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To Love and Laugh Again

AT THE TIME OF OUR WEDDING in 2004, Dave was working at Yahoo and I was working at Google. We thought one way of handling the rivalry between our companies—and some of our wedding guests—was to make a joke of it by giving everyone a choice of baseball hats. It would be our version of “Are you with the bride or the groom?” I ordered the Google hats way in advance and was feeling pretty good about them until Dave took one of my hats to the Yahoo office and said, “Make ours nicer.” They did, and to the delight of the Yahoo team, many of the Google guests wore Yahoo hats all weekend.

Love and laughter were always intertwined for Dave and me, and we wanted our wedding to reflect that. At my bridal brunch, I gave all my girlfriends a Mr. Wonderful doll. When you squeezed the doll’s hand, it spoke, saying things like “Let’s just cuddle tonight” or “Aw, can’t your mother stay another week?” My favorite was “You take the remote. As long as I’m with you, I don’t care what we watch.” At our rehearsal dinner, my brother-in-law Marc took humor to a whole new level, narrating a slide show of me and my past boyfriends. And yes, the phrase “dude with a nipple ring” did come up.

Our wedding took place on a beautiful and extremely breezy Arizona day. Right before the ceremony, Dave and I gathered in a small room with our family and closest friends to sign the vows we’d written as part of our ketubah, the Jewish wedding contract. I signed first then Dave added his bold, messy signature. We headed outdoors, where an aisle had been laid on an open lawn. The procession began, and just as I stepped into place I heard Marc ahead of me egging on our three-year-old ring bearer: “Hey, Jasper, I’ve heard this wedding is pants optional.” My sister jumped in: “Jasper, no more spit bombs!” I started down the makeshift aisle, still laughing from the Jasper exchange, when a gust of wind blew my veil so far up in the air that I almost fell over. I stabilized, joined Dave, and the rabbi began.

Traditionally, a Jewish bride circles her groom seven times. Dave and I circled each other, our eyes locked. Our friends said it looked like we were dancing. Then, surrounded by our parents and siblings, we faced each other and paragraph by paragraph recited the vows we’d written together:

I take you to be mine in love. I promise to love you deliberately each day, to feel your joy and your sorrow as my own. Together, we will build a home filled with honor and honesty, comfort and compassion, learning and love.
I take you to be mine in friendship. I vow to celebrate all that you are, to help you become the person you aspire to be. From this day forward, your dreams are my dreams and I dedicate myself to helping you fulfill the promise of your life.
I take you to be mine in faith. I believe that our commitment to each other will last a lifetime, that with you, my soul is complete.
Knowing who I am and who I want to be, on this day of our marriage, I give you my heart to be forever united with yours.

We spent eleven years living these vows, circling each other in love and friendship. Then, suddenly, Dave’s forever was over. Each night, my brokenhearted march to bed included seeing our vows as I walked past our ketubah hanging on the bedroom wall near Dave’s closet. The sight of both pained me, especially his clothes, which hung there as if waiting for him to come home—as I was.

After several months, I was still holding my breath as I walked past this wall and realized that I needed to do something. I could not bear to take our ketubah down—it hangs there still—so I decided to clean out Dave’s closet. It’s impossible to describe how much I dreaded this task. Nothing prepares you for this. Carole Geithner advised me to include my son and daughter, and the three of us started together. We laughed—which shocked me—at the pile of almost identical gray sweaters and shirts from conferences that Dave had attended decades before. We cried when we pulled out his beloved Vikings jersey. My kids selected what they wanted to keep, and as my daughter hugged one of his sweaters she blurted out what we’d all been thinking: “The clothes smell like Daddy.”

Later that night, Dave’s mother Paula and his brother Rob came upstairs to help me finish. They had already performed this miserable task once when they cleaned out Dave’s father’s closet sixteen years earlier. They never thought they would be doing this for Dave, and the completely surreal feeling overwhelmed all three of us. Paula held up the frayed gray sweater Dave wore most often and I broke down completely. I turned to her and said, “I can’t believe you are going through this again. How are you okay? How can you possibly be okay?” She said, “I didn’t die. Mel did and Dave did, but I am alive. And I am going to live.” She put her arm around me and said, “And you are going to live too.” Then she completely stunned me by adding, “And you are not only going to live, but you are going to get remarried one day—and I am going to be there to celebrate with you.”

Until then, I had not thought about finding love again. Months earlier, I had mentioned to Rob that I was going to take down the photograph of a beach at night that hung in my bedroom. Dave and I had selected the photograph together but now its dark imagery felt too depressing. I told Rob I wanted to replace it with a picture of me, Dave, and our kids. Rob shook his head. “This is your bedroom,” he said. “No pictures of Dave. You’re going to move on.”

Moving on is easier said than done. I couldn’t bear to take off my wedding ring, but every time I saw it on my left hand I felt I was living in denial. I moved the ring to my right hand so I could still feel connected to Dave but wasn’t pretending that I was still married. Since I couldn’t even sort out my feelings for an inanimate object, I really couldn’t bring myself to consider the possibility of dating, let alone talk about it. It felt disloyal and just reminded me how much I wanted Dave back. So when Rob implied that there might be someone else in my life one day, I quickly changed the subject.

At the same time, I had never wanted to be alone. My parents have a very loving marriage, and since childhood I longed to have one too. I think that this led me to get married too young the first time. I know that a stronger sense of independence and the confidence that I could take care of myself would have helped me throughout my dating life. After my first marriage ended in divorce, I had a repetitive stress dream where I would wake up looking for someone who was supposed to be sleeping next to me, see the empty bed, and realize that I was alone. After I married Dave, the dream still happened, but then I would wake up to see him next to me—or more frequently hear him snoring next to me—and feel that oh-I-was-just-dreaming relief.

Now the stress dream was real. I was alone in my bed. Alone when my kids went on playdates. Just one hour in my house without them made me project into the future to when they would go off to college, leaving me behind. Would I be alone for the rest of my life?

Marne reminded me that being alone can be an empowering choice. In a landmark fifteen-year study of changes in marital status among more than 24,000 people, getting married increased average happiness only a little bit; on a scale of 0 to 10, single people who were at a 6.7 in happiness might increase to a 6.8 after getting married. That tiny boost occurred around the time of the wedding and typically faded within a year. If one of the participants lost a spouse and did not remarry, eight years later on average their happiness would be a 6.55. It turns out that people who choose to be single are very satisfied with their lives. “Singles are stereotyped, stigmatized, and ignored,” psychologist Bella DePaulo finds, “and still live happily ever after.” She asks us to imagine a world where married people are treated like singles: “When you tell people you are married, they tilt their heads and say things like ‘Aaaawww’ or ‘Don’t worry, honey, your turn to divorce will come.’…At work, the single people just assume that you can cover the holidays and all the other inconvenient assignments.”

Like all couples, Dave and I had moments when we were out of sync, but we always tried to address the issue head-on. One thing we never addressed was the situation I now found myself in. I had told Dave that if I died, I wanted him to find love again—as long as he did not marry a woman who would be an evil stepmother and force our children to wear coats made from Dalmatians. Dave said it was an awful conversation and never shared a single wish with me. Now I encourage my friends and family to express their fears and desires to their partners.

Love is the third rail of grief—a topic so charged that it is untouchable. After losing a partner, the only thing more emotionally fraught than finding joy is finding love. The mere thought of dating someone else triggers sadness followed by guilt. If just dancing with a childhood friend could make me burst into tears, imagine…

How soon is too soon to date? I heard about a woman in England who lost her husband and began dating his best friend four weeks later. People were shocked at how quickly her new romance started. Her mother-in-law cut off communication with her and many of her friends did too. “Blame me if you like,” the woman said, “but grief hits people in different ways and I have no regrets.” When you are widowed, people pity you and want your sorrow to end. But if you start dating, sometimes they judge you and think maybe your sorrow ended just a wee bit too soon. A childhood friend of mine who is now a rabbi told me that in the Jewish religion, mourning for a parent, child, or sibling is a year, but mourning for a spouse is just thirty days. “The rabbis wanted people to move forward,” he said.

About four months into my widowhood, my brother David said there was something he wanted to talk to me about. “I don’t know if it’s okay to mention this,” he said, sounding much more hesitant than he usually does, “but I think you should start thinking about dating.” Like Rob, he assured me that Dave would never have wanted me to be alone. David believed it would help distract me and make me feel better about my future. He also pointed out that if I were a man, I would have started dating already.

Sure enough, after a partner dies, men are more likely to date than women and they start dating sooner. Of middle-aged adults who lost a spouse, 54 percent of men were in a romantic relationship a year later compared with only 7 percent of women. Among older adults who lost a spouse, 15 percent of men were dating after six months, compared with less than 1 percent of women. And after two years, 25 percent of men had remarried, compared with just 5 percent of women. Men who start new relationships are judged less harshly. Women are expected to carry the torch of love, and when that flame is extinguished they are supposed to mourn for it longer. The weeping widow lives up to our expectations. The widow who dances and dates does not. These differences reflect a double standard rooted in a range of issues, from women feeling more guilt and anxiety about new romances to a greater cultural acceptance of men marrying younger women to the demographic reality of women living longer than men.

One practical matter that falls more heavily on women is the responsibility to care for children and aging parents. A colleague of mine told me about her extended family, which includes four single moms, and not one ever dated let alone remarried. “I’m sure there are lots of reasons,” she said. “But the one that they would all point to was that they didn’t have the time or the money to date while raising their children.” Most of her relatives had to work multiple jobs to support their families since the men didn’t pay child support. The women absolutely wanted to find romantic love again, but it took all of their strength just to keep a roof over their children’s heads. They couldn’t afford babysitters and lived far from family or friends who could have pitched in to help. For them, dating was a luxury they could not afford.

Widows continue to face cruel treatment around the world. In some parts of India, widows are cast away by their own families, left to beg to survive. In some Nigerian villages, widows are stripped naked and forced to drink water that has been used to bathe their dead husbands. Discrimination against widows has been observed by 54 percent of people in China, 70 percent in Turkey, and 81 percent in South Korea. In many countries, widows have difficulty obtaining property rights.

Since there are few things that motivate me more than telling me that something is sexist, after my brother spoke up I started thinking about dating. As I tried to wrap my head around it, the questions swirled: Would trying to move on just make it all worse? Would dating be as dreadful as it had been before? I started occasionally writing about dating in my journals. But when I shared entries with my closest friends and family—which I did when it was easier than talking about my feelings—I edited these parts out. I felt guilty even thinking about it and worried about their reactions.

Several months later, I told Phil that I’d been emailing with a friend and it was starting to feel almost flirty. Phil’s initial reaction confirmed my fears: “I am your friend always,” he said, “but Dave was my close friend. I’m not ready for this.” Phil’s aunt, who had lost her husband a year earlier, was with us. Later that day when they were alone, Phil told her that he thought he had done “a pretty good job at handling an awkward conversation.” His aunt replied, “You were awful.”

Phil was taken aback. At first, he defended his position, explaining to her, “I was following the guy code. I was trying to respect Dave, not judge Sheryl.” But his aunt told him that even if he hadn’t meant any offense, his response was not supportive. Phil came back to my house and apologized. He added that he hoped we could talk about anything, including dating. We hugged and he said wistfully, “I guess we both need to move on.”

Others were less accepting. When the press reported that I was seeing someone, one man posted that I was a “garbage whore.” Another quipped that clearly I was “one classy lady” because the love of my life died and I was “already sharing fluids with a new guy.”

Fortunately, we can also find understanding on the internet. I read a blog by author Abel Keogh about trying to date after his wife died by suicide. He wrote, “The first time I went to dinner with another woman, I felt like I was cheating on my late wife….I was filled with feelings of guilt and betrayal.” After six months, he met a woman at church. On their first date, he told her he was a widower; she was put off and did not want to see him again. Her father encouraged her to give him a second chance. Less than a year later they married. They now have seven children and Abel has written dating guides for widowers. “There will always be someone who will not understand why you’ve chosen to date again,” he lamented. “They may give you a hard time or have some silly notion that widows and widowers shouldn’t fall in love again. Their opinions do not matter. All that matters is that you’re ready to date again. You don’t need to justify your actions.”

People who have lost a spouse feel enough grief and guilt on their own. Judging them makes those feelings worse. It’s kinder to see dating not as a betrayal but as an attempt for them to break through the sorrow and find some joy. I’ll always be grateful that Paula, Rob, and David raised the subject. They brought up the dating elephant and then escorted it politely out of the room.

Still, dating does not erase my grief. All of us in the club understand this. You can miss your spouse and be with someone else, especially if that person is secure enough to let you grieve and help you through it. I had breakfast with a friend three months after he lost his wife and said he should start dating when he was ready, hoping to give him the same kind encouragement that Dave’s family had given me. Later, he went on his first date and emailed me: “It was weird. And I was still just as sad the next day. But as awkward as it was at moments, it felt like one of the first steps forward I have taken. I felt alive again.”

I met Tracy Robinson this past summer when our kids attended the same camp. Like me, she was a widow with two children. For years, she felt deeply lonely without her husband Dan. She clung to her friends, becoming closer to some while others let her down. She was not thinking about dating—and then she met Michelle. “There’s a kindness in her,” she told me. “I love her in a very different way than I loved Dan.” Tracy and Michelle married this past summer, five years after Dan died. Tracy still misses him and says that getting remarried has not changed that, but she feels strongly about seizing opportunities because life truly can be over in a heartbeat. “I almost hate to say this, but I am the happiest I have ever been in my life,” she told me. “Sometimes it takes going through something so awful to realize the beauty that is out there in this world.”

Brain scans of people in love reveal an intoxicating state of energy and euphoria. After we fall in love, we gain confidence and self-esteem and expand our identities. Often we take on some of our new partner’s qualities; falling for someone who is curious or calm can make us see ourselves a bit more that way too.

Dating brought humor back into my life. The man I mentioned to Phil began emailing—at first intermittently and then more frequently—and in months and months of notes, he never failed to make me laugh. He called himself the “King of Distraction” and he was. He helped me focus more on the present and future and find moments of joy.

If love is the third rail of grief, laughter is equally charged. In the face of death, it feels wildly inappropriate to joke about anything. Even worse is joking about death itself. But every so often, I found myself doing it—and was then completely aghast, as if I had caught myself putting my hand and arm into some forbidden cookie jar. The first joke I remember making was when an ex-boyfriend walked into my house after the funeral. He hugged me and said how sorry he was. “This is all your fault,” I responded. “If you had been straight, we would have gotten married and then none of this would have happened.” We both laughed. And then I gasped, horrified at myself for making the joke.

A few weeks later, my sister-in-law Amy and I were upstairs in my room, crying together. I looked up and said, “Well, at least I don’t have to watch his bad movies anymore.” We were both stunned into silence. Then we burst into laughter because Dave really did have terrible taste in movies—almost as bad as my taste in TV shows. I still cringe every time I think of these jokes, but they pushed away the overwhelming darkness of the moment. Later, Rob did the same thing, blurting out that he would never forgive his brother for leaving him with a mother, wife, and sister-in-law who were all calling him twenty times a day. It was funny because it was true. And unfortunately for Rob, I didn’t take the hint and call him any less often.

The gasping has faded and now I can make jokes about Dave quite easily, as long as they are the same jokes we made together when he was alive. Jokes about his death, however, are still shockers. But they do help break the tension. One day a friend of ours who knew that Dave wanted our son to go to private school noted with surprise that he is attending a public middle school. I said, “If Dave wanted our children to go to private school, he should have stuck around to make it happen.” Our friend froze for a second and then relaxed as it dawned on him that I was joking. We then had our first real conversation since Dave died.

Humor can make us more resilient. Surgery patients who watch comedies request 25 percent less pain medication. Soldiers who make jokes deal better with stress. People who laugh naturally six months after losing a spouse cope better. Couples who laugh together are more likely to stay married. Physiologically, humor lowers our heart rate and relaxes our muscles. Evolutionarily, humor is a signal that a situation is safe. Laughter breaks tension by making stressful situations less threatening.

Humor can also provide a little dash of morality in which wrongs are righted. When you take a horrible situation and add a punch line to it, for at least a moment you have shifted the balance of power: the helpless become the victors and the underdog gets the last word. Mel Brooks said he made fun of Hitler and the Nazis because “if you can reduce them to ridicule then you’re way ahead.” For centuries, jesters were the only people who could speak truth to power and had permission to challenge a king or queen. Today in the United States, late-night TV comedians play this role.

Jokes are common at funerals because gallows humor helps us triumph over sadness. Before writing Lean In with me, Nell Scovell wrote for TV comedies. She has four siblings, and when they lost their mom, she opened her eulogy by holding up an envelope and declaring, “I have in this envelope the name of Mom’s favorite child.” After one of Nell’s friends was widowed, she started keeping a journal where she expressed her feelings to her deceased husband and noted, “He’s a way better listener now.” Comedian Janice Messitte’s husband died suddenly two weeks after they got married. When she was asked how she lost her husband, she retorted, “He’s not lost. He had a great sense of direction. He’s DEAD.” Humor can provide relief—even for a split second.

Trying to move on, I brought the King of Distraction to my cousin’s wedding. It was a relief to have someone to dance with again, but being at a family wedding without Dave was still hard. I put on my game face as the music started playing. A woman came over and said, “I heard you were dating! I am so glad you’re okay now!” Another woman shook hands with my date and then turned to me and exclaimed, “It’s so nice to see you’re over Dave’s death!” I know they meant well and wanted me to be happy, but no, I am not “over” Dave’s death. I never will be.

When we marry, we promise to love “till death do us part.” Our images of love are active—we love by being there for a friend, taking care of a child, waking up next to someone—all of which depend upon the person being alive. One of the most important things I’ve learned is how deeply you can keep loving someone after they die. You may not be able to hold them or talk to them, and you may even date or love someone else, but you can still love them every bit as much. Playwright Robert Woodruff Anderson captured it perfectly: “Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship.”

Last summer, I had dinner with three couples who are all close friends of mine but were just getting to know one another. They went around the table sharing their stories of how they met, spouses interjecting the funny asides of a well-honed routine. As the conversation began, I got that feeling in the pit of my stomach, and as the conversation continued that feeling grew and grew. Elephant, I never thought I’d miss you. At first, I thought I was sad because it was insensitive of my friends to tell their love stories with me sitting right there. It had been fifteen months and three days since Dave’s death, and for most people it was no longer at the forefront of their minds. The world had moved on. I went home early that night, explaining that I didn’t feel well.

But the next morning, I woke up even more upset—not at my friends, who would never want to hurt me, but at the realization that no one would ever ask me again how Dave and I met. As the couples went around the table, they had skipped me. Now that Dave was gone, our cute how-we-met story was no longer cute. Asking people how they met their deceased partner seems cruel so no one does it. But for the widow or widower, not asking means they miss out on the nostalgia of recalling those early romantic days. I called Tracy Robinson and we agreed that from now on, we would both ask the members of our club how they met their partner to give them a chance to remember the excitement of that first encounter.

As Adam and I studied resilience at home and at work, we also thought about how to apply these lessons to relationships. We all want to forge bonds that can withstand stress, make both people stronger, and get us through life’s ups and downs. In a new romance, it often seems easy. Psychologists find that when people are falling in love, even arguments make them more attracted to each other. Ever heard of makeup sex? Then people move out of the honeymoon phase and just dealing with the ordinary hassles of life can create strain. Sometimes adversity strikes without warning—a partner gets sick or laid off or depressed. Other times adversity stems from a mistake or bad choice—a partner cheats or lies or becomes unkind or abusive. Try as we might, sometimes relationships don’t or shouldn’t last.

To build resilience in a loving, long-term relationship, we need to pay attention to the everyday interactions we have with our partners. In a well-known study, 130 newlyweds were invited to spend the day at the “Love Lab,” which resembled a bed-and-breakfast. The psychologists observed the couples interacting “in the wild” and made predictions about which marriages would last. They were able to predict divorce over the next six years with 83 percent accuracy. A key was buried in the couples’ conversations, which often started with bids for attention, affection, support, or laughter. We are making a bid whenever we say things like “Hey, look at that bird!” or “Are we out of butter?” When a partner makes a bid, the other partner has two choices: to turn away or turn toward. Turning away means dismissing or ignoring the bid. Stop talking about birds, I’m watching TV. Turning toward means engaging. Yep, I’ll go get some butter. And some popcorn to go with it. The newlyweds who stayed together over the next six years turned toward each other 86 percent of the time, while couples who got divorced turned toward each other only 33 percent. Most of the couples’ fights weren’t about money or sex but about “failed bids for connection.”

Adam’s colleague Jane Dutton defines a resilient relationship as one that has the capacity to carry intense emotions and withstand strain. It’s more than two resilient individuals connecting—resilience becomes a feature of the connection itself. My late friend Harriet Braiker was a therapist who published many books on love. She often said there were three parties in any relationship: you, the other person, and the relationship itself. The relationship is a meaningful entity that needs to be protected and nurtured.

Part of protecting and nurturing a bond is doing small things together. After falling in love, couples often find that the sparks fade, and one way to reignite them is to try new or exciting activities. I remember going to an out-of-town wedding where Dave and I spent most of the weekend playing Scrabble. A friend who was recently divorced watched us and remarked that he and his ex-wife never really did anything together—and that his new goal was to find someone who would play Scrabble with him. Apparently Scrabble was his idea of an exciting experience. Mine too.

For a relationship to last, partners have to be able to deal with conflict. When newlyweds were asked to talk for fifteen minutes about an ongoing disagreement in their marriage, the amount of anger expressed by a husband or wife had no bearing on whether the couple got divorced over the next six years. The most common pattern for couples that divorced went like this: the wife would bring up an issue, the husband would get belligerent or defensive, and then the wife would reciprocate with sadness, disgust, or stonewalling. In the couples whose marriages lasted, instead of escalating negativity, both partners showed humor and affection. They took responsibility for their problems and found ways to compromise. They sent signals that even though they were fighting, at a deeper level, they were okay.

When we argue with our partners, it’s easy to get stuck in our own point of view. Taking a broader perspective helps resolve conflict. In one study, couples were instructed to write about their biggest disagreement as if they were outsiders looking in on the fight. Just three journal entries of seven minutes each were enough to help the couples maintain a loving marriage over the next year.

Of course, a strong relationship doesn’t solve all problems. My friend Jennifer Joffe loves her husband and he loves her. They have two great kids. Jennifer is one of the kindest people I know, but for thirty-five years she was not kind to herself. “I disliked myself so much, hated myself truthfully, that I had no regard for my body,” she said. Jennifer’s father died when she was the same age as my daughter and that profound sadness triggered decades of compulsive eating. “I used food to medicate the pain of losing my dad,” she said. “But as I got older I also used it to keep a protective layer between me and the world.”

Then a few years ago, Jennifer’s daughter was riding her bike home from school and got hit by a car. She was released from the hospital later that day but this near catastrophe jolted Jennifer’s perspective. “When my biggest fear almost came true, I realized I was not really living my life,” she said. She was able to stop her compulsive eating for a while, but by spring she was bingeing again. Then Dave died. Jennifer came over right away to comfort us. And in a beautiful twist, helping us turned out to help her too. “Just watching it all again was like being a ghost from Christmas past,” she told me. “I looked at your daughter and wanted her to know her world had changed forever, and it was so unfair, but it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was just life. I wanted her to love herself. And I wanted my daughter to love herself. But how could I expect her—and my son—to do that when their own mother did not?”

At last, Jennifer started treating herself with the kindness and care she showed others. Her big breakthrough came when she realized “you cannot outrun any addiction. You must heal, and that takes a kind of love that no one else can provide for you.” Once Jennifer found self-compassion and self-acceptance, she was able to gain control over her addiction and now coaches other women who struggle with emotional eating. She is a role model for me and a reminder that the love we need to lead a fulfilling life cannot only come from others but must come from inside us as well.

Like so much else in life, finding someone to love is not something we can control. As my Facebook colleague Nina Choudhuri got older, she grappled with her lifelong desire to get married and have children. Her parents had an arranged marriage, fell deeply in love, and then her father passed away when she was three. “The only reality I have known is growing up with a single mother who was not one by choice—that was her Option B,” Nina says. Nina dreamed of getting married and starting a family. Her mother encouraged her to look for the right partner and marry for love. Nina started searching for the perfect man. In her twenties, she would go on a first date and immediately ask herself, “Is this someone I could marry?” Nina remained optimistic, but as more and more online matches and blind dates didn’t pan out, she began to wonder if the dream she shared with her mother might not come true.

As Nina approached forty, she realized that she couldn’t control whether she fell in love, but she could choose to have a child. She was worried about the risks of pregnancy, so she started thinking about adoption. “At forty-three, I had this aha moment of acceptance and realizing life is not about image—it’s about fulfillment,” she said. She decided to adopt a baby on her own. When she told her brother, he cheered and wrapped his arms around her. Her mom was ecstatic too, telling her a child is a gift from God. “All of this support further validates my feeling of ‘Yes, I can do this!’ I am lucky to be surrounded by so much love and care,” Nina told me. “Who’s to say that a family is a man, a woman, and two and a half children and a white picket fence? In my Option B, the B stands for ‘baby.’ The two of us together will create our Option A.”

The process has required perseverance. Nina was selected by one birth mother, but the baby was born with a congenital heart defect and survived only a week. Nina told me at the time that she had no regrets. She said she “loved the baby for seven gorgeous days,” and although it was a brutal experience, it reaffirmed her decision to adopt. Then just before Valentine’s Day, Nina sent me an email with the subject line “Introducing…” My heart started beating faster when I saw a picture of her cradling a newborn just hours after birth. You can’t see Nina’s eyes in the photo because they are glued to her daughter. Her email contained this simple six-word message: “So in love! Can’t believe it!”

Resilience in love means finding strength from within that you can share with others. Finding a way to make love last through the highs and lows. Finding your own way to love when life does not work out as planned. Finding the hope to love and laugh again when love is cruelly taken from you. And finding a way to hang on to love even when the person you love is gone.

—

As I write this, it has been almost two years since that unimaginable day in Mexico. Two years since my children lost their father. Two years since I lost the love of my life.

Anna Quindlen told me that we confuse resilience with closure. She lost her mother forty years ago. “Is it easier than it was then? Yes,” she said to me over coffee. “Do I still miss her so much it feels like a toothache? Yes. Do I still pick up the phone and try to call her? Yes.”

Time has marched on and in some ways, I have too. In other ways, I haven’t. I now believe what Davis Guggenheim told me that first month: grief has to unfold. Writing this book and trying to find meaning have not replaced my sadness. Sometimes grief hits me like a wave, crashing into my consciousness until I can feel nothing else. It strikes at predictable big events, like our anniversary, and at the smallest of moments, like when junk mail comes to the house addressed to Dave. Sometimes I’ll be working at my kitchen table and my heart will skip a beat when I think for a brief second that he is opening the door and coming home.

But just as grief crashes into us like a wave, it also rolls back like the tide. We are left not just standing, but in some ways stronger. Option B still gives us options. We can still love…and we can still find joy.

I now know that it’s possible not just to bounce back but to grow. Would I trade this growth to have Dave back? Of course. No one would ever choose to grow this way. But it happens—and we do. As Allen Rucker wrote about his paralysis, “I won’t make your skin crawl by saying it’s a ‘blessing in disguise.’ It’s not a blessing and there is no disguise. But there are things to be gained and things to be lost, and on certain days, I’m not sure that the gains are not as great as, or even greater than, the inevitable losses.”

Tragedy does not have to be personal, pervasive, or permanent, but resilience can be. We can build it and carry it with us throughout our lives. If Malala can feel gratitude…if Catherine Hoke can get her second chance to help others get a second chance…if “leftover” women can band together to fight social stigma…if the Mother Emanuel congregants can rise above hate…if Allen Rucker can keep his sense of humor…if Wafaa can flee to a strange country and rediscover joy…if Joe Kasper can forge a co-destiny with his son…we can all find strength within ourselves and build strength together. There is light within each of us that will not be extinguished.

At Dave’s funeral, I said that if on the day I walked down the aisle with him, someone had told me that we would have only eleven years together, I would still have walked down that aisle. Eleven years of being Dave’s wife and ten years of being a parent with him is perhaps more luck and more happiness than I could ever have imagined. I am grateful for every minute we had. I concluded my eulogy with these words:

Dave, I have a few promises I make to you today:
I promise I will raise your children as Vikings fans even though I know nothing about football and I’m pretty sure that team never wins.
I promise to take them to Warriors games and pay attention enough to cheer only when the Warriors score.
I promise to let our son continue to play online poker even though you let him start at eight years old and most fathers would have discussed with the mother whether it was appropriate for such a young child to play online poker in the first place. And to our daughter: when you are eight—but not one minute before—you can play online poker too.
Dave, I promise to raise your children so that they know who you were—and everyone here can help me do that by sharing your stories with us. And Dave, I will raise your children so that they know what you wanted for them and that you loved them more than anything in the world.
Dave, I promise to try to live a life that would make you proud. A life of doing my best, being the friend you were to our friends, following your example in trying to make the world a better place, and always—but always—cherishing your memory and loving our family.
Today we will put the love of my life to rest, but we will bury only his body. His spirit, his soul, his amazing ability to give is still with all of us. I feel it in the stories people are sharing of how he touched their lives, I see it in the eyes of our family and friends, and above all, it is in the spirit and resilience of our children. Things will never be the same—but the world is better for the years Dave Goldberg lived.

Yes, the world is better for the years Dave Goldberg lived. I am better for the years we spent together and for what he taught me—both in life and in death.