After 39 years together, Anne Roiphe lost her husband, Herman, to a heart attack. For her, time moves on, but she remains suspended — "like the fly [she] saw in an amber stone, waiting for release." Still, she takes steps to rebuild her life.
"I am now a single woman," Roiphe writes. "There is no one at home to call when I am away. Self-pity is never useful. It tends to distort like a fun-house mirror. Nevertheless I indulge myself — heavy helpings of self-pity. Then I stop."
Roiphe says there are two parts to grief: loss and the remaking of life. Her book, she resolves, is about remaking life.
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