Patience and Memoir

JOYCE MAYNARD is the author of nine novels, including Labor Day (William Morrow, 2009) and To Die For (Dutton, 1992). Her earlier memoir, At Home in the World (Picador, 1998), has been translated into seventeen languages. Her new memoir about finding and losing her husband, The Best of Us, will be published by Bloomsbury this month.

NOBODY but a writer, or someone who loves a writer, would understand this. The night my husband died, I began to write a book. Not in the first hour. First I just lay there beside Jim with my head on his shoulder, my body pressed against his. We had stopped weighing him a couple weeks earlier, but he was probably down to ninety pounds by this time. Just a year before, almost to the day, he had undergone a fourteen-hour surgery to remove a tumor in his pancreas—remove the tumor and reroute his entire digestive system to the point where it was no longer possible to touch his abdomen; there were so many tubes and drains and stitches, and everything just hurt so much. All feeling having left his body now, I could place my hand on his belly again, and I did that.

For one hour—a little longer, maybe—I lay there with my husband as his skin grew cold. This was the last time we would ever lie together like this, and I wanted to take in every single thing about this moment. I took it all in, as a woman who adored this man and was mourning his departure from earth. But here