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Amy Krouse Rosenthal, who wrote about impending death, succumbs to cancer

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The death of the American writer Amy Krouse Rosenthal has been announced.
 
Ms Rosenthal, who was 51 and had been suffering from cancer, caused an international sensation earlier this month when the New York Times published her column entitled “You May Want To Marry My Husband”.
 
In the column, written in the form of a dating profile, she set out the qualities of her husband, Jason, saying she hoped “the right person reads this, finds Jason, and another love story begins”. 

The piece was widely re-published and praised. 

“I want more time with Jason,” she wrote. “I want more time with my children. I want more time sipping martinis at the Green Mill Jazz Club on Thursday nights. But that is not going to happen. I probably have only a few days left being a person on this planet.”

Ms Rosenthal, who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2015 wrote 28 children’s picture books and two memoirs as well as delivering TED (Technology, Entertainment Design) talks and producing short films. 

When she reached 40, Ms Rosenthal began calculating how many days she had left until she turned 80.

“How many more times, then, do I get to look at a tree?” she wrote in her memoir. “Let’s just say it’s 12,395. Absolutely, that’s a lot, but it’s not infinite, and I’m thinking anything less than infinite is too small a number and not satisfactory. At the very least, I want to look at trees a million more times. Is that too much to ask?”

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