Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

I checked this book out from the new release shelf at my local public library, Aspen Hill Public Library of Montgomery County, MD, and I must admit I was drawn to it by its size and cover. It is a hardback, but it is a non-traditional size, more of the size of a diary or journaling book, which is fitting because this book was borne of the journaling of the author.

Before I go any further, let me start with a trigger warning. This book is about death, loss, grief, and suicidal thoughts. This book is lovely but difficult to read; it is small in size but powerful. I started this book lying in bed on the night of April 3rd and finished it the next morning (still in bed) when I should have been up and doing something productive with my day. It is 257 pages long, and there is considerable white space on most of the pages. Somehow, this also is fitting in that the entire book seems to me to be written in a stream of consciousness writing style. Again, it looks like a journal and it reads like a journal.

Here After (Zibby Books, 2024) by Amy Lin is a memoir, the story of Amy Lin’s life and love and marriage, and finally, her initiation into the small club of young widows. Widowed at the very young age of 31, her husband, her Kurtis to whom this book is dedicated, dies suddenly while running a virtual half-marathon with Lin’s family. When Lin’s father hurries home to Amy to get her, as she had skipped the run due to problems with her knee, her entire world falls apart. She becomes a ship adrift, going days without sleep, days without showering, without brushing her hair, without doing anything but the constant and exhausting sobbing. Days slip into weeks, and then into months, and then the inevitable count down of how long it has been since he left her.

Lin has a massive support system, starting with parents and a sister who love her and take her in, isolating her from as much as possible so she can try to heal. She has a dear friend who drives hours and hours to get to her when the tragedy first happens. She has a therapist who she had been seeing before this happens, and RJ as she calls him, advises her to write her feelings, to get them out of herself and onto paper as a means of therapy. That turned into journaling online, in a public forum, and that turned into this book.

I loved this book but it scares me. It scares me to my core because I feel as deeply for my own husband as she did for hers. When I read Left on Tenth by Delia Ephron, another memoir about the loss of a husband, I was struck by what she writes after visiting her husband’s oncologist who recommended her husband sign a “DNR.” She says, “I began to rehearse being alone.” I felt this so deeply. At the time she wrote that, Delia had been married to her husband for 37 years. My husband and I will celebrate 36 years in June.

But, Amy Lin did not have 30-something years. She was just barely past her 30th birthday. Her 32-year-old husband was in perfect health. She becomes worn out from sobbing, from trying to forget, from remembering, from wanting him back. She begins to plan her exit from life, to join her husband in the After. Even though losing your perfectly healthy husband at the age of 32 should be enough for anyone, she herself then experiences a medical emergency and nearly dies from it. The treatments and operations nearly kill her as well, and through it all, she wants to survive, if only to control her own end on her terms.

This book is heavy, but it is also a story of resilience, of loving til death do us part and long after that. It is the reality of loving so deeply, but also arguing over small and silly stuff, that suddenly nags at you for how ridiculous it was to argue over when life is so fleeting. It is the story of how to help others who are experiencing an extremely traumatic event, of what to say and what not to say. It is a study in grief, how it behaves, how it lingers, how it is intermittent in its timing and intensity.

Because I couldn’t stop thinking about Amy Lin long after I finished this book, I googled her and found her Instagram account, which touches on some of this as she posts books she is reading and workout sessions and cups of green tea. It traces her stages of grief, but also her success at coming back from it. She has remarried. The therapist gave her great advice. Through her journaling, her writing of this book, she emptied herself of the past, of the pain, but in that process she makes space for life, makes space for love again. She continues her work as a writer, and I look forward to reading more from her.