Amy Krouse Rosenthal should be living happily ever after with her lawyer husband, Jason Brian Rosenthal. The 51-year-old and her husband have been married for 26 years and their youngest of three children, left for college over a year ago. What should be an empty nesting time of travel, dinners out and all the things we as parents long to do when the kids have left the nest, is a stark reality for this couple.
Amy is fighting ovarian cancer and she hasn’t got long to live.
The dying wife’s dreams of spending more time with the husband she loves and adores, have been dashed.
A talented children’s author who has penned 28 children’s picture books, Amy recently wrote an essay called ‘Modern Love’, published in the New York Times.
The memoir shares the moment she and her husband found out her diagnosis, with details of when they fell in love, and ends with a dating profile of her husband.
The memoir starts with these heartbreaking words,
‘I have been trying to write this for a while, but the morphine and lack of juicy cheeseburgers (what has it been now, five weeks without real food?) have drained my energy and interfered with whatever prose prowess remains. Additionally, the intermittent micronaps that keep whisking me away midsentence are clearly not propelling my work forward as quickly as I would like. But they are, admittedly, a bit of trippy fun.
Still, I have to stick with it, because I’m facing a deadline, in this case, a pressing one. I need to say this (and say it right) while I have a) your attention, and b) a pulse.
I have been married to the most extraordinary man for 26 years. I was planning on at least another 26 together.’
Amy writes how she has gone weeks without real food and is often napping or asleep mid-sentence because of the morphine. But she was determined to write her essay while she could as she wants her husband Jason to fall in love again after she passes away.
‘I have never been on Tinder, Bumble or eHarmony, but I’m going to create a general profile for Jason right here, based on my experience of coexisting in the same house with him for, like, 9,490 days.
First, the basics: He is 5-foot-10, 160 pounds, with salt-and-pepper hair and hazel eyes.
The following list of attributes is in no particular order because everything feels important to me in some way.
He is a sharp dresser. Our young adult sons, Justin and Miles, often borrow his clothes. Those who know him — or just happen to glance down at the gap between his dress slacks and dress shoes — know that he has a flair for fabulous socks. He is fit and enjoys keeping in shape.’
The 51-year-old lists the qualities of her husband of 26 years, as that of a newlywed.
“If he sounds like a prince and our relationship seems like a fairy tale, it’s not too far off, except for all of the regular stuff that comes from two and a half decades of playing house together. And the part about me getting cancer. Blech.”
Amy finishes the letter by saying she wished she had more time with her husband, and then explains why she has chosen to write her memoir.
‘I want more time with Jason. I want more time with my children. I want more time sipping martinis at the Green Mill Jazz Club on Thursday nights. But that is not going to happen. I probably have only a few days left being a person on this planet. So why I am doing this?
I am wrapping this up on Valentine’s Day, and the most genuine, non-vase-oriented gift I can hope for is that the right person reads this, finds Jason, and another love story begins.
I’ll leave this intentional empty space below as a way of giving you two the fresh start you deserve.’
You can read the full memoir here. Make sure you take some tissues.
