If you are in a place, #8: Amy Krouse Rosenthal's Last Essay

Amy Krouse Rosenthal, NYTimes

Amy Krouse Rosenthal's Last Essay

If you are in a place, read Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s last essay “You May Want to Marry My Husband”, printed in the New York Times last year. Now let me warn you. This may not get you out of the place. It is a woman’s simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming final written words to the world, published just ten days prior to losing her life to cancer.

This may be be the worst thing to read on Valentine’s Day. This may be the worst thing to read if you are depressed. This may be the worst thing to read if you feel disconnected from the world in any way. But let me posit this: it may be the best thing to read right now for all the same reasons. I’ve read this about ten times, and every single time I get chills. I get teary-eyed. I get an idea of how whole love can be. Here, we have a human, knowingly on the tail end of her breaths, presenting to the world her most vulnerable observations about the love of her life in hopes that someone else will notice them once she’s gone.

Every day, I feel my understanding of love shifts, just as I do in my own life. Adjust. Maneuver. Adapt. But the core of it never falters. Love is understanding. Love is being understood. But, maybe most of all, love is finding peace in accepting that we may never really ever be able to fully understand each other. And yet we will shift our feet towards that uncertain goal anyway. Love is seeing every fine detail about a person that makes them human and full. And love is hoping that others may see it too.