lettering . . . and a sudden pang that we wouldn’t be getting that flat in Paris we’d been talking about after all. That great little dress we bought for her in Thailand—what a beautiful trip that was, celebrating an anniversary, and now there would be no more of those.
In the days and weeks after Amy’s death, it was still too soon for those memories to be happy ones. Thankfully, Amy’s mom, siblings, sisters-in-law, and Paris came in and took out Amy’s clothes for me. I stayed in the house but out of the way and put full trust in these wonderful women. I had set aside a few items I wanted to keep for myself, memories I just couldn’t part with. Mostly, I wanted my daughter to take whatever she wanted for herself and, who knows, maybe her kids someday.
When the clean-out was finished, only a few of Amy’s items remained, hanging in the corner. Seeing the closet largely emptied of Amy’s clothes was startling at first. At the same time, it felt just like my heart, a place where there would always be a small space that would go unfilled, permanently reserved for Amy.
I took the opportunity that the vacated space provided to move my own stuff around. In one of the empty spaces I reserved a couple of shelves for pictures of Amy and the kids and a few items of hers I was not sure what to do with. One of those piles on a shelf contained a few journals and books that I had never taken the time to fully investigate.
So there I was, packing for San Francisco, when I stumbled across a book on her side of the closet. As I looked at it closely, I saw the familiar handwriting on the cover, “for Jason,” with her usual signature—a heart and “Amy” signed in her distinct cursive style, with the y attached to the a just so.
Courtesy of Brooke Hummer
It hit me right in the gut.
Just looking at the cover, the curves of the letters leading to thoughts of what could be hiding inside, made me too sad to deal with it at that moment. Instead I decided to take it to San Francisco with me and read it on our anniversary a few days later.
On March 2, 2018, I quietly sat down in my hotel room and pulled the book out of my bag. I braced myself for it, but how do you brace for a tsunami?
Words is a whimsical, brilliant book by Christoph Niemann, illustrated with his own unique language of pictures. On each page is one simple word.
And on each page, Amy had written a message to me. It became more and more apparent as I read that this was a little project she’d undertaken and hidden away toward the end of her life.
One of the early pages in the book bore the word paper, for example, but Amy had added in her own handwriting, “I always said that I may be the writer in the family, but you truly know what to do with a piece of paper. Each of our children have been gifted a ‘Jason letter’ on many occasions.”
On another page, with an image of a person with a sick face on both his face and his belly, Amy had written, “I think we should have been calling it ‘collywobbles’ all along!” The very next page, with the word gobbledygook and the image of a doctor conveying a diagnosis to a patient, included Amy’s caption: “Yes, Amy, it looks like you have quite a bit of collywobbles and gobbledygook inside you.”
I already had tears streaming down my face. Then I got to the entry that crushed me most. The image was of an ant carrying an apple several times its size. The word on the page was carry. The handwriting, shakier and clearly that of a sick person, read, “I will ‘carry’ you with me always and fo . . .”
Courtesy of Brooke Hummer
Yes, this brilliant woman—who was the most particular person about grammar and typos and would call you on your shit if you sent her even a love note with an error in it—couldn’t finish the sentence and left the page as is. Probably the result of a morphine-induced micronap. It broke my heart, and what would have been my twenty-seventh wedding anniversary ended up as a more intense day of grieving than I ever could have imagined.
One lesson I learned early on is that grief as a process is unique to everyone, and there is no right or wrong way to flow through it. This came much more clearly into focus as time went on and so many people shared their stories with me. By thrusting me into the spotlight, Amy had presented me with a path I never saw coming, but it was mine to take. Seeing this “word” book really hit me hard. I felt heartbroken that Amy had had to be so ill. The sudden wave of sadness was inevitable. I was resigned to the fact that my life would be an emotional roller coaster for the indefinite future, maybe always—one day I would be a wreck, the next, I’d stand tall as a representative of the Rosenthal family to honor Amy and help move her legacy permanently forward. I wasn’t about to let her down, and I managed to smile my way through the Matter gathering and the awarding of the scholarship in her name.
It’s a dichotomy that I realized would represent my life going forward, and indeed still does even now as I write these words. If I was going to speak about Amy, to honor her memory publicly, I needed to come to terms with the fact that my past, even the painful aspects of it, would be a part of my present and my future. It’s not a decision everyone would make, but it’s the one that felt right for me.
I am asked often whether carrying Amy with me always, and candidly telling everyone who will listen that it is an important part of my process, is like taking three steps forward and two steps back. In a word—no. I feel a healthy combination of accessing emotions about my loss that I do not mind returning to and a serene sense of my mission to keep Amy alive through talking about her and her uniquely gifted work. It is a message to the universe I think we need much more of as our planet gets more hostile and divergent. And personally, I feel good sharing her with the world, not only sharing my story but contributing my message of resilience as well.
Painful as it was, that conference, the book—the convergence of mourning and celebration of Amy on this day that had meant so much to us as a couple—all forced a realization upon me. In the year since Amy died, her life, her words, kept bringing me into contact with extraordinary new people. The essay in the New York Times had exposed a whole world of people to the woman that she was, and some of them now looked to me in ways that I never could have anticipated.
Her death had been covered in the nationwide press, from the New York Times to the Chicago Tribune to People magazine. Over five million people had read “You May Want to Marry My Husband” by the time she died; and since I was that husband, her spotlight inevitably spilled over onto me. I started hearing from a lot of women who’d lost their spouses, not with marriage proposals (yet) but with sweet, thoughtful, sincere condolences. In fact, two very accomplished women who’d been through public losses of their own reached out to share their experiences, openly describing the added intensity of grieving while strangers watch, and the helpless feeling of being at the mercy of unfamiliar emotions that are running wild. With time, they promised, joy would come if I let myself stay open to it. I couldn’t imagine it.
Because of the national attention that Amy’s death received, I also found myself descended upon by the media, and by—ready?—Hollywood producers. Shocking as it felt, I was “that husband,” “that guy,” so I guess there was an obvious logic to it, in someone’s world. It wasn’t my world, though, and I had no idea what to do. Wouldn’t you know, it was another Amy who came to the rescue. Her name is Amy Rennert, and she was Amy’s literary agent and friend. They were as close as sisters, and she feels like a part of our family. She stepped right in on my behalf, setting up a protective force field around me and our family and handling this barrage of inquiries.
I’m sure my mouth was hanging open a little when Amy Rennert explained that some top Hollywood producers were interested in obtaining film rights to Amy’s and my story and to some of her books. She encouraged me to at least listen to what these people had to say, sooner rather than later, so we could figure out who, if anyone, was the best fit. The idea of honoring Amy and perpetuating her exquisite messages by making a film about her life was definitely intriguing—Amy would have been ecstatic at the prospect.
Next thing I knew, we were on our way to Hollywood to “take meetings” with several very successful producers. Their bios were stellar, and their experience in the business was off the charts. For three days I collected myself emotionally and met one after another of these amazing people at a hotel in LA. Every single one of these superstars was warm, compassionate, and intensely interested in Amy and her legacy, and they came prepared. They’d dived deep into her vast body of work, from her published books to her films to her online presence to her résumé of public speaking engagements. I wasn’t just impressed, I was very, very grateful.
Amy Rennert and I flew out of LAX to our respective homes wishing Amy had known these people. She would have been fast friends with many of them, and she would have had dozens of collaboration ideas, whether they involved a feature film or not. It was an incredibly stimulating trip, and both thrilling and intimidating to think of Amy, and our family, being portrayed on the big screen. Choosing the best team to make it happen and make it happen right, capturing the unique magic and contagious generosity of her spirit, was one of the most significant decisions I’d faced since Amy died. I was lucky to have Amy Rennert by my side—someone who knows us all, loved us as much as we loved her, and wasn’t about to settle for anything but the best for us, and especially for Amy.
We ended up going with my first choice, a guy who shares a lot of my values, who reminds me of Paul, my father-in-law and role model, and who, as luck would have it, has Chicago connections.
The California trip was inspiring, and I came back more determined than ever not only to honor Amy’s legacy but also put it to good, active use. Soon after I returned, I began the process of forming the Amy Krouse Rosenthal Foundation.
The mission reflects two causes important to Amy and our family: to support research in early detection of ovarian cancer, and to promote child literacy. I can’t stress enough that I had no idea what I was doing. I had no qualifications to serve as the executive director and chairman of the board of a nonprofit organization. What I did have, though, was the full support of my entire family and the passionate involvement of a group of beautiful, supertalented people who agreed to serve on our initial board.
The Amy Krouse Rosenthal Foundation is small, and we’re new, but we’ve already funded a researcher in Amy’s name to see what kind of dent we can make in increasing awareness of the early signs of ovarian cancer, signs often ignored because they’re so common among women: B is for persistent BLOATING that doesn’t come and go; E is for difficulty EATING, and feeling full more quickly; A is for ABDOMINAL and pelvic pain felt on most days; and T is for TOILET, changes in urination or bowel habits. (And, guys, in case you haven’t already figured this out, women are a lot tougher than we are, so they often battle through these symptoms without taking them seriously enough. Pay attention!) Early-stage ovarian cancer detection can result in a 90 percent survival rate, as compared to late-stage ovarian cancer, which has about a 20 percent survival rate and is unfortunately much more common.
As for child literacy, we have already donated tens of thousands of books to kids in need and are committed to many, many more being handed out over time. We have also engaged in programming geared toward kids to expose them to books at an early age, those formative years when we know reading is essential for a lifetime engagement with learning.
I can’t begin to describe how proud I am of the Amy Krouse Rosenthal Foundation, and how fulfilled and grateful I am to be spending part of my time on this planet giving back, on Amy’s and our family’s behalf. And as usual, just when I thought Amy had enriched my life as much as she possibly could in the wake of her death, another door opened because of her, and all I had to do was say yes and walk on in.
All of this work on behalf of Amy’s memory came to a crescendo in April 2018 when I walked on the main stage for a TED talk.
A member of the TED community approached me at the end of 2017 and invited me to give a talk at the upcoming main conference in Vancouver, Canada. In case you’re not familiar with TED, it’s a nonprofit global media organization that holds a main annual conference (and many others around the world). Many of the talks are posted online in more than a hundred languages and cover a wide variety of subjects, with the slogan “Ideas worth spreading.” TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design.
Amy had a relationship with TED. She’d spoken at TEDx conferences throughout the country (a TEDx event is a local gathering where live TED-like talks and performances are shared with the community) and assisted them with other creative projects, sometimes in collaboration with other artists, and she had enormous respect for the whole organization.
A million reactions flooded through my body, mind, and soul at the suggestion that I was even capable of doing something like this. I asked for some time to think about it.
What attracted me most to even the suggestion of telling my story publicly in this setting was the fact that I’d have control of the content. It was not an interview setting, where a talking head would drill me on my personal life, on the concept of Amy’s essay being a personal ad, and on whether I’d found love yet. Here, I thought, I could control the message. If I agreed to write and deliver a TED talk, I could weave together my story the only way I knew how—being really honest about Amy and our relationship, the end of life, the treatment of the subject of death in our culture, loss of all types, the responses to Amy’s article, and moving through and with grief to find some joy, happiness, and beauty. If they’d let me convey all that in my own way, why not give it a shot? I agreed to write a piece for TED.
Writing that TED talk was cathartic. It was also overwhelmingly emotional. I labored over every single word. When the script was as close to finished as I felt it was going to get, I submitted it to the powers that be, and they accepted it virtually as is.
I was on my way to giving a TED talk.
I spent the next couple of months far outside my comfort zone. I rehearsed that speech as if my life depended on it. Of course, I wanted to deliver—or, as a dear friend offered as a bit of coaching advice, “not suck.” (Thanks again for that, Amy. Yes, yet another Amy R., AKR’s college roommate and now my confidante on many subjects.) I wanted to nail it for Amy, for the thousands of people who’d reached out to me about Amy’s essay, for my kids, for my family, and for the message itself. I practiced in front of the mirror. I practiced all over the house. I practiced in my law office. You name the place, I practiced there. I didn’t share the content with my children or my family or my friends. I occasionally worked with a wonderful TED coach, but other than that, I was very private about what I was going to say.
I flew to Vancouver, walked nervously into the conference center, and promptly bumped into an old high school pal. He was surprised to see me. He was shocked when he saw this:
Courtesy of Brooke Hummer
It turned out he was a TED veteran, and he couldn’t have been more encouraging and supportive. Running into him after all those years at that time, at that place, felt like a sign that I’d made the right decision in agreeing to speak at this conference. My heart calmed from beating out of my chest to simply pounding as I headed to the greenroom to get ready. I was slated to give my talk on the Friday evening of the weeklong event, which ended Saturday morning. I could only imagine how many skilled, articulate, erudite acts I was following, and I wondered if I’d ever been this nervous in my life.
And then it was time. Paris was still in college in British Columbia, so as luck would have it, she was there, sitting in the audience to watch her dad succeed or fail at his first public-speaking gig. I went to the side of the stage to wait for my cue. Not until then, with two minutes to go, did I realize that I’d left my notes and my iPad in the greenroom. Oh, well. Too late now. I was about to stand naked, without a crutch, and deliver a speech in front of two thousand people.
I took a deep breath, stepped into that iconic TED red circle, and felt an immediate, surprising sense of calm as I dived in. Next thing I knew, I was saying, “Thank you.” My fourteen minutes were up, and my knees almost buckled with relief. I’d done it. I couldn’t believe it. What a full, exhilarating feeling. I was inundated with positive, warm, emotional responses, but none meant more to me than the hugs and heartfelt praise I got from my daughter. She was moved. She was impressed.
As soon as the applause for the last talk of the evening faded away, the throngs descended on the basement of the conference center for the wrap party. There was plenty of food, drink, music, and dancing—and what do you know, I ran into another Chicago friend, this one a woman who was a fellow parent at my son’s school for years. We started chatting, which evolved into dancing.
We were making our way around the dance floor when another dancing couple paused to acknowledge me and profusely thank me for the talk I’d given. We kept dancing. So did they. Step right, hips moving left. They introduced themselves. Shoulders swinging back in rhythm. They’d both been through significant losses as well. “My wife committed suicide a few months ago!” the man shouted over the music. Step right, now left. “Yeah, my husband died just a few months ago as well,” the woman loudly announced. Shake a hip side to side.
It was a brief, remarkable scene—total strangers connecting on a dance floor over our devastating losses without missing a single step, sharing stories, understanding, caring, just being alive together with so few words, all set to music.
The balance between moving forward through grief and keeping my past life with Amy very much a part of what I have chosen to do with my blank page is a conflict I still think about and have been asked to comment on often. I can’t imagine any other way, and honestly, I think Amy knew my path forward also. I touched upon this earlier, but it bears repeating: Amy had to have known that if her Modern Love column was published, it would be read widely. (I do not think she had any clue about the viral nature of what actually happened, but you get the point.) As a natural result of that, I would be the focus of attention in equal part to her gifted prose.
It has been so rewarding to keep Amy’s legacy alive in my speaking and in my writing. Time has brought me joy—a lot of it—and an appreciation that I have so much to be grateful for. One of those gifts is my incredible life with Amy. Keeping her in my private life by grieving in my own way as well as talking about her publicly in my work has made me capable of processing how fortunate I was to have had what I did with her. I feel I am now at a place where I deeply appreciate that, though it has taken a while to get to that place, because grief is a complex and unforgiving beast. But how lucky was I, and how lucky are all of us who have been to the depths of intense grieving? We are the fortunate ones to have loved so deeply, or why else would we have such intense reactions to loss?
Almost immediately after my TED talk, I started fielding requests for speaking engagements. Apparently I was the new go-to guy on the subjects of loss and grief. I’ll admit, it was a bit hard to know how to feel about this. Speaking about this regularly meant I’d be revisiting all of my challenges from the past year over and over again. I’d be moving forward by focusing on the past.
As time moves on, I move forward through and with grief, but also with a message of resilience added in. As that TED talk had revealed, I felt perfectly comfortable in that space.