A woman dying from cancer has written an online dating profile for her husband so he can find happiness with someone new after she’s gone.
Children’s author Amy Krouse Rosenthal has been happily married to husband Jason for 26 years. She says she was hoping for 26 more but her world was turned upside down when she became ill two years ago. She thought the pain in his stomach was possibly appendicitis but it turned out to be ovarian cancer. Soon, it will take her life.
Amy has written about her experiences in an extraordinarily moving article in the New York Times.
She tells of how the devastating news came just at the time the youngest of her three children left home to go to college. It meant Amy and Jason could finally take the dream holidays they’d planned for years in places like South Africa and Asia.
The cancer changed all that. Instead of a newfound freedom, she was faced with the reality that her life was coming to an end and Jason would be left alone. She now tries to live only in the present but wants her husband to find happiness with someone new when the cancer finally takes her.
She tells how she met Jason on a blind date: “It was 1989. We were only 24. I had precisely zero expectations about this going anywhere. But when he knocked on the door of my little frame house, I thought, “Uh-oh, there is something highly likable about this person.”
“By the end of dinner, I knew I wanted to marry him. Jason? He knew a year later.
“I have never been on Tinder, Bumble or eHarmony, but I’m going to create a general profile for Jason right here, based on my experience of coexisting in the same house with him for, like, 9,490 days.
“First, the basics: He is 5-foot-10, 160 pounds, with salt-and-pepper hair and hazel eyes.”
Amy goes on to describe how Jason is loving and kind, very handy around the house and a great cook.
“He is an absolutely wonderful father. Ask anyone. See that guy on the corner? Go ahead and ask him; he’ll tell you. Jason is compassionate — and he can flip a pancake.
“Jason paints. I love his artwork. I would call him an artist except for the law degree that keeps him at his downtown office most days from 9 to 5. Or at least it did before I got sick.
“If you’re looking for a dreamy, let’s-go-for-it travel companion, Jason is your man. He also has an affinity for tiny things: taster spoons, little jars, a mini-sculpture of a couple sitting on a bench, which he presented to me as a reminder of how our family began.
“Wait. Did I mention that he is incredibly handsome? I’m going to miss looking at that face of his.”
She ends the article by saying she would love to have more time with Jason but that is not going to happen.
“I probably have only a few days left being a person on this planet. So why I am doing this?
“I am wrapping this up on Valentine’s Day, and the most genuine, non-vase-oriented gift I can hope for is that the right person reads this, finds Jason, and another love story begins.
“I’ll leave this intentional empty space below as a way of giving you two the fresh start you deserve.”
Amy’s incredible story has now been covered by media outlets across the world, leaving thousands of readers moved and inspired by her article.
