True Love and Healing After Loss: Marcy Shrewsbury Lopez's Journey

In this episode of Seeing Death Clearly, host Jill McClennen, a death doula and funeral celebrant, speaks with Marcy Shrewsbury Lopez about her extraordinary love story and journey through grief. 

Marcy shares her experience being married to her husband, who was 46 years older than her, and the deep connection they shared until his death at 98 years old. 

She reflects on the challenges of caregiving and her path to healing through art, teaching, and nature. Marcy also discusses her memoir, 'A Place of Promise,' which portrays their love story and her personal growth. 

This conversation highlights the themes of love, aging, and the perseverance required to move forward after losing a loved one.

00:00 Finding a Place of Promise

00:21 Introduction to the Podcast

01:24 Marcy's Early Life and Background

03:40 Life in The Bahamas and Return to New Jersey

07:15 Pursuing Art and Medical Illustration

10:56 Meeting and Marrying Adrian

12:50 Caring for Adrian and Coping with Loss

16:19 Moving Forward and Embracing New Experiences

19:38 The Healing Power of Horses

21:24 A Healing Connection with Horses

22:30 Art as a Grieving Outlet

24:45 The Power of Nature in Healing

26:33 Teaching and Giving Back

29:21 Writing a Memoir: A Journey of Love and Loss

33:54 The Challenges of Publishing

41:07 Final Thoughts and Reflections

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61578733719839

https://www.marcieshrewsburylopez.com

Transcript

Marcie : [00:00:00] It's a place of promise to know where you are safe and can be your authentic self. I have that every time. I feel my husband's love and I was loved unconditionally by him. So that's what I think we need to find is that place of promise, where we become who we're meant to be in our spirit is free.

Jill: Welcome back to Seeing Death Clearly. I'm your host, Jill McClennen. Death doula and funeral celebrant. This is a space for real human conversations about death, dying grief, and living life. In this episode, I'm joined by Marcy Shrewsbury Lopez, who shares her extraordinary love story with her husband, who was 46 years older than her.

And the rich life they shared together until his death at 98 years old. Marcy reflects honestly on caregiving and grief, not as something you get over, but as something she learned to live with. She shares how art teaching and time in nature became important parts in her healing and [00:01:00] how giving back helped her find meaning after loss.

We also talk about her memoir. A place of promise which captures both her love story and the long determined journey of bringing that book into the world. This conversation is about love, aging grief, and the quiet persistence it takes to keep moving forward after profound loss. Thank you for joining us.

Welcome, Marcy to the podcast. Thank you for coming on today. Can you just tell me to start us off a little bit about you, who you are, where you grew up, anything like that you wanna share? 

Marcie : My name is Marcy Shrewsbury Lopez. Thank you for inviting me onto your podcast. I was born and raised in Plainfield, New Jersey, and we lived most of our lives.

Our family life in Ong, back when it was rural, and that's near Somerville, Somerset County, and that was before Route 78 and 2 87. 78 was a Native American trail and a lot of kids walked to school on that. I was lucky to have a [00:02:00] pony and I rode my pony with other little girls on that. It was really beautiful.

A lot of kids found arrowheads. New Jersey then in that area was a little bit rural suburbs with a real feel of rural, not too far away. We lived a good life. Didn't have any major problems. It was quiet, pretty conventional conservative. Mother did mother things and provided a lovely home. My father worked.

He was athletic. We were always told to get outside and get the apples in our cheeks. They hugged together. She would go deer hunting with 'em and duck hunting, and my brothers would go with them. And I went a couple times. That was. Not really for me, a big gun and pointing it at at Bird, but it just took great to get outside.

We would go down to South Jersey. My father would go to Duck Blinds down there. He had a boat down at the Jersey shore and we'd go out fishing with him and that also was not my favorite thing to do. If you don't see land and you're on water, it's uncomfortable. [00:03:00] My brothers and I always wanted to go back in, but we caught blue fish and then we come back in.

I have an outdoors background and I think that's helped me. With my experience in life, I often think of that my grandparents had 26 acres in Martinsville, New Jersey, not too far from Somerville. All long gone, all the vegetable and fruit farms in which they had gone, but I was lucky to go for weekends there.

That was a lovely experience and not many people have that experience of being on a farm and waking up and helping to pick the apples and the tomatoes, and I think that's given me a grounding in life. A lot of people don't have. Then my father was offered a job in The Bahamas. My mother said, let's go.

Let's try it. We had still owned our house in Huong and rented it to people and we went to The Bahamas and that was a great experience to see a different part of the world as a teenager and meet other kids and. Then we came back to New Jersey [00:04:00] and moved back into that house. The high school wouldn't accept my credits from the British school, and I loved the British school.

It was a lot of Shakespeare and Thomas Hardy then Grand Bahama Island was British. The school was very British. If you misbehaved, you got cane. I did not get caned. The instructors were from England. The English professors were the parents of the Beatles first drummer. We knew who the Beatles were and we kind of looked at them like, are you serious?

If you see the name, they were the best, their first drummer. I love the literature classes. Nothing like that, British literature. Then we came back to the states and the public school wouldn't accept the credits from the British school, so I went to prep school in Burnsville, New Jersey, horse country, rural.

My mother had relatives up there, and again, I love the literature. I love the art classes. And did well in everything, but chemistry 

Jill: needed tutors for that. 

Marcie : Then went on to junior [00:05:00] college and graduated from NYU with a degree in English, and I had gone to art school and took some pre-med classes at NYU 'cause I thought I was gonna be a doctor also.

Not for me, but I became a medical artist at NYU Medical Center and worked with some of the best surgeons going into the operating room. I worked hard until I met my husband. I didn't have to work. I developed my art and writing. He was a publisher of quilting and crafts magazines and car racing magazines.

He had a natural talent for writing with brevity, and I thought when I graduated from NYU, I was a writer, so I would write some stories for him, be a reporter. Rita told him, he would just listen. He never said anything negative to or about another person and I thought, wow, he's gonna say this is really great.

And he would say Overriding. Overriding. But that taught me, and he kind of was a Faulkner Hemingway type of writer where you the less and with as much brevity as [00:06:00] possible. I was inspired by him and his son was a well-known writer who won the National Book Award. That gives you a brief. History, maybe too much, but you have an idea who I am now.

Jill: No, it was perfect. I love it. I love hearing all about people's lives. And being a Jersey girl myself, I love meeting other people from New Jersey. Of 

Marcie : course 

Jill: I am South Jersey, like that's where I grew up, down the farmland. That is also starting to go away, even in South Jersey because when you meet people, oh, it's, they're like Jersey.

Why is it called the garden state? 'cause they only think of the highways. And I'm like, no. There used to be a lot of farmland. 

Marcie : Was, was 

Jill: not. 

Marcie : Well, my mother would take her mother and myself out to New Hope, Pennsylvania. Mm-hmm. Which would be close to Pennsylvania. It was all rural on the way out, and there was no 78 to get out there.

It would be farmland after farmland. That's all gone. 

Jill: It's very different now. It is what it is, right? That's part of the world now. Things change. It is kind of sad to see it going [00:07:00] away because you're right. My grandmother grew up on a farm picking vegetables and they had cows and chicken, but that was already gone by the time I was born.

The farm was a carpet store when I was a kid. Yeah. Actually still is a carpet store now, but you know, things definitely change. What did you say you were a medical. 

Marcie : Medical art. I didn't know what it was. Myself. I had a job at St. Vincent's Hospital while I was in art school. 

Jill: Mm-hmm. 

Marcie : I went to Parson School of Design on 12th Street, and St.

Vincent's was close. I got a job as the lowest of the low in the hospital ward clerk. It's a public ward. You keep all the files together and when the doctors come in and give you slips, you file it on that patient, make sure all the patients are okay. It's just a basic clerk job. I was copying anatomy books that I would find in the library at the hospital.

One of the doctors said to me, why don't you become a medical artist? And I was like, well, what is that? Well, the medical artists needed for. A MA journals, nursing [00:08:00] textbooks, doctor's textbooks. Now a lot of it's done with computers, but I was doing it. I started to do it with watercolors and pen and ink, and I got hired at NYU Medical Center to be an artist going into the operating room with doctors and got scrubbed and had a mask and you don't say anything.

It's a very intense. Beautiful experience to be in an operating room. Everybody's at a thousand percent at their best of their intelligence and talent. Those surgical nurses hand them the instrument before they ask for it. It's a beautiful experience and what I. A greater appreciation than the human body.

I mean, people would say, whoa. Well no, I just thought it was beautiful. So we're all put together and it is almost magical. So I did that for a while. My drawings have been in American Medical Association textbooks. Doctors use them for teaching aids, and they taught other surgeons. It was fun. It was very dynamic.

Every time I would work with a surgeon, I'd get [00:09:00] called and I would talk to the surgeon, say, okay, you're gonna come into this operation with me. I'd photograph and draw, and then I'd meet him maybe the same day or the next day, and I'd say, well, doctor, how soon do you want this? Every one of them said yesterday, Marcy, because that's how they were.

They don't waste time. They don't have that luxury to waste time. So I would be in the medical school library till late at night doing my research to know what I was drawing, what the anatomy was, what the organs were, they were operating on. Very dynamic. 

Jill: That is really neat. I guess I've never thought about it, right?

And now that I think about it, I'm like, oh yeah, of course there people do it. 

Marcie : Google later. Frank Netter, N-E-T-T-E-R. He is like the first medical artist in the United States. He was a doctor at Bellevue. And he needed drawings and nobody can compete with those drawings. They're really good. 

Jill: Oh, I will for sure check that out.

That's actually fun. My goal for this year is to learn how to draw. I got a book out of the library, like drawing from the right side [00:10:00] or something. It's supposed to be a really good book that teaches you how to draw by looking at things differently. Yeah, you 

Marcie : need to look. A lot of it is looking, and this is just being loose if the book is too technical.

That can be a handicap. Sometimes what we would do would be just draw an art school, just gesture drawings, which means you don't really look at your drawing, but you look at the object and gesture. You get a three minute drawing, a five minute drawing, and then at the end of 20 minutes you get to look at what you did.

And sometimes it does look like a bird or a flower. Sometimes it doesn't, but it's like calisthenics for an artist to loosen up and then you can be more anatomical with a figure later. Think of shading and shadows. 

Jill: Yeah. 

Marcie : Then you can get the form. Just stay loose. 

Jill: Yeah. I find the human body to be really fascinating, so I'm sure doing what you did must have been amazing.

Now I'm gonna look up some of those drawings. 'cause now I'm curious. And then you said your husband was [00:11:00] 46 years 

Marcie : older than you? Years older. 

Jill: Wow. 

Marcie : That's one of the reasons the publisher wanted to publish the book because it was so fascinating and unique. He would often call me unique, so I guess we were a unique couple.

We didn't realize how unique we were because it was too love. After three days, he asked me to marry him. He was in very good shape. He had been an athlete at Notre Dame and just kept working out, staying in good shape. And jogging. I couldn't even keep up with him jogging at the Jersey Shore. He would jog from bay head up to the inlet and point pleasant and back.

Say, well, I'm going for a run. And I'm like reading the Sunday papers and I would call him Gogo Lopez. He had diesel engines in them. Hmm. That's something you inherit? I guess. So. I didn't realize it until, and this is in the book, we go for the marriage license in downtown New York because he lived in the city and that was going to be our full-time home.

As we go to the elevator, I have the marriage license, I said, oh, Adrian, [00:12:00] look, look, they made a mistake. Look. Look what they said is your age. And he just kind of gently pushed me towards the elevator. He said, no, that is my age. And I went. Well, wait a second. If he had told me before, I probably would've really hesitated.

He was being underhanded or surreptitious and not being honest. And I think if he had said to me, I'm like 46-year-old, I just, this is just really crazy, but was so natural. That's how you know it's true love. It's when you're so comfortable and you bring the best out in each other, was magical. 

Jill: The fact that you said he died when he was 98.

Yeah. Which is old. Right. That's great. But that's still, you know, I think like that's a lot of lifetime that you're gonna live without him. 

Marcie : I did start some therapy at some point, and she said that to me and I was like, I don't know what you're talking about. I was in denial. He's gonna live forever and we're gonna be the only [00:13:00] couple on the earth that ever lived forever.

It was just kind of this fantasy, but then in the last couple of years of his life, he became ill and then that reality. Oh yeah, he's that much older. Then he started to become frail. I took good care of him. I tried to help him live forever, and of course he didn't. Then it became a reality. He began to decline.

First. You either love the person or you don't. You either stay by their side or you don't. I fought for him. I fought for his life. I challenged all the doctors. It was actually very good for me because I was the only daughter of the youngest. Besides animals in my pony, I didn't really think much about caring for anybody else.

I was one who was cared for and when he became ill, there was something in me. I guess it was true love. I know it was true love and some strength. I rose to the occasion. The nurses and the the nurses' aides we'd have in the house. We needed a lot of care at the end, and they would say to my mother. [00:14:00] Mrs.

Shrewsbury, she knows everything we do with him. She knows every toenail, every fingernail we file, she knows how we comb his hair. It was love, and that's what love does. One of the nurses aids said to me, well, why don't you just put him in a home? And that was the last day she worked. He was my best friend, was everything to me.

Maybe some codependency, but we had a great time together. Just we were best friends. 

Jill: Beautiful. 

Marcie : Yeah, that's what the publisher said, that the reason they published it is because of the love story, the age difference, and how my art helped me to survive his passing and to thrive afterwards. And of course, the unconditional love that he gave me a foundation to go on and he would want me to go on.

You have moments when your best friend is gone. Totally best friend. There wasn't. [00:15:00] Anything I could do or say. He would just say, oh, you're so funny. He loved me that much, and when that significant other is gone for me, it was like having a limb. One of my limbs was I was missing a leg or an arm, even though I, he was older and he began to decline.

When you don't hear that person's voice, when that person isn't there to hug you, that's a shock. It's a real adjustment and no matter how much people try to help you, you need to process that. I did alone a lot with other people, of course. And express those feelings. I think you never get over it. Like I'm just about to start crying now because it was so beautiful.

Really what we had. I miss 'em dearly. He learned to live with it. Like what you're saying about the landscape changes, we accept it. We learn to accept. It's not easy. Somebody once said to me, if it hadn't been a good relationship, you'd have been happy [00:16:00] he was gone, but that wasn't it. I mean, he liked to know that he's there and come home or I'm here when he comes home.

Even just being quiet together to have that significant other, it's hard to process those feelings. The only way through it is to process the feelings. Otherwise you don't go forward. He wouldn't want me to be stuck. The house where we lived was about 40 minutes south of where I am now at the Jersey Shore in Bay.

Had New Jersey and I would watch, we had a house close to the beach, but not on the beach. A little one-way street ran in front of our house and I would see these older women widows drive by my house. They knew my mother and I knew them. I just thought, I am not gonna be an older woman widow. Before my time and I chose to sell that house and move on, it was like ripping out teeth.

But if you wanna go forward, you process and you make yourself go forward, and I chose to go forward. I gave away things, gave away [00:17:00] furniture. Soon after he died, we had a finished basement in the utility room, and I had rods put up so the summer clothes would go there. After he died, I went down there and just screamed and held his clothes.

That's what I had to do, and everybody grieves differently. I just begged him to come back. It's very hard to process that person, isn't there? You don't have a choice really unless you wanna stay stuck. And as I say, I chose not to stay stuck, made myself get out and meet people and do things, and took a ballroom Dancing class.

Helps you to get forward. 

Jill: Learning new things for sure can give you something for your mind to focus on. Ballroom dancing actually sounds like a lot of fun. I would love to learn how to ballroom dance 

Marcie : fun. 

Jill: How old were you when he died? 

Marcie : Well, let's see. So I was 32 when we were married, and he was 79, 78. I thought he was in his early sixties because I had a friend, [00:18:00] a semi society person, she was like my age and married to somebody who was in his early sixties.

Adrian was older, so I was 32 and then that was 84 and he died in oh four. So how old was I 

Jill: 50? 

Marcie : I was in my fifties. 

Jill: 52 

Marcie : or so. Yeah. Okay. Looking a lot younger, I have to say. 

Jill: Mm-hmm. 

Marcie : Kept in good shape. Like him. You have to stay fit and keep yourself moving forward. Yeah, it was a shock. I wasn't the average old 50 too.

I have to make sure that. 

Jill: I actually don't know how old you are now calculating it in my head briefly, but yes, you seem young spirited. I guess 

Marcie : my friends now are a lot younger and they don't realize how old, not a lot, but significantly younger. They don't realize how old I am. That's a nice group of women, guys and friends.

Some people do know there's one who helps me with my computer and I said, now you know how old I am. Don't you tell any people, but [00:19:00] it's a mindset too. I just don't believe. Getting old. If you surrender, I guess genetics, you can become ill. I try to eat really well. I just had neighbors come over and bought some very nice cupcakes, which are all sugar, and I had a half a 1 1 9.

I thought I was gonna die. 

Jill: No, 

Marcie : it's so unhealthy to eat sugar and excess flour. I'm not a fanatic, but I realize that it gives you energy to be careful what you eat. 

Jill: Mm-hmm. 

Marcie : So I'm very careful with that. Get exercise, walking and ride horses. 

Jill: I've never really ridden a horse. I was on a horse once and somebody walked it in a circle, which I don't think really counts.

Marcie : Beginning 

Jill: that's better than nothing, but they seem. Like a beautiful animal to 

Marcie : they're noble, loyal, and they help heal. There's a movement when they are brought into places where people [00:20:00] are healing from addictions and mental crises. And they're given a horse. The facilitator decides which horse, and I've heard stories where people haven't cried in a long time.

Horses mirror our feelings. I think they have telepathy like a lot of animals. I've been around some of them, especially recently. As I grow more aware of the world around me, I'm close to a thoroughbred breeding farm and, and visit the horses because I know horses and there's one I had become close with and she was way up in the back pasture.

And it was my birthday. They told me she was a defiant, difficult horse reared in the gate at the racetrack. She would throw her jockeys. I said, it's not the Alan, she's a beast. I said, not with me. She trusted. She knew I was a kind person. So she's way up in the back and I said, hi, taffy. Hi. She was grazing.

She looked at me like, don't bother me. I said, taffy, it's my birthday. Could you come [00:21:00] down here? As I'm sitting here and one of the barn guys was next to me, she looked up and she started to come down in a zigzag and I, who knows what she's gonna do? She stopped at the holly bush, scratched her back, and I thought, she's gonna stop there.

She came right over to me and kissed me, but she know it in my voice. Do they understand? He couldn't believe it. 'cause he's the one who told me, oh, she's a beast. I don't know why you like her. And she would put her head under my arm. So they sense if you have love and kindness in you towards them. Mm-hmm.

They're very healing, beautiful animals. 

Jill: Were you riding horses when your husband died? Was that something you were already? 

Marcie : He encouraged me and we bought a horse. I was riding, but I had sold the horse we had, and I still regret that because it was before nine 11. I think I would've done better if I had still had that horse.

I had a full-time job at Times [00:22:00] Mirror Magazines in New York City. We lived in the city. We'd come down to the Jersey Shore on weekends. He was beginning to decline. We had two larger than average homes that I became responsible for. I was really overwhelmed with a lot, and I really didn't have time to ride the horse.

He was a healer. He was a big horse. Every time I'd walk into a stall, he would chew on my hair. And somebody wanted him and I sold, um, so I started writing again recently. 

Jill: Good. 

Marcie : Yes. 

Jill: Yeah. And I know in your book you talk a little bit about some of the things you already mentioned using art for your grieving process.

What was that like for you? What kind of things gave you the best outlets to work through your grief? 

Marcie : The art definitely was a major factor. When he was ill in the last year or two, one of my art instructors said, Marcy, start drawing him. As much as you can, and I have these lovely small drawings of him, and you can see his process as their [00:23:00] life is ending.

There is a transformation at the end, and other people have told me they see this too, and at the very end, some of them glow. My husband had this glow. I think the spirit is partially on its way or knows it's going. I have some very good drawings of him and that helped. And then for a while I couldn't draw it all.

I couldn't do anything. The instructor who knew him. I knew me as a couple. She had a place in Maine. She said, come up and draw with me and my friends. And that helped because we were outside. Drawing models. They would pose in the woods and we'd draw in the woods just like what you and I are talking about, just loosening up.

I was so tight with grief and that beginning. Then I went back to my graduate school on Franklin Street near the Holland Tunnel in New York and took some graduate classes with some of the people I had studied. I knew if I didn't get back into it, it would be lost. It helped motivate me, helped get my energy going.[00:24:00] 

One class was going down to the South Street Seaport and drawing there. Being with other artists is so important. I think that really helped. Then I painted with a Pple Air group here. The artists of me never stopped. They started to pick up momentum, and now I've been in some art galleries and group museum shows and taught at a local college here in a college up at Essex County Community College.

You choose that or you choose to not live. And just sit and grief like little old ladies who have lost their husband. I just couldn't do it. I wasn't ready to do that. I can feel some of my muscles when I wake up in the morning, but I'm not gonna give into it. I'm getting a little older and I stretch more and do my art.

I have a nice studio here where I live. 

Jill: And I know you mentioned outdoors being a big part of your life. Did you do some more hiking or gardening 

Marcie : or anything you outside? I'm walking along the beach, right. My husband and I would walk on that road one way street in front of our [00:25:00] house. So I started doing that and then a friend would go with me.

My friend went to Maine with me, and we would walk through the woods and out to the end of this private island, which is now I think a federal park. I would just cry out there. I mean, it just, it helped the grieving process, definitely nature, really quiet. It was pretty far up in Maine, and then we did go up to Northeast Harbor, which is pretty far up there, and just being in nature and walking through the parks.

Healing. Really healing, definitely. I, I highly encourage people to get outside at night and just look at the moon and the stars and be with other people who understand and not ask a lot of questions. Well, how did it happen? You know, that sort of thing. 

Jill: Let you be. 

Marcie : It's traumatic 

Jill: and 

Marcie : it takes a while to settle down and accepted.

Sometimes I had too much coffee or something. It was so stressful to be without him going outside, [00:26:00] going to the beach, being with other people, being alone, whatever it takes to just keep going forward 

Jill: and moving, 

Marcie : and then have that quiet time where you need to cry for the first year or two. He had left messages on a little tape.

I had his voice and you know, one of those little tiny tape, I had it under my pillow. I would play his voice a little prayer for me until the recorder broke. The tape broke. I played it so often. That's what I needed to do. It's different for other people. His voice always calmed me down, quieted me down, being outside and doing my art and giving to others, and that's what teaching art did for me.

Focusing that was such a good experience. I had no idea. And they would call me professor and I felt like going, who are you talking? Oh, that's me. I have an M, FA and r. I got my MFA before he passed away, so I had a good foundation of how to mix the [00:27:00] paint and what to do and and perspective and how to draw a figure.

There was nothing like going back and taking some classes to be around other artists and then teaching people and ask you questions and you realize how much, you know, just encouraging other people who are hurting. And one class I taught up at Essex County College. In Newark, there was a young man I was showing pictures from books and walking up and down the aisle I saw a tattoo on a young man's.

Arm and I said, oh, that's a nice tattoo. He said, that's for my grandmother. She just died and I helped him through his art. I said, that's art too. A tattoo is the right way. You honored your grandmother encourage other people who are grieving. They all did great in my class. Being a teacher is a sacrifice.

It's not about me, it's about my ability and talent. To share and creativity to share with other people. And that does make a stronger year [00:28:00] when you share, believe me, it wasn't for the money they paid me. Like less than you pay a housekeeper, you know, to teach college. And I had a master's of fine art and all the hours I put in to get that, but it wasn't about that because it was a healing process to give to others.

So whatever way it helps you to give to others, whether it's through cooking or whatever, doing for others is healing. 

Jill: I work at a nonprofit part-time now. I know many of the volunteers come from a wide variety of backgrounds. There's definitely been some that are widowed. We even had. A family come in once because the son died in his early twenties.

He was very young. Yeah. But he had volunteered with us. So the family all came in on his death anniversary. His parents, his sisters, they came in and they all volunteered as a way to give back. We're friends now on Facebook every year for Christmas. Everybody picks a [00:29:00] charity and they donate money in his name for a different charity in his memory.

It is a nice way to. Work through our grief by giving beautiful back, beautiful to others. Right? Whatever that is. Like you said, it could be cooking, it could be teaching, it could be a variety of different things. Giving back in a way that honors your person is a beautiful way to do it. 

Marcie : Well, that's what I hope.

This book that I wrote and is published. Does to comfort those who mourn and to let people know there is true love, even if there's a 46 year difference. So it's a story of hope. This is my mission, to let other people experience true love. Some people have said to me, they had no idea that this kind of love exists.

One of my friends said she cried all the way. Through the book. And I said, but it's not all sad. And she said, well, I cried because it was so beautiful too. The relationship you had. She's and other friends said they stay up all night, they just [00:30:00] can't stop turning the page. Is it great literature? No. Is it gonna win a Pulitzer?

Probably not. But it's from the heart. There's not a lot of honest love stories without literary gymnastics where you're thinking, where are we in the story here? It's just pretty straightforward. The loving relationship we had, and this honors him. This is my way of giving to him and to others. Not the world yet, but if it happens, people buy it in other countries.

Right now I'm just staying local, doing what I can. Podcasts, book signings, and bookstores. And getting the word out. And then the publisher created a website and it's just my name, Marcy rebury lopez.com. And that tells more about the book and our relationship. They wanted pictures for my about the author section, so I have some pictures of my [00:31:00] studio and a picture of my cat sitting at my easel.

She's wait for me to come downstairs to paint a cute picture. It tells more about me and people who have written stories about me and references, and it's about the relationship. So if you go to marcie schuberg.com, you learn more about the book and our relationship, and there are pictures, some of my art and the book is in black and white.

The what to color Images of my art that. Some of the art that's in the book in black and white is in color in the gallery section of my website. 

Jill: And I will put a link in the show notes so people can easily find the website. Thank you. And what actually inspired you to write the book? Like what was the final thing that you were like, all right, I'm gonna do this.

I'm gonna write a book. 'cause that's a big project to do. 

Marcie : Oh. If I had been told what it takes, it's writing is rewriting, uh, rewriting and when you're compelled to do something, you don't [00:32:00] stop. The initial seed was planted by the dialysis nurses who took care of my husband 'cause he was so kind, he never talked about himself.

He walked into dialysis where people 30, 40 years younger. We're brought in on stretchers 

Jill: dialysis. I didn't really know what it was until he needed it. I'd heard about it, 

Marcie : never complained. He always asked the nurses about them, how are you today? And how is your family today? That was his attitude. He was the kindest, sweetest.

Person really special, humble, and he had been successful with this magazine, so no arrogance. They would say, you should write a book about him, Mrs. Lopez. I was trying to keep my husband alive. I really didn't think about it until the, the OI still wasn't allowing myself. That would be impossible. 'cause I'm not a writer because my husband was a writer and his son won the National Book Award for his book Arctic Dreams and their [00:33:00] literary people.

I'm merely an artist. You know, I, I just rejected that idea. Maybe I shelved it way in the back as it was obvious that he was not gonna live for another year. Because he had said to me, when I die, I want you to speak. And his son, Barry, to speak. I said, I'm not speaking. Yes you are. You're a good speaker.

Just say what you want to say about us, about me. I started taking notes what I wanted to say, to have good sequence, to not cry, to not go off on tangents, to keep it focused. As I started to write that, I thought, yeah, this is a good story. After the funeral, so many people, including one of my brothers, oh, that was so beautiful what you said.

Oh, and the funeral was so a service and it so that. Made me realize that maybe this could be a book. There was an obituary, there were a lot of obituaries 'cause he was well respected in the New York [00:34:00] Times, the Los Angeles Times Miami. But the local newspaper, the Asbury Park Press. That was a lovely obit.

I got in touch with him and I said, I'd like to have a book written about my husband. Well, I'd be happy to do that for you, Marcy, if he didn't know my husband. But he did a lot of research on who my husband was. He submitted two or three pages, really well written his imagination of who Adrian would be.

As a younger man, it wasn't my husband. It was very good writing. I reached out to people in the publishing industry. Somebody interviewed me and other people, and her significant other was a well-known writer. He said, no, and it just became clear there's no one who can do this. I'll try. I took a memoir writing workshop at NYU as a non matriculating on 42nd Street and living down here, it was only an hour in hour back I could park and I took three or four sessions, so each session would be a semester.

The [00:35:00] feedback from other people, and there were lawyers in there. There were educated people who wanted public speaking. The lawyers wanted to know how to present their ideas in public. The English professor from NYU would give us prompts, write for 10 minutes, anybody who wants to read, and all the responses.

People, I wanna know more about your husband. Oh, but you didn't tell us this. Well, how did you know how? And they would keep asking questions. I guess I did it for maybe four or five semesters, a compilation. Of a story began, so I reached out to one of my husband's ex employees and she said, go to so and so in New York.

It was in media, and he was like, Adrian deserves a book. Oh, this is so great, what you've written. It wasn't great. I was starting. But that's how people are in the creative world because who knows what it's going to become? Who knows what kind of an artist is in you, or a writer or whatever, or sculptor.

And creative people encourage other creative people. He was a creative person. So he said, oh, you know, I'm gonna put you in touch with an agent. And I met this agent and [00:36:00] he said, you have a story, Marcy. You need an editor. I don't have time to do it. I said, well, how do I find an editor? And he said, just look online.

And I just looked online editor from memoir. The first time I thought I couldn't write this book. I think it's a miracle something like this would happen. The first one that popped up. The person said, tell me in a couple of paragraphs what your story is. She called me the next day and said, I'm interested.

Turns out she was a retired editor from Random House. She works with me and what a good editor does is shape it, help you choose. Doesn't write for you, but it's like an art therapist. Well, what do you think about it? Go deeper. She had some good responses. She sent it to some agents, but nothing. Uh, I just stopped for a while and went up to an art.

Workshop up in Maine. There was a woman who came all the way from Montana. Most everybody was from the northeast. She had no idea how to stretch a canvas. She didn't know how to prepare the canvas. You [00:37:00] don't paint on white, you tone it in a gray or neutral colors. She had no idea what she was doing. I thought, this is either a crazy person or she's somebody.

Everybody else was fighting to be around the instructor and started talking to this woman. She was nominated for a national book for war. A writer. She knew my husband's son. It took me a year to tell her that I'm writing a memoir. And when I told her it was on the phone, Marcy, I teach at the Iowa workshop.

I teach in Boston. I'm writing my next novel. And she said, okay, send me a couple of chapters. And she said, I'll work with you. Then we worked and we worked and sent it around to agents and kept getting rejections, and I would stop for a while and every time I'd stop. Somebody else would appear and say, don't stop.

You have a story. It was a process for me because I wasn't a professional writer. I had to overcome the doubt and the fear that I'm not a writer, but I knew I [00:38:00] had a story to tell 'cause a lot of people validated that I had to dig in. And then that woman I met at the art workshop when I moved down here from North Jersey, I looked at what I had written to that point and I realized.

This is never gonna be published. This is amateur and Marcy, you're either gonna do this or you're not, and nobody can do this for you. I'd get up every morning at four 30 for three months. I'd step outside, look at the moon, look at the stars, pray to my husband. If you want this written, you have to channel through me.

I'm not a writer, and I would write till 11 o'clock or so and stop. Then I called her and I said, I'm gonna send it to you. What I have she got? I said, this is my final attempt. And she said, now you're writing Marcy. Oh, I don't have time to be your editor. But she gave me a list of editors that only professional writers.

Now these are significant editors, and [00:39:00] each one of those editors said, tell me about the story. And had a conversation with each one and the one I liked, he was Gore V Doll's, editor. Lived with Go Vidal in Italy on his estate and edited all his personal papers. He brought me to the next level. He inspired me to do an archeological dig into my feelings, my ability to write.

So that happened until now. And the last time I was going to quit and that first one who was my editor from Random House, I called her back up. I said, oh, Marc, so good to hear from you. Various editors have helped me. I'm still getting rejections. Could you take a look at it? And she did fine. Tuning of every piece of grammar, every sentence had to be clear, had to be organized.

I sent it around about 20 people and I said, okay, just so you know, quit. It's never gonna be published. She said, you have a story. Go to the local [00:40:00] bookstore. Find a book on grief, grieving memoir, something similar, and see who the agent is. See who the publisher is. The publisher was Hayas. I contacted them.

They said, we don't take anybody without an agent. We have a subsidiary publishing house, Alboa, and they published it. I was ready to quit many more times than I'm telling you. It was meant to be that the right people were put in my path to continue. If you have a story to tell and you believe it, search for the right guidance and the people who believe in it, because every one of the people who kept me going believed in the story.

Jill: Yeah, that is a lot of hoops to jump through to get that 

Marcie : process. Oh, it was, yeah. Was because who is it Grisel. He turns out like a couple books a year and he's got them going fast, and I bought one of them and oh, it's fast. Stephen King says he writes a book every three, four months. Well, those are people who have been doing it all their lives and they're writers and they don't have all [00:41:00] that doubt and fear, can I do this?

Jill: Yeah. 

Marcie : So 

Jill: yeah, it's second nature for for 

Marcie : sure. 

Jill: Yeah. I love that you wrote the book. I think it's amazing. I think it's such a great thing to share stories with people because you're right, we need love stories and we also need to hear those stories of. People experiencing grief and making their way through it and how they did it.

And so you gave us a website already, 

Marcie : and I'll give you the name of the book just to be short Place of Promise. And that appeared in the book before it appeared. I was coming up with a thousand different titles and I would give it to my editor, the one I met up at the art workshop. She said, forget it, it will appear in the book.

And about three quarters of the way through, I saw myself write that it's a place of promise. To know where you are safe and can be your authentic self. That's who I am when I do my art and I have [00:42:00] that place of promise every time I feel my husband's love and I was loved unconditionally by him. So that's what I think we need to find that place of promise, where we become who we're meant to be and our spirit is free.

That's the name of the book, A Place of Promise. 

Jill: Do you have social media that people can find you? 

Marcie : Well, let's see. The publisher wanted me to be on Facebook. It's the same thing, just my name. 

Jill: Mm-hmm. 

Marcie : Uh, Marcy Shrewbury Lopez. On Facebook, there are articles about me that have been published in local papers, and that's all for the book.

It was all meant to be for the book, but because I'm a horse person, I slept in some pictures with horses because that's who I am. 

Jill: I will put a link to your website and Facebook for sure, so people can reach you. 

Marcie : Thank you. 

Jill: Thank you so much, Marcy. This was wonderful learning about you and your husband and your life together.

Marcie : Thank you. I really appreciate being with you. It was very pleasant. We had a nice time. 

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