Dear Reader,

Dead wives get promoted to sainthood. It happens at the funeral. Automatic. One day she’s a person who steals the blankets, and the next day everyone talks about her like she was assembled by angels.

Grief memoirs do the same thing. The dead spouse floats through the book like a halo with a name attached. Perfect. Patient. Gone. You finish knowing everything about the author’s pain and nothing about the person who caused it.

Reason #2 to read my book: you get to meet Vanessa.

Not “my late wife.” You meet Vanessa. A Bolivian valley girl who married a Jewish engineer. Her mom is Abuela. My mom is Savta. Our daughter is half of each. There’s a chapter in the book called “The Cutest Jewtina Alive.” Nobody in this family picked a lane.

The first part of the book is essentially “How I Met Your Mommy.” You get her before any of the sad. The toe cracking she deserved a gold medal for. The love song she rewrote until it was about stinky toes. The dogs she squeezed until they squeaked.

She was funnier than me. I put that in writing. It still stings.

The book ends with a letter for Luciana’s quinceañera. Which I will be planning alone. A Jewish dad googling quinceañera etiquette. Vanessa would have found that hilarious.

She dies. That’s not a spoiler. It’s on the cover. But by the time it happens, you’re not reading about some author’s wife. You’re losing Vanessa too.

That’s a guess. I haven’t read the book since it was published. I’m not a masochist. I already know Vanessa is dead.

Before you fact check me: yes, my version of her is polished. No, I’m not going to trash my dead wife for the whole world to read just to score some honesty points with random people on the internet. That is not a fun way to destroy my complicated relationship with Vanessa’s family.

But the book admits it. There’s a whole chapter called “Mommy the Saint” where I try to list her flaws and catch myself protecting her in real time. I hedge. I flinch. I left all of it in. I’d rather be honest about lying than lie about being honest.

I told you the book was honest. Then I told you it was funny. Then I promised there’s no redemption arc. Reason #2 is simpler than all of those. She was thirty five. Everyone should have gotten more time with her. You get nine letters.

One more thing. She needed forty hugs a day. Really. Forty. I was too lazy to keep lifting my arms, so we compromised on little kisses instead. Besitos.

Every letter on this site ends with her word. Now you know whose it was.

Besitos,

Michael