In early 2020, as the world sunk into the pandemic, James Runcie and his wife Marilyn Imrie were going through a different, far more personal tragedy. After 35 years of miraculously happy marriage, they learned that the painful, frustrating symptoms Marilyn had been experiencing for two years were a sign of Lou Gehrig's Disease. In the wake of Marilyn's death in August 2020, Runcie stumbled in the dark. How do you make sense of the decline and death of the most alive person you have ever met? And how do you go about building a life worth living in their absence? In this startling and intimate memoir of life before death and love after grief, James tells the story of his Marilyn's illness and death - in all its moments of tragedy, rage, and strangeness -- while painting a vivid portrait of her life, in all its color, humor, and brightness. And during the first year of loss, he awakens to the strange paradox of grief: that the way to survive Marilyn's death is to understand how very good she was at living.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.