Please, sir, may I have some more?
Not long ago a close family member asked me, “When are you moving? Aren’t there ghosts everywhere?” A little crass, I guess, but I understood the desire to protect me from too many memories and too much loneliness.
Whether to pack up and leave or stay right where you are is an intensely personal decision after you’ve lost a spouse you treasured, a decision no one can really make but you. I completely get it that staying is unbearable for some people. For me, at least for now, it would be unbearable for me to leave my house, to go home to some new place after a day’s work or an evening out or a weekend with the family or a trip.
I’ve mentioned several times that this was Amy’s and my dream house, and there’s no other way to describe it. We built it together from the ground up, on the same site as the little frame house we bought together, on a tree-lined residential street that’s about a ten-minute walk from Wrigley Field. When our kids came along and we realized we were running out of space, we hired my best friend Jeff as our general contractor, tore down the frame house, and started over. What we created can best be described as a modern farmhouse, with fabricated wood paneling on the outside and a whole wall of bookshelves on the inside that extends from the basement to the third floor, because we could, because we wanted to, because that was so much of who Jason&Amy were.
We made every single decision about every single detail as a team, but the house has Amy’s imprint, her unique artistic sensibility and her quirky style, everywhere you look.
We raised our family here together. We created here together, and cooked here together, and had Shabbat dinners and Backwards Nights here. We made life plans together here. Cougar spent fourteen years here with us. Amy wrote here, and I developed my own sense of art and style here. The playfulness of the powder room on the first floor was my pet project—sparkly wallpaper, and a magnificent clear chandelier with red accents. My own idiosyncratic habits evolved here. Adjusting the shades in the living room just so, organizing the firewood so that it was stacked exactly right, placing the three digitally printed pieces of art representing our children’s images in a neat row on our chest of drawers. When our kids come home from wherever they are, they come here.
“Home” is here, so I am too. For now. As I have learned too well, nothing is permanent.
Chicago is also a big part of that. On Tuesday, May 14, 2019, I fulfilled my dream of having a public piece of art in Amy’s memory installed in a place called Grandmother’s Garden in Lincoln Park, our family’s old stomping ground. I had spent nearly two years navigating the bureaucracies of the City of Chicago and the Chicago Park District. My kids and I all went to school near Lincoln Park, and it’s a neighborhood where Amy spent many hours in local cafés.
With the help of Chicago artist Susan Giles; a Chicago-based design and production studio called Space Haus; my friend and general contractor Jeff; a structural engineer; the Chicago Park District; and a committee overseeing public art installations in local parks, and with the blessings of Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, a nine-foot-tall yellow umbrella now stands. The glass was hand-painted and manufactured in Germany and decorated with photographs the artist took of flowers that grow in Lincoln Park.
And last but certainly not least, the word more appears on the umbrella panels, positioned in such a way that when the sun shines at different times of the day, that same word is reflected on the ground. “More” was the first word Amy spoke in this life, and I can’t think of a more perfect word for her to leave behind.
The day before this tribute to her, this celebration of her, was installed, I sat by myself in the park at sunset, silently admiring it, lost in thoughts of how much Amy would have loved it. My tears flowed, but my heart was so full.
Courtesy of Brooke Hummer
Every square inch of my house and this great city makes me think of Amy. Honestly, though, what doesn’t? Why fight it, when there are reminders of her everywhere, from a random bag of potato chips, to a corkscrew that was once a shadow puppet, to an exit sign that should read “excite,” to a display of unique buttons that could make a great brooch, to the mail that still comes in response to Amy’s column, and to some of the work I have put out in the universe since then?
I have come to a place where I have a deeper appreciation for what I had with Amy. I have made peace with the reminders I see about Amy. I have the realization now that I am one of the fortunate ones to have loved so deeply and to have experienced grief in such a profound way. It means to me that I was one of the lucky ones, to have cared and loved so much—why else would I have such intense reactions to my loss?
So I do not mind reminders of my past. In fact, I want more. When I go back to “You May Want to Marry My Husband,” I now realize that Amy must have known what would happen to me if her piece was published in the Modern Love column. It meant that I would be the center of some significant attention.
She knew me better than any human being ever has, so maybe more of Amy means more is also where I am going.