The Tragic, Beautiful Story Of Two Widows Who Found Each Other In Grief

WE FRET A LOT ABOUT THE EMOTIONAL BAGGAGE WE BRING to relationships, as if the goal is to come to each new love empty-handed, our hearts wiped clean. But recently, when I read that the widows of two best-selling memoirists had fallen in love, I was reminded that leaving your bags behind isn’t really an option. And you shouldn’t want it to be.

 

- Susanna Schrobsdorf

The pair: Lucy Kalanithi, wife of Paul Kalanithi, a neurosurgeon whose 2016 memoir When Breath Becomes Air, about his terminal lung-cancer diagnosis, came out the year after his death. And John Duberstein, husband of Nina Riggs, whose book The Bright Hour came out in June, a few months after Riggs died of complications from metastatic breast cancer.

John and Lucy’s story, first reported by the Washington Post, could be another memoir: Lucy had written a blurb for Nina’s book, and they’d become friends. In her final days, Nina suggested that John contact Lucy for support after she was gone. He did, and the two grew close via email. Now they are planning a future together. It’s the kind of resolution we all crave in dark moments.

Both books are gorgeously written and so heartbreaking, they’re hard to take in one after the other, though they act as complements. That’s why Lucy and John are often on tour promoting the books together. When they read the words of the two people they loved so profoundly, perhaps their old lives seem woven into their new life, one love spilling into the next, families merging, past and present overlapping.