0:04

This is all of it on WNYC. I'm

0:07

Kusha Navadar. It was August of

0:09

2020 when author

0:11

Amy Lynn lost her young husband

0:13

Curtis just months before the two of

0:16

them were planning to move to Vancouver.

0:19

Amy was just 31 years old and suddenly

0:21

she had to face the experience of being

0:23

a young widow. She's written

0:25

a moving memoir about her experience grieving

0:27

the loss of her husband and faced

0:30

experiencing life as a widow. The book is

0:32

called Here After and she joined me

0:34

recently as part of our ongoing series

0:36

Mental Health Mondays. We

0:38

also took your very thoughtful calls as

0:40

part of the conversation but since this

0:43

is an encore broadcast we actually can't

0:45

take your calls live today. I

0:47

started by asking Amy about her late

0:49

husband Curtis and how they first met. Thank

0:52

you. I'm so glad we're starting

0:54

with Curtis who's really the lodestar of this book.

0:57

He and I were set up on a

0:59

blind date by a woman who was my

1:01

neighbor when I was a child. We lived

1:04

side by side making

1:06

plant potions together until we were

1:08

about 10 and then we lost

1:10

total touch because she moved. As

1:12

is the kind of nature of childhood

1:14

relationships people move and they've immediately fallen

1:17

off the planet. When

1:20

I was in my early 20s, 24, I ran into her

1:22

on the street. It

1:26

had been decades and

1:29

she said, oh my gosh, let's grab coffee. We

1:31

did. It was one of those rare things. We

1:33

both had the time and about 10

1:35

minutes in she said, my boyfriend's roommate is

1:37

perfect for you. That was

1:39

Curtis. What was he

1:41

like? What were some of

1:43

his goals and aspirations in life? When

1:45

I first met Curtis, one

1:47

of his main goals was he wanted to grow his

1:50

hair down to his shoulders. He

1:52

had this gorgeous head of hair that

1:55

he loved and

1:57

that I truthfully think thrived and was grown

1:59

long-term. There are and. Sort.

2:01

Of words of affirmation. The more people

2:04

comment on it though, longer it got

2:06

him. He was also. In.

2:08

A very early years as his

2:10

practice of architecture and one of

2:12

his. Feet. Passions was he spoke.

2:15

At great length about yes he took

2:17

me to a building on our first

2:20

blind dates. was the ways in which

2:22

the physical architecture of space can actually

2:24

preparing to hold better the emotional realities

2:26

of space which is not something I

2:29

had ever thought about until I met

2:31

Curtis. He really. Earned me

2:33

towards the brick and mortar world and the ways in

2:35

which it. Creates. Emotional

2:38

space for us. In. A way

2:40

that I had never, I just had never seen. It before

2:42

me talk about emotional space and

2:44

and that creating emotional space to

2:46

navigating through a you know that

2:48

is a segway said talking about

2:51

when you were married and when

2:53

you unfortunately past how long was

2:55

that time period between those two

2:57

events. Sicker. To say

2:59

we're together. All.

3:02

And all just shy of

3:04

seven years married. A

3:06

year and a little bit high put

3:08

it. We. Had. Very.

3:11

Little time in some ways together and other

3:13

ways we had. That.

3:18

A kind of time together that feels so

3:20

vast when I think about it, and when

3:22

I think about how. Lucky. I

3:24

was to love someone like Curtis and to be

3:26

held by him. And in

3:28

so many ways, that period of

3:30

time has completely radicalized and changed

3:33

my life and. Think

3:35

it's really shown me we tend to

3:37

I think sometimes in Greece. Have.

3:40

Different ideas of how much pain a one

3:42

year relationship that and might have Earth fifty

3:44

five year relationship That and how much that

3:46

might have that The reality is. Time.

3:50

Doesn't exist in the landscape of Greece. And

3:53

the love that has grown. Regardless,

3:55

Of the time. Between two people will always

3:57

result. In this internet can.

4:00

of grief and of loss and

4:03

I'm really grateful for the time I had with

4:05

Curtis. I wish there had been more but there

4:07

was so much love, an infinite

4:09

amount of it. That idea of

4:12

grief and

4:14

the experience regardless of how much time

4:16

you had, both of those things kind

4:18

of being timeless, if that's a fair

4:20

way to summarize it. Would

4:23

you say you understood that before the event? Is that

4:25

something you learned as a result of it? Were there

4:27

other things that you learned about grief that you didn't

4:29

expect through this process? That's

4:31

a beautiful question. I think until

4:34

I was in it, I had

4:36

no idea how much we are asked

4:41

to hold as human beings, how much pain

4:43

we are expected to be

4:45

capable of holding and I also didn't

4:48

fully comprehend until I was in grief

4:50

and continue to be in it that

4:53

really grief is the final

4:55

form of love. It's actually

4:58

what all of us will do if

5:00

we love somebody. We will

5:02

eventually carry them in grief

5:04

and love them in grief and

5:06

I think when we societally

5:09

try to like cheer people up when

5:11

they're in grief, we want them to

5:13

feel better. That's so human but

5:16

it means that we limit their ability to

5:18

love the beloved who has gone. When

5:20

we limit people's ability to speak about

5:23

or show or even tell you about their

5:25

grief and their pain, we limit

5:28

their love in some way. We limit our

5:30

ability to love in this

5:32

way and that wasn't something I understood until

5:34

I was in it. That grief is

5:37

painful and awful but it is a part of

5:39

the beautiful burden that we all bear of loving

5:43

those of us that have died. That's

5:45

beautifully said. If you're just joining us,

5:48

I'm talking to Amy Lynn who's a

5:50

writer and teacher. Her memoir, Here After

5:52

a Memoir, was published on March 5th.

5:55

We're talking about the loss that we

5:57

experience when we become a widow or

6:00

widower and when we lose somebody important

6:02

in our lives. And Amy, we got

6:04

a text from a listener right now

6:06

that I'd love to read asking for

6:08

some advice. The text reads, my best

6:10

friend lost her husband very suddenly leaving

6:13

her and their nine-year-old son. What advice

6:15

can Amy give to a friend on

6:17

how best to support someone managing such

6:19

grief? Wow, I really

6:21

appreciate this question. So it's

6:26

such a beautiful question to say, how can I

6:28

help my friend in grief? And I'm so grateful

6:30

for it. My advice always

6:33

is sort of two

6:35

things. The first would be there's

6:37

such a human urge to

6:40

want to help in a really tangible way. So

6:42

the obvious

6:44

things of providing food,

6:47

especially if you have a nine-year-old, kid-friendly

6:49

food, to help relieve the the

6:52

daily burden of what the grievers

6:55

will have to process, and that's the child and

6:57

the partner. But

6:59

also I encourage people who

7:01

are supporting people in grief to

7:04

witness their friends or their loved

7:06

ones pain. So instead of

7:09

offering them things that might help them

7:11

feel better or we think we want

7:13

to offer it to them, offer them

7:15

recognition. Things like, I

7:17

bet you're not sleeping well. You

7:19

must be exhausted. You

7:22

must feel like you're the only

7:24

person in this much pain. You must

7:26

be so sad. These

7:29

were things offered to me really early

7:31

in grief that made me feel so

7:35

grateful because it allowed me a place

7:37

to actually say the things that

7:39

were happening to me. I was exhausted.

7:41

I was tired. I

7:44

was having difficulty keeping things straight and

7:46

when people allowed me a space to

7:48

share that with them, they actually entered

7:50

into my experience with me and they

7:52

made me less alone. And I think

7:55

grief tries really hard

7:57

to convince us that we're alone. people

8:00

in this kind of pain and that other people don't

8:02

want to know or don't know and by

8:05

offering Griever's Witness. I think we offer

8:07

the best thing any of us can

8:09

offer anyone, which is a place

8:12

to be as you are. Other

8:15

tools that you've discussed for dealing with

8:17

grief, you know, there's one part in

8:20

the book where somebody

8:22

you're talking to talks about the tools that you

8:24

have and everybody has specific tools for you that

8:26

that tool is writing. And you've

8:29

talked about how people often ask

8:31

you whether writing was a cathartic

8:33

experience for you and I'm using

8:35

cathartic specifically here because you said

8:37

it's like asking someone who's drowning

8:39

and receiving a flotation device whether

8:42

they thought grabbing the rubber ring

8:44

was cathartic. And so

8:46

instead I'm going to ask you

8:48

how did writing about the loss

8:50

of Curtis keep you afloat and

8:52

help you process what happened? Thank

8:55

you. That's a so

8:57

thoughtfully put question. Writing

9:01

for me is what I have. We

9:03

have different things. One person's grief is

9:05

simply one person's grief. My

9:08

friend Rebecca who's in the book grieves symbolically so

9:10

she does rituals around her grief which is beautiful

9:12

and she doesn't write. For

9:15

writing for me allowed me

9:17

to create a place, a

9:19

physical landscape in the vast

9:22

territory of grief where I could

9:24

put some of my pain

9:26

and where I could draw people to

9:29

that spot and say this is what

9:31

it's like for me. It allowed me

9:33

to hold pain

9:35

differently because what are

9:38

books if not places for

9:41

the past to live and

9:43

I needed to make a place for

9:45

myself in

9:47

grief. Grief totally snapped the narrative of

9:49

my life. I got married. I

9:52

am no longer a wife. I'm a narrative

9:54

that makes no sense anymore. And

9:56

for me as someone who has writing I

9:59

needed to. Create. A

10:01

space where I could live. had to rewrite

10:03

a part of my story and so hereafter

10:05

as a large part of that. Did

10:08

you know that writing was gonna play that role for

10:10

you? You are right or beforehand. whether or not you

10:12

wanted to admit to there's a part of the bug

10:14

where it you have a hard time assuming that title.

10:16

But did you know that writing was going to be

10:19

this tool for you? Or was it organically just the

10:21

thing that you were drawn to. Genuinely

10:23

I did not know. I remember when

10:25

I was in school for writing. I

10:28

had a few professors. Sheriff Me. That.

10:32

They. Said There will always be a moment when you

10:34

know your writer and they're all the a moment when

10:36

writing will say is. Who. You are. And

10:39

I remember thinking. That. Seems overly

10:42

romantic, you know, Like I just thought.

10:44

That's. Very. Grand. But.

10:47

That is the truth I think when writing is what

10:49

you have. So I it when my life fell apart.

10:51

My. Health failed. Curtis died. I.

10:54

Physically could not move. I really

10:56

couldn't do anything at all. And there's

10:58

nothing. In. The territory of

11:01

grief that we can do. we. Have to speak

11:03

with a new mouth. We have to learn a

11:05

new language. And. In

11:07

that. Vast. Unknown

11:09

that I was going to have to navigate

11:12

without Curtis, I just reached that. the thing

11:14

that had always been there, which was my

11:16

ability. To. Write and to say

11:18

in writing that things were like and I

11:20

was grateful that it was there and. It's

11:23

true, I'm. In. So many

11:25

ways. Writing: Like.

11:27

The rubber ring saves who I was

11:30

in that moment. This is all that

11:32

on w unwise see I'm Kusanagi door

11:34

and we're joined by a Mulan. was

11:36

a writer and teacher of her books

11:38

year after a memoir discusses the loss

11:40

of her late husband Curtis and what

11:43

it means to go through Greece when

11:45

you lose a significant other. Samy, let's

11:47

get some. Listeners are on line one

11:49

we've got part in Manhattan Hi Pat

11:51

Will to the show. Hi.

11:55

how are you and and hello

11:57

amy i'm so interested in seeking

11:59

you book to read. I

12:02

lost my husband after

12:04

39 years of marriage. He

12:06

was 59 and he died

12:08

suddenly but

12:13

horrifically my daughter passed

12:16

before him. Three months before him

12:18

she was 29. So I

12:21

think I was kind of in shock for

12:24

about a year but losing

12:26

my daughter first and then my husband three

12:28

months later. This is

12:32

10 years ago. It has taught me

12:34

an enormous amount about life and grief.

12:36

So the three things I

12:39

tell people that lose a loved one

12:41

whether it's mostly a husband because I'm

12:43

of an age where a lot of

12:46

my girlfriends are losing their spouses and

12:48

I say you're going to be tired.

12:50

You're going to be tired all the

12:53

time and nothing will

12:55

be the same. Nothing will be the

12:57

same and you have to

13:00

re-look at your life now as

13:03

a completely different storybook than what it

13:05

was. You were defined by, in my

13:08

case, five people that went

13:10

to three in a

13:12

matter of three months. The one thing that sticks

13:17

with me with my daughter who

13:19

was just brilliant through her illness

13:21

she said to me, Mommy, why

13:23

are you crying? When you cry

13:25

you're really crying for yourself. You're

13:28

sad because you're missing us and

13:31

don't cry. Don't cry

13:33

because I don't want you to

13:36

cry but they leave you with

13:38

these poignant messages all the time.

13:40

So yes but

13:42

I'm looking forward to reading your book. Pat,

13:44

thank you so much for that call and

13:46

for sharing your story and letting us benefit

13:49

from it and for, we're

13:52

so sorry for what you went through. Amy,

13:54

how does it hear to feel that the

13:56

fatigue that Pat was describing? Yeah,

13:59

Pat, thank you. so much for sharing that.

14:01

One thing, hearing you how

14:03

much loss you hold, I just

14:07

feel so deeply the land that you

14:09

live in. And also so much

14:11

you say it's 10 years ago, how soon that

14:13

is. How soon

14:15

that feels to me, it feels so close to

14:17

me, the loss of

14:19

your beautiful daughter and husband, and

14:21

it is exhausting. I'm really grateful

14:23

that you share that with other people in

14:25

your life because often I

14:28

think people don't understand that grief is

14:30

work, that grievers are

14:33

working so hard to understand this new

14:35

and impossible reality, and that

14:37

is so tiring for grievers.

14:39

Thank you, Pat, for sharing that. I

14:42

feel really honored

14:44

to have heard about your

14:46

daughter and husband. We

14:49

have Michael from Franklin. Hi, Michael.

14:53

Hi. I'm

14:55

calling because let me just

14:57

preface what I'm going to say to you

14:59

first because I know how

15:01

to get through grief. I

15:04

was very blessed when I

15:06

took my master's with

15:08

a teacher who was trained

15:11

basically in the Kublai-Wos school

15:13

of teaching grief, and

15:16

I was going to go through a difficult time because my

15:18

mother passed at an early age. So I know

15:20

how to do that, but I don't know how to do. Right

15:23

now, my wife of 44 years

15:28

is dying, and

15:31

I don't know how to do this. Yeah.

15:34

44 years of

15:36

absolute bone

15:39

beyond anything I could describe. Yeah.

15:43

I just don't have to do this. I

15:46

hear you. Michael, thank

15:48

you so much for sharing that for us, and we want you

15:50

to stay on the line if you could,

15:52

but Amy, I want to direct it towards you. You

15:54

hear 44 years of marriage When

15:58

you are in community with people who are. Asking

16:00

how do I do this? I

16:03

imagine there's no easy answer. How

16:05

do you navigate that? I.

16:08

Really here. So.

16:10

Keenly. The. You don't know

16:13

how to do it. I must have said that

16:15

a million times. I. Don't know how

16:17

to do this and especially how do you do it. Without.

16:20

The beloved who you've always done things with.

16:22

I really hear that in it. So. Integral

16:24

to our experience of grief. My

16:27

only. Offering there.

16:30

Is to not do it alone. And

16:33

then I really believe that

16:35

Greece ask service, courage and

16:38

tenderness. And.

16:43

Process. That none of us

16:45

actually can do we don't know how to

16:47

do it, and that none of us can

16:50

move into. Or through. The. World

16:52

of grief alone. And that

16:54

it is so important to tell people

16:56

I don't know how to do this.

16:58

I am exhausted, I'm lost, I'm afraid,

17:00

and to allow others to come alongside

17:03

us and to help us. Because

17:05

this is not something that we know how

17:07

to do. And we need

17:10

others to help. To help show

17:12

us the way. And Michael

17:14

I just wanted st you on behalf of

17:16

all of us at all that for sharing

17:18

that sorry we we can hear the pain

17:20

and like you said amy sharing and grieving

17:22

isn't is an act of courage and we

17:24

want to thank you very much for sitting

17:26

in the space with us. Oh what's go

17:28

to another caller. We've also got Terrell from

17:30

New York hi Carol. Oh

17:33

hi! On.

17:36

I just wanna say I was listening to

17:38

the poor of my arm. Ah congratulations on

17:40

your buck and and or something that the

17:43

author said that really struck me my I

17:45

lost my husband twenty. Almost

17:48

twenty five years ago, I was

17:50

thirty four years old. movie together

17:52

Nine years, he dated for married

17:55

five and. She's. out

17:57

when that The

18:00

other said something about that time being compressed

18:02

that just kind of hit me, which

18:04

was very odd because it's been so long. But

18:07

it really was – we

18:09

lived so much life in those short

18:11

amount of years. We met and

18:14

we dated. We worked

18:16

together. We lived together. We moved a couple times.

18:18

We bought an apartment. We sold an apartment. We

18:20

got married. We both excelled

18:23

professionally. We traveled. We made tons of

18:25

friends. On top of all of that,

18:27

we were navigating cancer for

18:29

five of the nine years we were

18:31

together. I think about that. It

18:33

was like the most jam-packed decade of my

18:35

entire life. Everything that

18:38

usually happens over the course of a lifetime

18:40

happened in those two short years. Nothing

18:46

since has ever matched it. We

18:48

lost friends actually right before my

18:50

husband passed away. We lost a

18:53

few family members. It

18:56

was extraordinary now to be 60 and looking

18:58

back on it and to think

19:01

of all that happened. I

19:04

know time is healing and time is all

19:06

of that and it is true. Now

19:13

I look back on it and I think it

19:17

was an extraordinary

19:19

important part of my life even though

19:21

it was only those nine years. Thank

19:23

you for letting me share that. Carol,

19:25

thank you so much for calling. You

19:27

talk about the passage of time. That

19:30

is a great jumping off point for a text that

19:32

we just got with a question for you, Amy.

19:35

From Michael, we have many thanks to Amy for

19:37

giving voice to our shared pain, especially the loss

19:40

of our identity that accompanied the sudden death. Michael

19:43

is 61 male and he said that he is

19:46

the loss of identity that accompanied the sudden death

19:48

of his wife who is 60 last year. For

19:52

me, Michael writes, one unexpected challenge

19:54

has been balancing my own need to

19:56

find joy in the life and time

19:58

left to me with the need of

20:00

others. including our young adult children and

20:02

our closest friends, to commiserate over our

20:04

shared loss. How does Amy

20:07

suggest signaling to those close to

20:09

us that it's okay to experience

20:11

joy and share it with us

20:13

as we grieve? Amy? Thank

20:16

you. That's a beautiful question.

20:21

What is so misunderstood,

20:24

I think, sometimes about grief, is

20:27

that we tend to create grief

20:29

as a binary against

20:31

joy. We say you can either be

20:33

grieving or you can be joyful, but

20:36

we don't necessarily always hold that

20:39

we are people of the

20:41

both, that we contain multitudes.

20:44

And there were

20:46

moments, even hours

20:49

or even days after Curtis died, where

20:51

there were small moments of joy, where a friend gave me a

20:53

hug and I relaxed into it. Our capacity as human beings is

20:55

so much more complex than I think we allow

20:59

when we make grief an opposite to joy. And I

21:01

would communicate to the people around you

21:04

that very

21:07

fact that we all hold all kinds of emotions and states of

21:10

being all the time, and

21:12

that it does

21:15

not diminish the deep grief and the painful

21:17

loss that you have had to experience

21:19

joy, that rather

21:22

we are all made fuller and more human when

21:24

we acknowledge that our incredible grief absolutely

21:32

lives in the same body that

21:34

houses deep joy. And we do a greater credit to

21:37

both pain and to both joy when we

21:39

give them fullness in the same space. And Carol, I want to

21:41

say thank you again for

21:44

sharing that we had a lot of text. In fact, Amy,

21:46

we were planning on reading a passage of the book,

21:49

but obviously the lovely swell of community that

21:51

we've created has been so cherished as well.

21:55

So callers, thank you for sitting in this space with us.

22:00

and our best wishes to everyone. Amy,

22:02

as you think about writing this book and

22:04

being on the other side of it, what was the

22:07

most unexpected or surprising aspect of

22:09

writing this book for you and what you'll

22:11

carry with it in your own process? I

22:15

think one of the most surprising and beautiful

22:17

things about this has been that this

22:20

book came from a sub-stack, which is

22:22

a newsletter that I still write called

22:24

At the Bottom of Everything. And

22:28

through that sub-stack, people still write to me,

22:30

and I encourage anyone who did not get

22:32

to share today to reach out to me.

22:34

I would love to hear from you. But

22:37

they share with me their pain, all

22:40

kinds of pain, bodily pain, infertility,

22:43

trauma, and they

22:45

almost always say, by being able

22:48

to read some of your loss

22:50

and your pain, you

22:52

gave me language and a tiny bit of

22:54

courage to write to you about mine. That

22:56

was my conversation with author Amy Lynn

22:58

about grieving the loss of her husband

23:00

and how she faced the grief of

23:03

being a young widow. Her experience is

23:05

the subject of her new memoir. It's

23:07

called Hereafter. Coming up

23:09

next hour, we'll prepare for all

23:11

that spring has to offer. I'm

23:13

talking about tips for plant care,

23:15

dealing with allergies, and what new books

23:17

to look out for this season. You

23:25

come to the New Yorker Radio Hour for

23:27

conversations that go deeper with people

23:29

you really want to hear from, whether

23:31

it's Bruce Springsteen or Questlove or Olivia

23:33

Rodrigo, Liz Cheney,

23:35

or the godfather of artificial intelligence,

23:39

or some of my extraordinarily well-informed

23:41

colleagues at the New Yorker. So

23:44

join us every week on the New Yorker Radio

23:46

Hour wherever you listen to podcasts.