Ford Books

August 2024. "Here After is an intimate story of deep love followed by dizzying loss; a stunning, taut memoir from but author Amy Lin so finely etched and powerful that it will alter readers' hearts. 'When he dies, I fall out of time.' Amy Lin never expected to find a love like the one she shares with her husband, Kurtis, a gifted young architect who pulls her toward joy, adventure, and greater self-acceptance. But on a sweltering August morning, only a few months shy of the newlyweds' move to Vancouver, thirty-two-year-old Kurtis heads out run a half marathon with Amy's family. It is the last time she sees her husband alive. Ten days after this seismic loss, Amy is in the hospital, navigating her own shocking medical crisis and making life-or-death decisions about her treatment. What follows is a rich and unflinchingly honest accounting of her life with Kurtis, the vortex created by his death, and the ongoing struggle Amy faces as she attempts to understand her own experience in the context of commonly held "truths" about what the grieving process looks like. Here After is a love story and a meditation on the ways in which Kurtis' death shatters any set ideas Amy ever held about grief, strength, and memory. Its power will last with you long after the final page."

I've been with my partner for 2.5 years. We've known each other for years through work, but we were both always in other relationships, and the possibility never occurred to us. Upon the beginning of our romantic relationship, I looked back at my life with a deep regret that I had wasted any time with anyone who wasn't him. At night sometimes, I lie awake and have morbid visions of what my life would be like if he passed away unexpectedly, like Amy Lin's husband, Kurtis. What follows in my imaginative dream state is a feeling so sharp, so possible and disgustingly morose, it gives me nightmares long after my eyes have shut for the night. Perhaps it's not healthy to ruminate on our time after each other, when I should be enjoying our time during each other. But these dream scenarios have become much more frequent after reading Lin's memoir, because I have an impending feeling that I need to prepare myself for the worst possible outcome.

Amy and Kurtis are young, happy, and healthy. One day, Kurtis leaves the house to run a marathon with Amy's family. She stays behind on account of a twisted ankle. During his run, Kurtis' heart stops, he collapses, and this is the end of his life. Lin's writing in this book is so raw, so depressingly honest, that it brought me to tears practically every other page. As the months after his death pass, Lin does not attempt to write about some sort of Eat-Pray-Love Personal Awakening that we see in many grief writings. She is sad, she is depressed, she is overcome with grief, and these are the facts of her life.

Lin's writing is poetic and poignant. I felt during reading that I could vividly envision each scenario she portrayed. I could feel the love that she and Kurtis felt for each other, and I could feel his cold absence after his death.