Amy Krouse Rosenthal, who wrote 28 children's books and two memoirs, as well as being a quirky and prolific social commentator, passed away yesterday of ovarian cancer.. She was 51.
- KC's View:
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To be honest, I was not aware of Rosenthal's work until just the other day ... but that is the reason I am mentioning her passing here on MNB.
It was less than two weeks ago that she authored a piece for the "Modern Love" column in the New York Times that served as a kind of love story about her relationship with her husband, Jason Rosenthal. The column attracted some 4.5 million readers online, and started this way:
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.
But, conceding the inevitable, Krouse titled the piece, "You May Want To Marry My Husband," and wrote:
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.
When I forwarded this to Mrs. Content Guy, it was with the rueful knowledge that she never would be able to say such things about me under the same circumstances, and that Jason Rosenthal makes pretty much every other husband on the planet look bad. (As I write this, Mrs. Content Guy is getting ready to go outside and use the snow blower while I'm sipping coffee and writing in the warm indoors. I fail on so many levels.)
No matter. Amy Krouse Rosenthal's last column is both heartbreaking and uplifting, and I recommend you read it here. You may even want to forward it to your spouse.
