Selling Our Dream Home Is Another Deeply Emotional Loss

It’s been five years of living alone in the hollow absence of the power, beauty, humor, and love infused in its walls by my late wife

I’m selling our dream house.

It feels like another loss, a deeply emotional one that many widows and widowers sometimes find themselves facing, which is why I’m feeling the need to share it with the universe. I’m learning that losses cannot be compared to the vast array of emotions that surface in their wake; the choice to relive so many moments of joy and pain is a voluntary one.

In my case, it is the house where we spent seventy-five thousand hours of our family life together. The bedroom where my wife Amy and I spent sacred moments of comfort, canoodling, reading, and indulging in cherished rest. Every detail carefully selected, like the wall we decorated with a Parisian scene in burnt umber behind the bed where I routinely sat up to read while Amy took a hot bath in my line of vision in the bathroom through our walk-in closet.

In the late 1980s, I read a book called House, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder. It was an eloquent portrayal of the home building process, a perfect description of what Amy and I went through, from the complexities of such unfamiliar territory to the relationships involved along the way that almost made House read more like a novel. We enjoyed every moment of that overwhelming project and never lost sight of what a privilege it was, what a gift, and how lucky we were to be able to create our very own modern farmhouse on a tree-lined street in Chicago.

It was in that home that Amy encouraged me to become a better person, a better husband, and a better dad. She told the world that she loved my artwork, so I painted more (she said she’d call me an artist “except for the law degree that keeps him at his downtown office most days…”) and hung my art throughout the house.

I flipped many a pancake in our open kitchen, with its book clock, chalkboard memorializing our weekly activities, and the water fountain we installed to satisfy our three kids’ perpetual “I’m thirsty” when they were little. Our dining room table doubled as a track around which Amy would play spontaneous games of “chase” with the kids, her vertically challenged body making it difficult to tell the children from the mommy.

Fourteen joyful years with our dear family dog Cougar. Our kids growing up too fast, sneaking out at night and tiptoeing back in, hoping we wouldn’t hear them. The long, lingering hugs from both parents after bad breakups. The pre-gaming before proms. The Shabbat dinners. Movie nights and Backwards Nights. The children’s inevitable transition to adulthood to start their own lives, but when they came home from wherever they were, they came here.

And finally, impossibly, in our dream house, there was hospice, and the end of their mom’s life. My wife’s life. Amy’s life.

It’s been five years. Five years of living here alone in the hollow absence of the power, beauty, humor, and love infused in these walls by Amy Krouse Rosenthal.

I’m sure many of you have been through the difficult decision to vacate the family home following the deeply intense loss of a family member. I carry the emotional intensity it brings me and my three adult children. They haven’t lived here every day as I have, so many of their feelings about this transition stem from the beautiful memories they have of this bright, book-filled home, their parents’ dream once upon a time that became a reality.

I know, I know. There’s an old saying that it’s not the brick-and-mortar real estate that’s important, it’s the memories we made there. I believe that’s true. But it doesn’t make this transition easier.

As bestselling author Nicole Krauss once wrote, “This is why the rabbis tell us that a broken heart is more full than one that is content: because a broken heart has a vacancy, and the vacancy has the potential to be filled with the infinite.”

There’s a vacancy at the Rosenthal Inn. There’s been a vacancy in my heart, too. But I’m a very fortunate soul to say that the vacancy is being filled with the infinite. A new home. A new gal. A new place my kids can always return to and find me waiting. New memories to be made and cherished.

It’s time.

Jason B. Rosenthal is an author, foundation Board Chair, public speaker, and lawyer. He is also the subject of an essay written by his wife, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, called You May Want to Marry My Husband which went viral and was read by millions of readers worldwide. His first book, written in collaboration with his daughter Paris called Dear Boy, debuted on the New York Times Bestseller list at #1. His response to Amy’s piece titled, My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me was published in 2018, and his memoir by the same name was published in 2020.

This essay is part of our Moms Don’t Have Time to Grieve column.