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.
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.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der January 22,2018-Ausgabe von Time.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der January 22,2018-Ausgabe von Time.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
Your Toxic Life
An independent lab has made a business of exposing what’s really inside everyday products
A Man in Full, adapted and redacted
Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full is a massive book, in more ways than one. The 742-page social novel about a swaggering Atlanta real estate mogul, which took Wolfe over a decade to write, sold a jaw-dropping 1.4 million hardcover copies after its publication in 1998. The book's themes-money, power, race, masculinity--are just as grand.
Exhibition showcases ancient splendor
A captivating exhibition at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco offers a clue to the vibrant Bronze Age cultures that flourished along the Yangtze River more than 2,000 years ago.
Flights of kites
An ancient folk craft tradition floats across time and still soars to new heights in modern times
What does a biopic owe its subject?
AMY WINEHOUSE WROTE SONGS THAT CUT TO THE CORE of heartbreak and sang them in a voice as supple and sturdy as raw silk.
On the road again with Mad Max's mastermind
GEORGE MILLER HAS SPENT MORE THAN 40 YEARS swerving in and out of the post apocalyptic world of Mad Max.
TV'S ENDLESS HOLOCAUST
A surge of World War II dramas fails to connect with the present
NEXT GENERATION LEADERS
11 trailblazers who are challenging the status quo, leading with empathy, and forging solutions for a brighter future
Uranium dreams
The promise of clean nuclear power brings the West to Mongolia
Why the Westminster Dog Show made me appreciate mutts
I SPENT THREE YEARS AMONG DOGS WITH BLOODLINES like British royalty.