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There are three words
that explain why I am here.
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They are "Amy Krouse Rosenthal."
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At the end of Amy's life,
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hyped up on morphine and home in hospice,
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the "New York Times"
published an article she wrote
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for the "Modern Love" column
on March 3, 2017.
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It was read worldwide
by over five million people.
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The piece was unbearably sad,
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ironically funny
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and brutally honest.
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While it was certainly
about our life together,
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the focus of the piece was me.
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It was called, "You May
Want to Marry My Husband."
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It was a creative play
on a personal ad for me.
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Amy quite literally left
an empty space for me to fill
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with another love story.
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Amy was my wife for half my life.
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She was my partner in raising
three wonderful, now grown children,
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and really, she was my girl, you know?
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We had so much in common.
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We loved the same art,
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the same documentaries, the same music.
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Music was a huge part
of our life together.
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And we shared the same values.
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We were in love,
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and our love grew stronger
up until her last day.
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Amy was a prolific author.
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In addition to two groundbreaking memoirs,
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she published over 30 children's books.
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Posthumously, the book she wrote
with our daughter Paris,
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called "Dear Girl,"
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reached the number one position
on the "New York Times" bestseller list.
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She was a self-described tiny filmmaker.
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She was 5'1" and her films
were not that long.
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(Laughter)
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Her films exemplified her natural ability
to gather people together.
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She was also a terrific public speaker,
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talking with children
and adults of all ages
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all over the world.
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Now, my story of grief is only unique
in the sense of it being rather public.
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However, the grieving process itself
was not my story alone.
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Amy gave me permission to move forward,
and I'm so grateful for that.
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Now, just a little over a year
into my new life,
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I've learned a few things.
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I'm here to share with you
part of the process of moving forward
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through and with grief.
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But before I do that,
I think it would be important
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to talk a little bit
about the end of life,
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because it forms how I have been
emotionally since then.
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Death is such a taboo subject, right?
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Amy ate her last meal on January 9, 2017.
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She somehow lived an additional two months
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without solid food.
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Her doctors told us
we could do hospice at home
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or in the hospital.
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They did not tell us that Amy
would shrink to half her body weight,
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that she would never lay
with her husband again,
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and that walking upstairs to our bedroom
would soon feel like running a marathon.
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Home hospice does have an aura of being
a beautiful environment to die in.
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How great that you don't have
the sounds of machines beeping
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and going on and off all the time,
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no disruptions for mandatory
drug administration,
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home with your family to die.
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We did our best to make those weeks
as meaningful as we could.
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We talked often about death.
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Everybody knows it's going
to happen to them, like, for sure,
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but being able to talk openly
about it was liberating.
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We talked about subjects like parenting.
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I asked Amy how I could be the best parent
possible to our children in her absence.
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In those conversations,
she gave me confidence
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by stressing what a great relationship
I had with each one of them,
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and that I can do it.
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I know there will be many times
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where I wish she and I
can make decisions together.
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We were always so in sync.
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May I be so audacious as to suggest
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that you have these conversations now,
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when healthy.
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Please don't wait.
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As part of our hospice experience,
we organized groups of visitors.
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How brave of Amy to receive them,
even as she began her physical decline.
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We had a Krouse night,
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her parents and three siblings.
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Friends and family were next.
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Each told beautiful stories
of Amy and of us.
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Amy made an immense impact
on her loyal friends.
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But home hospice is not so beautiful
for the surviving family members.
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I want to get a little personal here
and tell you that to this date,
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I have memories of those
final weeks that haunt me.
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I remember walking backwards
to the bathroom,
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assisting Amy with each step.
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I felt so strong.
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I'm not such a big guy,
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but my arms looked and felt so healthy
compared to Amy's frail body.
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And that body failed in our house.
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On March 13 of last year,
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my wife died of ovarian cancer in our bed.
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I carried her lifeless body
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down our stairs,
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through our dining room
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and our living room
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to a waiting gurney
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to have her body cremated.
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I will never get that image
out of my head.
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If you know someone who has been
through the hospice experience,
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acknowledge that.
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Just say you heard this guy Jason
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talk about how tough it must be
to have those memories
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and that you're there
if they ever want to talk about it.
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They may not want to talk,
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but it's nice to connect with someone
living each day with those lasting images.
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I know this sounds unbelievable,
but I've never been asked that question.
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Amy's essay caused me
to experience grief in a public way.
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Many of the readers who reached out to me
wrote beautiful words of reflection.
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The scope of Amy's impact
was deeper and richer
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than even us and her family knew.
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Some of the responses I received helped me
with the intense grieving process
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because of their humor,
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like this email I received
from a woman reader
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who read the article, declaring,
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"I will marry you when you are ready --
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(Laughter)
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"provided you permanently stop drinking.
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No other conditions.
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I promise to outlive you.
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Thank you very much."
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Now, I do like a good tequila,
but that really is not my issue.
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Yet how could I say no to that proposal?
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(Laughter)
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I laughed through the tears when I read
this note from a family friend:
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"I remember Shabbat dinners at your home
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and Amy teaching me
how to make cornbread croutons.
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Only Amy could find
creativity in croutons."
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(Laughter)
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On July 27, just a few months
after Amy's death,
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my dad died of complications
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related to a decades-long battle
with Parkinson's disease.
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I had to wonder: How much
can the human condition handle?
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What makes us capable
of dealing with this intense loss
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and yet carry on?
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Was this a test?
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Why my family and my amazing children?
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Looking for answers, I regret to say,
is a lifelong mission,
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but the key to my being able to persevere
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is Amy's expressed and very public edict
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that I must go on.
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Throughout this year,
I have done just that.
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I have attempted to step out
and seek the joy and the beauty
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that I know this life
is capable of providing.
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But here's the reality:
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those family gatherings,
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attending weddings
and events honoring Amy,
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as loving as they are,
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have all been very difficult to endure.
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People say I'm amazing.
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"How do you handle yourself
that way during those times?"
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They say, "You do it with such grace."
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Well, guess what?
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I really am sad a lot of the time.
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I often feel like I'm kind of a mess,
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and I know these feelings
apply to other surviving spouses,
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children, parents
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and other family members.
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In Japanese Zen, there is a term "Shoji,"
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which translates as "birth death."
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There is no separation
between life and death
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other than a thin line
that connects the two.
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Birth, or the joyous,
wonderful, vital parts of life,
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and death, those things
we want to get rid of,
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are said to be faced equally.
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In this new life that I find myself in,
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I am doing my best to embrace this concept
as I move forward with grieving.
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In the early months
following Amy's death, though,
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I was sure that the feeling of despair
would be ever-present,
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that it would be all-consuming.
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Soon I was fortunate
to receive some promising advice.
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Many members of the losing-a-spouse club
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reached out to me.
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One friend in particular who had also
lost her life partner kept repeating,
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"Jason, you will find joy."
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I didn't even know
what she was talking about.
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How was that possible?
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But because Amy gave me
very public permission
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to also find happiness,
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I now have experienced joy
from time to time.
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There it was, dancing the night away
at an LCD Soundsystem concert,
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traveling with my brother and best friend
or with a college buddy on a boys' trip
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to meet a group of great guys
I never met before.
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From observing that my deck had sun
beating down on it on a cold day,
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stepping out in it, laying there,
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the warmth consuming my body.
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The joy comes from my three
stunning children.
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There was my son Justin,
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texting me a picture of himself
with an older gentleman
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with a massive, strong forearm
and the caption, "I just met Popeye,"
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with a huge grin on his face.
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(Laughter)
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There was his brother Miles,
walking to the train
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for his first day of work
after graduating college,
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who stopped and looked
back at me and asked,
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"What am I forgetting?"
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I assured him right away,
"You are 100 percent ready. You got this."
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And my daughter Paris,
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walking together
through Battersea Park in London,
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the leaves piled high,
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the sun glistening in the early morning
on our way to yoga.
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I would add that beauty
is also there to discover,
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and I mean beauty of the wabi-sabi variety
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but beauty nonetheless.
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On the one hand, when I see something
in this category, I want to say,
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"Amy, did you see that? Did you hear that?
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It's too beautiful
for you not to share with me."
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On the other hand,
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I now experience these moments
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in an entirely new way.
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There was the beauty I found in music,
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like the moment in the newest
Manchester Orchestra album,
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when the song "The Alien"
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seamlessly transitions
into "The Sunshine,"
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or the haunting beauty
of Luke Sital-Singh's "Killing Me,"
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whose chorus reads,
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"And it's killing me
that you're not here with me.
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I'm living happily,
but I'm feeling guilty."
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There is beauty in the simple moments
that life has to offer,
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a way of seeing that world
that was so much a part of Amy's DNA,
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like on my morning commute,
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looking at the sun
reflecting off of Lake Michigan,
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or stopping and truly seeing
how the light shines
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at different times of the day
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in the house we built together;
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even after a Chicago storm,
noticing the fresh buildup of snow
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throughout the neighborhood;
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or peeking into my daughter's room
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as she's practicing the bass guitar.
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Listen, I want to make it clear
that I'm a very fortunate person.
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I have the most amazing family
that loves and supports me.
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I have the resources for personal growth
during my time of grief.
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But whether it's a divorce,
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losing a job you worked so hard at
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or having a family member die suddenly
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or of a slow-moving and painful death,
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I would like to offer you
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what I was given:
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a blank of sheet of paper.
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What will you do
with your intentional empty space,
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with your fresh start?
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Thank you.
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(Applause)