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   June 12, 2018, 9:35 PM GMT / Source: TODAY By Gina Vivinetto 
   
   Author and filmmaker Amy Krouse Rosenthal touched readers' hearts last year when she wrote a heartbreaking dating profile for her husband, Jason Rosenthal, just days before dying of ovarian cancer. 
   
   Now, in a candid TED Talk, Jason Rosenthal is opening up about his late wife's final days and how he's learning to find joy again after losing his companion of more than 26 years. 
   
   "My wife died of ovarian cancer in our bed,” Rosenthal told the audience at the recent TED 2018 conference, the video of which was released this week. “I carried her lifeless body down our stairs, through our dining room and our living room to a waiting gurney to have her body cremated. I will never get that image out of my head." 
   
   In March 2017, 10 days before she died at 51, Amy Krouse Rosenthal published an essay titled "You May Want to Marry My Husband" in the New York Times. The tender, funny essay acted as a kind of personal ad for Jason, who, she knew, would soon be a widower. 
   
   "He is an easy man to fall in love with. I did it in one day," Amy wrote, recalling the couple's first blind date nearly three decades before. She described Jason as thoughtful, handy and handsome. "I’m going to miss looking at that face of his," she wrote, adding that he was an “absolutely wonderful father” to their three grown children. 
   
   Jason Rosenthal said he tries to honor his late wife, author and filmmaker Amy Krouse Rosenthal, by finding beauty and joy in simple moments. TED 
   
   "We were in love and our love grew stronger up until her last day," Jason Rosenthal told the audience of his endlessly creative late wife, who published both best-selling children's books — including "I Wish You More" and "Uni the Unicorn" — and critically acclaimed memoirs. 
   
   "To this day I have memories of those final weeks that haunt me," he shared. “I remember walking backwards to the bathroom, assisting Amy with each step. I felt so strong. I’m not such a big guy, but my arms looked and felt so big and healthy compared to Amy’s frail body.” 
   
   Amy Krouse Rosenthal @missamykr/Twitter 
   
   In January 2017, Amy had given up eating solid food, and though she'd shrunk to half her body weight, she hung on for two more months. After her death, Rosenthal experienced "despair," which was made worse four months later when his father died of complications related to a battle with Parkinson's disease. 
   
   "I had to wonder: How much can the human condition handle?" Rosenthal asked. "What makes us capable of dealing with this intense loss and yet carry on? Was this a test? Why my family and my amazing children?" 
   
   The key to his being able to persevere, he shared, "is Amy's expressed and very public edict that I must go on." 
   
   Though he's "sad a lot of the time," Rosenthal said he does his best to honor Amy by seeking out joy and beauty each day. 
   
   “Because Amy gave me very public permission to also find happiness, I now have experienced joy from time to time," he said. 
   
   Music, nature and time with his children are precious sources of pleasure, he shared, adding that relishing simple, everyday moments was "part of Amy's DNA." 
   
   As for his late wife's adoring essay about him, it did prompt all sorts of people, including interested women, to reach out. One potential suitor emailed him with an ultimatum. 
   
   "I will marry you when you are ready. Provided you permanently stop drinking, no other conditions. I promise to outlive you. Thank you very much," the woman bluntly wrote. 
   
   "I do like a good tequila," Rosenthal joked to the audience. "Yet, how could I say ‘no’ to that proposal?” 
   
   The letter he most cherished, however, was one from a close family friend, who remembered his late wife teaching guests how to make cornbread croutons at a Shabbat dinner. 
   
   "Only Amy," the friend wrote, "could find creativity in croutons." 
   
   Rosenthal and his family have set up a foundation in his late wife's name to raise money for ovarian cancer research and children's literacy, causes that were near and dear to her heart. ||||| When Amy Krouse Rosenthal penned a heartbreaking dating profile for her husband, Jason Rosenthal, before her death last year, she encouraged him to start a new love story. 
   
   It’s been 15 months since the Chicago author died from ovarian cancer on March 13, 2017. And although Jason has been able to find moments of joy again, the widower says he’s not sure if he’ll ever remarry. 
   
   “I have no idea. I don’t know,” he said in a recent interview with Today. “When I said, ‘I live day to day,’ that’s what I’m doing right now.” 
   
   Last March, The New York Times published the dating profile titled “You May Want to Marry My Husband” that Amy wrote for Jason. In the moving essay, Amy called Jason “an easy man to fall in love with,” described him as a “sharp dresser” and an “absolutely wonderful father” to their three children. 
   
   RELATED: Husband of Dying Author Who Wrote Heartbreaking Dating Profile for Him Speaks Out 1 Year Later 
   
   Courtesy Rosenthal Family 
   
   RELATED: Chicago Author Who Wrote Heartbreaking Dating Profile for Husband Dies: Her ‘Love Letter Was the Ultimate Gift’ 
   
   Amy died 10 days after the profile was published. Jason said the months following her death were “groggy,” but he found a bit of joy in the onslaught of messages he received from female readers. 
   
   “A group of women reached out to me and professed their commitment,” he told Today. “Some of it provided a nice bit of levity and some humor.” 
   
   The comments come just after he opened up about his wife’s final weeks during the recent TED 2018 conference. He spoke of a particular email from a potential partner. 
   
   The message read: “I will marry you when you are ready. Provided you permanently stop drinking, no other conditions. I promise to outlive you. Thank you very much.” 
   
   Despite the instances of humor and joy, Jason said he is still haunted by the last moments he spent with Amy. 
   
   “My wife died of ovarian cancer in our bed,” he said in the TED Talk. “I carried her lifeless body down our stairs, through our dining room and our living room to a waiting gurney to have her body cremated. I will never get that image out of my head.” 
   
   RELATED: Woman with Terminal Cancer Creates Heartbreaking Dating Profile for Husband: ‘He Is an Easy Man to Fall in Love With’ 
   
   The love letter captured the world’s attention, making Jason’s grief public. Still, he said, his final weeks with his wife produced a personal pain he’ll never be able to adequately express. 
   
   Courtesy Rosenthal Family 
   
   “I remember walking backwards to the bathroom, assisting Amy with each step,” he said. “I felt so strong. I’m not such a big guy, but my arms looked and felt so big and healthy compared to Amy’s frail body.” 
   
   Now, Jason is grateful for his wife’s very public edict that he “go on” after her death. 
   
   “As I climbed out of the deep, deep darkness of grieving, I sort of had that little guardian angel on my shoulder when I went out and I found my smiling,” he told Today. “I’m laughing, ‘It’s okay, Amy said you could find happiness.’ ” 
   
   The Rosenthal family has also relaunched the Amy Krouse Rosenthal Foundation, which now funds ovarian cancer research and childhood literacy initiatives.
target: – It's been more than a year since author Amy Krouse Rosenthal died of ovarian cancer shortly after writing a viral essay in which she encouraged readers to consider marrying husband Jason after her passing. Now Jason Rosenthal is speaking out, in a TED talk he gave at the TED 2018 conference as well as an interview with Today. Asked whether he'll remarry, he said, "I have no idea. I don’t know." But he says several women did reach out after reading his late wife's column. "A group of women reached out to me and professed their commitment," he told Today, per People. "Some of it provided a nice bit of levity and some humor." He says one of the women even promised to outlive him. As for the TED talk, Rosenthal recounted his grief and said he's learning to smile again after losing his partner of 26 years, Today reports. His father also died just four months after Amy, leading him to wonder, "How much can the human condition handle? What makes us capable of dealing with this intense loss and yet carry on? Was this a test? Why my family and my amazing children?" But Amy had made it clear to the world at large that he needed to persevere. "Because Amy gave me very public permission to also find happiness, I now have experienced joy from time to time," he said in the talk.