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Committed is brought to you by I Heart Media.

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I have been married to the most extraordinary

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man for twenty six years. I

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was planning on at least another twenty six together.

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I want to hear a sick joke. A husband

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and wife walk into the emergency room

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in the late evening on September. A

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few hours and tests later, the doctor

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clarifies that the unusual pain the wife is feeling

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on her right side isn't the no Bigg appendicitis

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they suspected, but rather a varying

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cancer. Amy

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Krauss Rosenthal wrote this essay for the Modern

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Love section of the New York Times. In this

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is when we entered into what I came to think

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of as Plan B, existing

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only in the present as

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of the future. Allow me to introduce

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you to the gentleman of this article, Jason

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Brian Rosenthal. He's

1:01

an easy man to fall in love with. I

1:03

did it in one day. First,

1:06

the basics. He is five ft ten

1:08

hundred and sixty pounds, with salt and pepper hair

1:10

and hazel eyes. Here is the kind

1:12

of man Jason is. He showed

1:14

up at our first pregnancy ultrasound with

1:17

flowers. This is a man who

1:19

because he always wakes up early surprises

1:21

me every Sunday morning by making some kind

1:23

of oddball smiley face out of items near

1:25

the coffee pot, a spoon, a mug, a banana.

1:29

Wait, did I mention that he is incredibly handsome.

1:32

I'm going to miss looking at that face

1:34

of his. I want more time with Jason.

1:37

I want more time with my children. I

1:39

want more time sipping more Teeni's at the Green

1:41

Mill Jazz Club on Thursday nights, but

1:44

that is not going to happen. I

1:47

probably only have a few days left being

1:49

a person on this planet, So

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why am I doing this. I'm

1:55

wrapping this up on Valentine's Day,

1:58

and the most genuine, no on vas

2:00

oriented gift I can hope for is that the right

2:02

person reads this, finds Jason,

2:05

and another love story begins. I'll

2:08

leave this intentional empty space below

2:10

as a way of giving you to the fresh start

2:13

you deserve. Any

2:15

died ten days after this essay was published,

2:18

ten days after she told the world that she was

2:20

looking for a new love for her husband, Jason.

2:28

I was surprised, although it took me

2:30

a while to deeply appreciate

2:32

what she was doing, But yes, I was surprised

2:35

what she did at the end of the piece. Just for those who don't

2:37

know, she left a literal blank space

2:39

at the end of the essay. The

2:41

way she described that space was for me to fill

2:43

it with another love story. I used that

2:46

permission really as a metaphor

2:48

as I continue to move forward in my life

2:50

and to fill that blank space with meaning. And

2:52

that's what really tried to do. I hope I've done

2:54

and continued to try to do as because

2:56

I move forward. I'm

2:59

to Yazza and this

3:02

is committed. We

3:33

don't usually do committed interviews with just

3:35

one person. I think we've

3:37

done it maybe once before. But

3:40

Jason and Amy's love story is one that truly

3:43

transcends time and death.

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After Amy published the most beautifully written

3:49

personal out of all time, her husband

3:51

received thousands of emails, letters,

3:54

and video messages from women around the

3:56

world who were willing to

3:58

apply for the job of Jason new

4:00

main Squeeze. But

4:02

Jason needed to morn Amy first. He

4:05

needed to work through his grief and find a way

4:07

to keep living without the love of his life. This

4:11

episode is about Jason and Amy's

4:13

love story, but before and

4:16

after Amy's death, So

4:20

I think the beginning is an interesting story.

4:22

So we were set up

4:24

on a blind date, and the gentleman

4:26

who set us up, we affectually both called

4:29

Uncle John because Uncle John was

4:31

Amy's dad Paul's best childhood

4:34

friend and happened to

4:36

date my mom in the early seventies

4:39

between her two marriages, so he knew both of us

4:41

as young kids. Jason had

4:43

been studying for the Illinois Bar Exam

4:45

when Uncle John called him up and

4:48

he said, you know, there's this wonderful woman moving

4:50

back from a advertising

4:52

job in San Francisco to Chicago, and

4:54

you should give her a call. And even

4:56

though I was sort of laser focused on studying

4:59

for the bar exam, I I did that. I gave her a call

5:01

and and we went on on

5:03

on my first and only blind date.

5:06

Jason picked her up in his little v W golf

5:08

with a manual transmission. They

5:10

went out to an Italian joint called Jimmy

5:13

and Johnny's. It no longer exists.

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Jason immediately thought that Amy was super

5:18

cute, smart, curious about everything,

5:21

and possessed a contagious passion

5:23

for life. As

5:25

Amy famously tells the story, at the

5:28

end of that meal, she knew she wanted

5:30

to marry me, and about

5:33

a year later I knew the same thing,

5:35

and that set us off on a trajectory

5:39

of being together for the next

5:42

seven years or so. They

5:45

were young, just twenty four, but

5:48

they immediately felt this really deep

5:50

connection with one another. They shared

5:52

the same values, and they just

5:54

had a lot of fun together. After

5:58

we were dating for

6:00

just a very short period of time, I had had

6:02

this road trip

6:05

plan where after taking the

6:07

bar, I was going to go to the East Coast

6:09

and see friends and etcetera. And we started

6:11

to write letters to each other, and I just felt

6:13

like it was such an interesting

6:16

way of getting to know each

6:18

other, you know, and not talking

6:20

on the phone, not seeing each other. It

6:23

was sort of before email was really

6:25

a thing in a big way, and

6:28

so it was just a really special way

6:30

to express how we felt about each other and

6:32

get to know one another through the writing process.

6:36

And then about a year after their first date,

6:38

Jason was ready to propose. He

6:41

wanted to do what any upstanding young

6:43

man would do and ask her parents for permission,

6:46

So he bought a bouquet of flowers, a nice

6:48

bottle of scotch, and he asked Amy's

6:50

parents for their daughter's hand in marriage. They

6:53

gave him a resounding yes.

6:56

My dad at the time had a commercial

6:59

film studio right here in Chicago,

7:02

and so I coordinated

7:04

with him too. You know. I got the keys, and I

7:07

set up this scene of Paris

7:10

on the sound stage with a

7:12

beautiful table laid out with a

7:14

tablecloth and some red wine and

7:16

some French music playing and images

7:18

of Paris and stuff. Because Amy

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had spent a year in Paris

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in college and was a French major, and my

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paternal grandmother was born in Paris,

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so we had a lot of connections to Paris. And

7:31

that's what I did. I brought her there and got

7:33

down on one knee and for closed. Jason

7:37

and Amy both wanted a small wedding. They

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said their vows in Amy's parents house, surrounded

7:42

by just friends and family. During

7:44

the ceremony, Jason burst into tears

7:47

and began to cry like a baby. He writes

7:49

in his book that it was because it hit him genuinely

7:52

to the core that he was experiencing the

7:54

most happy moment of his life. Very

7:57

soon after that, on our second

8:00

wedding anniversary, we brought

8:02

home our first child, and

8:04

we have three children. Together, and

8:07

you know, raising a family with Amy was just

8:09

really enjoy you know, it was full of

8:11

a lot of fun and whimsy and creativity,

8:15

even through all the chaos of having

8:17

three children. About two years apart, on

8:21

that exhausting note, time

8:24

for a quick break. In

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the past few years, Jason has had a

8:30

lot of time to reflect on exactly

8:33

what made his marriage work. As

8:35

I began to process a lot of this stuff, it's

8:37

it was clear to me that people

8:39

wanted to know who those two folks

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were that were the subject

8:44

of Amy's viral, very viral essay,

8:46

And as I began to reflect

8:48

on it, it really comes down to the fact that

8:51

we really supported

8:53

each other individually in

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our professional lives. You

8:58

know, we just really were there for one another.

9:01

And I really encouraged Amy

9:03

when she wanted to drop

9:05

out of her full time advertising job

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and take a stab writing full time to

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do it. You know, it was her passion and I

9:12

knew that, and so that's

9:15

part of it. You know, when she always encouraged me when

9:17

I won a case or you

9:19

know, did a deal in my real estate business, she

9:21

was always very very supportive. So

9:24

there was that, you know, there was supporting our individual

9:27

paths and being happy

9:30

for each other almost

9:32

more on a percentage

9:34

basis than we were, you know, just for

9:36

ourselves. So that was really a support

9:38

there. When I began to write my book,

9:40

I found something in our cross

9:43

space amongst all the stuff that one saves

9:45

throughout the course of one's life, and

9:47

it was a document that we wrote on our honeymoon.

9:50

And the document was called Amy and Jason

9:52

Rosenthal's Marriage Goals

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and Ideas. And

9:57

I had sort of forgotten about this. The

10:00

t is great. It includes

10:02

things like keep sex fun, never

10:04

stop learning, get dressed up

10:07

and go on dates, common

10:09

sense, and also things

10:11

we usually forget. And it was

10:13

interesting because I didn't exactly remember

10:16

writing it until I read it again, and

10:20

as I began to reflect on it, it really

10:22

did form a lot of the foundation

10:24

of our lives together over the

10:26

next twenty six years. And

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one of the things that was on there was

10:31

pretty simple, and that was to really take

10:34

time to be together and remember

10:36

throughout all the chaos of raising kids

10:38

and what that brings. As you well know, I

10:41

used to stop and pause and you

10:43

know, go out on dates and remember that

10:46

it was the two of us who came first and

10:48

That's something we literally did from

10:50

day one, sometimes probably

10:53

to a fault. You know, we have a babysitter

10:55

who was thirteen years old and say, okay, here's

10:57

a here's a frozen pizza and a black bust.

11:00

Your video we'll see in a couple of hours.

11:02

But I think it was really really important

11:04

for us to take that time to be together.

11:07

Amy and Jason had taken a gigantic

11:10

bite out of life. Amy had written

11:12

thirty five children's books. They'd raised a

11:14

family together, but they were looking

11:16

forward to it finally just being the two of them

11:18

again. Amy,

11:21

who loved making lists, made

11:23

this long list of things they do during this

11:25

new phase of their life. It included

11:27

going to Burning Man, living in a foreign

11:30

city, and doing more social service.

11:33

The timing is just unbelievable when I think

11:35

about it. We were the type of couple that was

11:38

really, really, really looking forward to the

11:40

proverbial empty nest. Our

11:42

youngest, our daughter had just gone

11:44

off to college literally, and Amy was on a business

11:47

trip and she called me from there and

11:49

said, you know, I'm not really feeling

11:51

so great, something in my stomach. And I called

11:53

my family doctor

11:56

and she recommended that you picked me up from the

11:58

airport and go straight to the emergency room.

12:03

And you know, this was very unusual.

12:05

I have to highlight because you know, living with Amy

12:07

for twenty six years, this is

12:09

a woman who rarely ever complained about

12:11

anything physical, and I knew something

12:14

was really wrong, but I had absolutely

12:16

no idea, you know what it ultimately

12:18

became. So I took her to the emergency

12:20

room from the airport literally the day that

12:23

she was going to walk through our door and we were

12:25

gonna enter that phase of

12:27

having this empty nest together. The

12:29

diagnosis was a varian cancer. At

12:33

first, Jason was sure his wife was going to divide

12:35

the odds. She was strong, she

12:37

was otherwise healthy, and they had plans.

12:40

They had plans for this empty nest. Amy

12:43

endured surgery and chemotherapy, and

12:45

for a while they both thought that Jason was right.

12:49

Amy went into remission and it looked like she was

12:51

going to make it. They could breathe again. But

12:55

then their world came crashing down. The

12:57

malignancy came back this time and Amy's

13:00

liver and limph notes. Amy

13:03

facing around mortality forced the two of them

13:05

to have these really intimate conversations

13:07

about the end of her life. We

13:09

knew what was coming. We knew that it

13:12

was potentially the end of her life at the beginning,

13:14

and then we absolutely knew that it

13:16

was coming, and so it allowed

13:18

us to spend some time digging

13:20

into some really deep questions about

13:23

For example, in our specific case, I

13:25

had a lot of angst about what it was going to be like

13:27

to be a single parent to these three amazing

13:30

children, and so we talked a lot

13:32

about that, and those conversations that we

13:34

had helped me so much because she assured

13:36

me very specifically that you

13:38

know, Jason, you can do it. You have

13:40

such a great relationship with each kid,

13:44

and you're gonna be okay, and and hearing

13:46

that from her was just so helpful to me.

13:49

And then we talked about a lot of other things as

13:51

well, and those ranged

13:53

from practical considerations

13:55

about, you know, what kind of service she

13:58

wanted, did she want to religious component

14:00

or some music, or did she want so

14:02

and so to speak, and what does she want

14:04

to do with her body? And all of those things are important

14:07

things to talk about, and

14:09

lots of people don't have the time to do it, you

14:11

know, they're not as fortunate as we were, because

14:13

something's happened quite suddenly, and

14:16

so I do encourage people to have these types of

14:18

conversation really early on. And

14:21

anyway, that's a long way of saying that our intimacy,

14:24

if it was possible, really grew closer

14:26

and closer. And I think that I

14:29

never had the issue of, you know, feeling

14:31

like whether I loved Amy or not, but if

14:33

it was possible, that too, even grew

14:35

so much more. Throughout the course of the

14:37

end of her life. Jason

14:40

felt like he had one mission during

14:42

this time. All he needed to do was make

14:44

Amy comfortable, to be her caretaker,

14:46

make her feel loved, and make her last moments

14:49

on this planet as tolerable as possible.

14:52

And throughout all of that Amy was working

14:55

on her modern love say in secret. It

15:00

was at a time period

15:02

where we had no other options,

15:05

and Amy's doctors told

15:07

us we could either do hospice

15:09

at home or in the hospital, and

15:11

we entered home hospice, and

15:15

I only knew that Amy had

15:18

one final project that she wanted

15:20

to complete before the end of her

15:23

life, and I'd watch her from across the

15:25

room and she literally physically labored

15:27

through trying to get through this final

15:30

project. Because of course she was on

15:32

high doses of medication and terminally

15:34

ill. And it wasn't until

15:37

it was complete that she said would you like to

15:39

read it? And I said, of course, you know, and

15:42

that was the first time I knew that this piece was

15:45

basically focused on me, certainly

15:47

about our life together, but it was a creative

15:49

play on a personal

15:51

ad for me for when Amy

15:54

died. And

15:58

it was incredible when I first read it. The

16:01

prose was so beautiful and

16:03

the combination of the

16:06

intense, you know, feelings

16:08

that one could have about terminal

16:10

illness, but then also in the same

16:13

sentence just laugh out

16:15

loud. It was remarkable, and

16:18

so of course I gave her my blessing and said, you

16:20

know, great, if if it gets published, that's awesome.

16:22

But you know, even living with a very very successful

16:24

writer for all this time, one never

16:26

knows what's going to happen and if

16:29

or when it's going to get published. It

16:31

immediately went crazy viral, with more

16:33

than five million people around the world reading

16:36

it. At the same time, of

16:38

course, my focus was

16:40

on Amy and making her comfortable for this last

16:43

stretch of her life, and it's

16:45

not always so beautiful,

16:47

even though it also is very

16:49

beautiful in some ways, it's really difficult,

16:52

and the pain of

16:55

watching someone you love physically disappear

16:57

sort of right in front of your eyes, and the incredible

17:02

emotion that is tied with caregiving

17:05

at the end of life, and

17:07

those images that one has.

17:11

Anybody who's been through hospice and there

17:13

are a lot of us who knows what I'm talking

17:15

about, but you know, those those lasting

17:17

images are

17:19

haunting, and unfortunately

17:22

that's what stays with you for a really long

17:24

period of time. And

17:28

then you know, after that, really

17:30

focusing on the kids and plans

17:32

and arrangements and things like that. We're

17:36

going to take a quick break here. When

17:38

we get back, we'll talk to Jason about all the

17:40

messages he got in response to Amy's essay.

17:47

Once Jason could finally lift his head back

17:49

up and face life as a fifty two year old

17:51

widower, I was literally

17:53

inundated with physical

17:56

correspondents, emails,

17:59

requests for me. The all these things

18:01

were just raining down on me. And

18:04

to be honest with you, it's a bit of a blur, you

18:06

know, because I didn't pay attention to really any

18:08

of it at that moment. Even for the first

18:11

many months, I rejected

18:13

all media requests and because it got

18:15

kind of like, you know, people interested in solacious

18:18

details. Even so early on I was

18:20

just I was turned off by all of that. But

18:23

as I began to proceed forward.

18:26

It was at the end of two thousand and seventeen when

18:29

I was asked if I wanted to give a ted

18:31

talk about my process and what it was like to

18:33

be with someone you love at the end of their life. And

18:37

as I slowly began to emerge

18:39

from that really really tight grip

18:42

of grief you feel like you can never

18:44

get out of at the beginning, I

18:46

started to appreciate all of these things that people

18:48

had sent to me into my family. And

18:52

then there was of course a full category

18:55

of letters and emails that

18:57

we're from women who were trying to take any

19:00

up on her her offer, you know, to

19:03

reach out to me and to start what

19:06

Amy wanted for me, which was another love story

19:08

at the time that just sort of there

19:11

are a lot of those that really made me laugh and

19:13

smile because of the

19:16

content of what what they wrote about, and I

19:19

needed that, you know, I needed that lift at

19:21

that time, and that's what it provided me. Surprised

19:23

by Amy's essay, I was surprised,

19:26

although it took me a while to deeply appreciate

19:28

what she was doing, but yes, I was surprised.

19:30

And what she did at the end of the piece, just for

19:32

those who don't know, she left a literal blank

19:35

space at the end of the essay and

19:37

what she described that space.

19:40

What the way she described that space was for me to

19:43

fill it with another love story. I used that

19:45

permission really as a metaphor as

19:47

I continued to move forward in my life and

19:50

to fill that blank space with meaning. And that's

19:52

what I really tried to do. I hope

19:54

I've done and continued to try to do as

19:56

I as I moved forward in

19:58

her essay, Amy che and Jason to look

20:00

forward to live his best life

20:03

without her, And it took

20:05

a long time, but Jason finally did start

20:07

dating again. He's now in

20:09

a relationship and he tries to keep it mostly

20:11

out of the public eye to try to give the two of them

20:14

space to let it grow. Well,

20:17

I'm very grateful to being a meaningful

20:19

relationship. The reason I

20:22

even speak about that in any way, because

20:24

let's be honest, it's really challenging to talk

20:26

about still three plus years later

20:29

and a lot of that is internalized because

20:32

I think for those in my position, people

20:34

around you, your family, your

20:36

close friends, people you care about really

20:39

just want you to be happy. But still,

20:41

I think you put a lot of pressure on yourself.

20:43

And that's why I talk about it. That's why I

20:45

wrote a little bit about it, the idea of

20:49

someone in my position. I was basically

20:51

out of the dating game for thirty years,

20:53

which is a really long time, and

20:56

the challenges of dipping your

20:58

toes into that territory are intense,

21:01

and I wanted to sort

21:03

of, you know, pay it forward, to pay forward

21:05

what Amy gave me in giving me

21:07

that kind of permission, And I think

21:09

by writing about it, I do that for

21:11

other folks in my my

21:14

similar scenario. How do

21:16

you keep gaming his memory alive? I

21:18

bring up Amy a lot, you know, I bring her up

21:21

not only in connection with our incredible relationship,

21:23

but with how she lived

21:25

her life. She was just, you know, this

21:27

incredible human being who was generous and kind

21:30

and something I think

21:32

that we need a lot more of in our world.

21:35

Many people close to me wonder is

21:37

that okay for you? You know, is it okay for you to

21:39

keep talking publicly about Amy, like that,

21:42

and for sure it is. That's my answer.

21:44

It brings me joy, it brings joy to my family,

21:46

and it brings joy to people all over the world.

21:49

And so that's one way. Pretty

21:52

much. Immediately after Amy died, I started

21:54

to commission a piece of public art in her

21:56

honor that I wanted to put up here

21:58

in Chicago in a public place. And

22:01

the help of an artist, we through

22:03

two years of navigating the city of Chicago,

22:05

and the park district got that dumb

22:08

and so there's a beautiful glass

22:11

umbrella. A yellow umbrella became Amy's

22:13

legacy symbol that sits in the

22:15

park and it's a wonderful

22:17

space for us and her family to return

22:19

to and reflect or to smile.

22:22

And it's also a space that others

22:25

can enjoy in community and hang out

22:27

and read and appreciate. And I

22:29

think selfishly too, it's a place that I hope

22:32

that one day, if I'm blessed

22:34

to have them, that I can, you know, take my

22:36

grandchildren to and talk talk a little bit

22:38

about any How do you like to describe

22:40

her? What stories do you like to tell?

22:42

Oh, gosh, I mean there's so many. I

22:45

I mean I would tell my grandkids what

22:47

an incredible human being she

22:49

she was, and her enthusiasm

22:51

for life and her

22:54

creativity in general. I know that sort

22:56

of a generic word, but the

22:58

way she was able to live her life

23:01

by doing the things that she absolutely

23:04

loved every single day and

23:06

cared so much about people and brought them together

23:09

in community and these sort of strange

23:11

but beautiful projects that she that

23:14

she engaged in, and you

23:16

know how she did things for other people

23:18

without any expectation of anything

23:21

in return. It's such an incredible quality

23:23

and human being. Losing

23:51

Amy talked Jason about what it was like to live

23:53

with grief, to live with

23:55

it, and to push through it. He

23:57

writes about it in his new memoir My Wife

23:59

Said, You May want to Marry Me. In

24:01

it, there are tons of lessons for people who've lost

24:04

loved once, something a lot

24:06

of us are going through right now. But

24:08

there's also wisdom for dealing with grief in

24:10

your everyday life, mourning

24:12

the loss of expectations, jobs,

24:15

and normalcy. Everyone

24:19

right now and in the face of this global pandemic

24:21

and other issues that are presenting themselves

24:23

in everyday news, are

24:26

going through loss and grief in

24:28

some form or another, whether that comes in the form

24:30

of, you know, not being able to go out and do the

24:32

things you used to do your normal routines,

24:35

or not getting paid. You know a lot of people

24:37

have lost their jobs, or god forbid,

24:40

I know someone who's desperately ill and

24:42

made it through, or desperately ill

24:45

and succumbed to this disease. I

24:47

think that what I really learned about

24:49

grief is that there is no timetable, and

24:52

as we take three steps forward, we may

24:55

take one back or two back and dip

24:58

back into anxiety, and that two

25:01

is really normal and not to be too worried

25:03

about that process. My experience

25:05

in having gone through this, of

25:07

course, is that it will at

25:09

some point dissipate, and

25:12

to hang in there and to really embrace

25:14

the grief that you're feeling, because that's important

25:16

too, and to

25:19

know that you will emerge from

25:21

that feeling at some point and

25:24

at some point in the future

25:26

experience tiny moments

25:28

of joy that you didn't think

25:30

would ever be possible again, and too,

25:33

you know, embrace those as well, because they'll

25:35

become more frequent as time goes out.

25:47

This episode was hosted and reported by Joe

25:49

Piazza, with special thanks to Jason Rosenthal

25:52

and a very special thanks to Lauren vocal Bam

25:54

for reading Amy Krouse Rosenthal's I Say

25:57

It was produced, edited and mixed by

25:59

Ramsey n. The executive producers

26:01

are Joe Piazza Entyler Clinton. Theme

26:03

song by Tristan McNeil. For comments,

26:05

suggestions, or to be part of the show, give

26:08

us a call at four zero four three.

26:12

That's four zero four seven

26:16

three, or send us an email at Joe

26:19

at Committed podcast dot com. That's

26:22

j O at Committed podcast dot

26:24

com. You can grab a copy of Joe's

26:26

book How to Be Married on Amazon

26:28

or wherever books are sold. Committed

26:30

as a production of iHeart Radio and Producing

26:32

our studios located in Atlanta, Georgia. For

26:35

more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit

26:37

the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

26:39

or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.