Terminally ill children’s author Amy Krouse Rosenthal, who penned a heartbreaking essay and dating profile for her husband, has died. She was 51.
The Chicago-native authored more than two dozen children’s book in her career and more recently penned a heartbreaking essay in the New York Times last week offering up her husband Jason to future suitors before passing away from ovarian cancer.
In the essay, dubbed “You May Want to Marry My Husband,” Rosenthal wrote that she’s been married to the “most extraordinary man for 26 years” and was “planning on at least another 26 together” before being diagnosed with cancer in 2015.
“Want to hear a sick joke? A husband and wife walk into the emergency room in the late evening on Sept. 5, 2015,” the author wrote. “A few hours and tests later, the doctor clarifies that the unusual pain the wife is feeling on her right side isn’t the no-biggie appendicitis they suspected but rather ovarian cancer.”
Rosenthal wrote that she’s gone weeks without real food and falls asleep mid-sentence because of the morphine she needs. Despite feeling weak, she said she had to write the essay while she still could, because she wanted him to fall in love again after she is gone.
“He is an easy man to fall in love with. I did it in one day,” she wrote. “First, the basics: He is 5-foot-10, 160 pounds, with salt-and-pepper hair and hazel eyes.
“The following list of attributes is in no particular order because everything feels important to me in some way. He is a sharp dresser. Our young adult sons, Justin and Miles, often borrow his clothes. Those who know him — or just happen to glance down at the gap between his dress slacks and dress shoes — know that he has a flair for fabulous socks. He is fit and enjoys keeping in shape,” Rosenthal wrote.
Rosenthal’s long-time agent confirmed the author lost her battle against cancer Monday morning.
Tributes poured in on social media for Rosenthal while many were sharing the gut-wrenching “dating profile” from the Times.
Rosenthal wrote how her lawyer husband is an excellent cook who paints in his spare time and loves listening to music. She noted that he even “showed up at our first pregnancy ultrasound with flowers.”
“Wait. Did I mention that he is incredibly handsome? I’m going to miss looking at that face of his,” Rosenthal wrote.
–with files from Global News reporter Andrew Russell
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