Today is the end of sheloshim for my beloved husband -- the first 30 days. Judaism calls for a period of intense mourning known as shiva that lasts seven days after a loved one is buried. After shiva, most normal activities can be resumed, but it is the end of sheloshim that marks the completion of religious mourning for a spouse.

A childhood friend of mine who is now a rabbi recently told me that the most powerful one-line prayer he has ever read is: "Let me not die while I am still alive." I would have never understood that prayer before losing Dave. Now I do.

I think when tragedy occurs, it presents a choice. You can give in to the void, the emptiness that fills your heart, your lungs, constricts your ability to think or even breathe. Or you can try to find meaning. These past 30 days, I have spent many of my moments lost in that void. And I know that many future moments will be consumed by the vast emptiness as well.

But when I can, I want to choose life and meaning.

And this is why I am writing: to mark the end of sheloshim and to give back some of what others have given to me. While the experience of grief is profoundly personal, the bravery of those who have shared their own experiences has helped pull me through. Some who opened their hearts were my closest friends. Others were total strangers who have shared wisdom and advice publicly. So I am sharing what I have learned in the hope that it helps someone else. In the hope that there can be some meaning from this tragedy.

I have lived 30 years in these 30 days. I am 30 years sadder. I feel like I am 30 years wiser.

I have gained a more profound understanding of what it is to be a mother, both through the depth of the agony I feel when my children scream and cry and from the connection my mother has to my pain. She has tried to fill the empty space in my bed, holding me each night until I cry myself to sleep. She has fought to hold back her own tears to make room for mine. She has explained to me that the anguish I am feeling is both my own and my children's, and I understood that she was right as I saw the pain in her own eyes.

I have learned that I never really knew what to say to others in need. I think I got this all wrong before; I tried to assure people that it would be OK, thinking that hope was the most comforting thing I could offer. A friend of mine with late-stage cancer told me that the worst thing people could say to him was "It is going to be OK." That voice in his head would scream, How do you know it is going to be OK? Do you not understand that I might die? I learned this past month what he was trying to teach me. Real empathy is sometimes not insisting that it will be OK but acknowledging that it is not. When people say to me, "You and your children will find happiness again," my heart tells me, Yes, I believe that, but I know I will never feel pure joy again. Those who have said, "You will find a new normal, but it will never be as good" comfort me more because they know and speak the truth. Even a simple "How are you?" -- almost always asked with the best of intentions -- is better replaced with "How are you today?" When I am asked "How are you?" I stop myself from shouting, My husband died a month ago, how do you think I am? When I hear "How are you today?" I realize the person knows that the best I can do right now is to get through each day.

I have learned some practical stuff that matters. Although we now know that Dave died immediately, I didn't know that in the ambulance. The trip to the hospital was unbearably slow. I still hate every car that did not move to the side, every person who cared more about arriving at their destination a few minutes earlier than making room for us to pass. I have noticed this while driving in many countries and cities. Let's all move out of the way. Someone's parent or partner or child might depend on it.

I have learned how ephemeral everything can feel -- and maybe everything is. That whatever rug you are standing on can be pulled right out from under you with absolutely no warning. In the last 30 days, I have heard from too many women who lost a spouse and then had multiple rugs pulled out from under them. Some lack support networks and struggle alone as they face emotional distress and financial insecurity. It seems so wrong to me that we abandon these women and their families when they are in greatest need.

I have learned to ask for help -- and I have learned how much help I need. Until now, I have been the older sister, the COO, the doer and the planner. I did not plan this, and when it happened, I was not capable of doing much of anything. Those closest to me took over. They planned. They arranged. They told me where to sit and reminded me to eat. They are still doing so much to support me and my children.

I have learned that resilience can be learned. Adam M. Grant taught me that three things are critical to resilience and that I can work on all three. Personalization -- realizing it is not my fault. He told me to ban the word "sorry." To tell myself over and over, This is not my fault. Permanence -- remembering that I won't feel like this forever. This will get better. Pervasiveness -- this does not have to affect every area of my life; the ability to compartmentalize is healthy.

For me, starting the transition back to work has been a savior, a chance to feel useful and connected. But I quickly discovered that even those connections had changed. Many of my co-workers had a look of fear in their eyes as I approached. I knew why -- they wanted to help but weren't sure how. Should I mention it? Should I not mention it? If I mention it, what the hell do I say? I realized that to restore that closeness with my colleagues that has always been so important to me, I needed to let them in. And that meant being more open and vulnerable than I ever wanted to be. I told those I work with most closely that they could ask me their honest questions and I would answer. I also said it was OK for them to talk about how they felt. One colleague admitted she'd been driving by my house frequently, not sure if she should come in. Another said he was paralyzed when I was around, worried he might say the wrong thing. Speaking openly replaced the fear of doing and saying the wrong thing. One of my favorite cartoons of all time has an elephant in a room answering the phone, saying, "It's the elephant." Once I addressed the elephant, we were able to kick him out of the room.

At the same time, there are moments when I can't let people in. I went to Portfolio Night at school where kids show their parents around the classroom to look at their work hung on the walls. So many of the parents -- all of whom have been so kind -- tried to make eye contact or say something they thought would be comforting. I looked down the entire time so no one could catch my eye for fear of breaking down. I hope they understood.

I have learned gratitude. Real gratitude for the things I took for granted before -- like life. As heartbroken as I am, I look at my children each day and rejoice that they are alive. I appreciate every smile, every hug. I no longer take each day for granted. When a friend told me that he hates birthdays and so he was not celebrating his, I looked at him and said through tears, "Celebrate your birthday, goddammit. You are lucky to have each one." My next birthday will be depressing as hell, but I am determined to celebrate it in my heart more than I have ever celebrated a birthday before.

I am truly grateful to the many who have offered their sympathy. A colleague told me that his wife, whom I have never met, decided to show her support by going back to school to get her degree -- something she had been putting off for years. Yes! When the circumstances allow, I believe as much as ever in leaning in. And so many men -- from those I know well to those I will likely never know -- are honoring Dave's life by spending more time with their families.

I can't even express the gratitude I feel to my family and friends who have done so much and reassured me that they will continue to be there. In the brutal moments when I am overtaken by the void, when the months and years stretch out in front of me endless and empty, only their faces pull me out of the isolation and fear. My appreciation for them knows no bounds.

I was talking to one of these friends about a father-child activity that Dave is not here to do. We came up with a plan to fill in for Dave. I cried to him, "But I want Dave. I want option A." He put his arm around me and said, "Option A is not available. So let's just kick the shit out of option B."

Dave, to honor your memory and raise your children as they deserve to be raised, I promise to do all I can to kick the shit out of option B. And even though sheloshim has ended, I still mourn for option A. I will always mourn for option A. As Bono sang, "There is no end to grief . . . and there is no end to love." I love you, Dave.

(Dedicated to my sweetheart.)

My oldest daughter, Jenna, recently said to me, "My greatest fear as a child was that you and mom would get divorced. Then, when I was twelve, I decided that you fought so much that maybe it would be better if you did." Then she added with a smile. "I'm glad you guys figured things out."

For years my wife Keri and I struggled. Looking back, I'm not exactly sure what initially drew us together, but our personalities didn't quite match up. And the longer we were married the more extreme the differences seemed. Encountering "fame and fortune" didn't make our marriage any easier. In fact, it exacerbated our problems. The tension between us got so bad that going out on book tour became a relief, though it seems we always paid for it on re-entry. Our fighting became so constant that it was difficult to even imagine a peaceful relationship. We became perpetually defensive, building emotional fortresses around our hearts. We were on the edge of divorce and more than once we discussed it.

I was on book tour when things came to a head. We had just had another big fight on the phone and Keri had hung up on me. I was alone and lonely, frustrated and angry. I had reached my limit.

That's when I turned to God. Or turned on God. I don't know if you could call it prayer -- maybe shouting at God isn't prayer, maybe it is-but whatever I was engaged in I'll never forget it. I was standing in the shower of the Buckhead, Atlanta Ritz-Carlton yelling at God that marriage was wrong and I couldn't do it anymore. As much as I hated the idea of divorce, the pain of being together was just too much. I was also confused. I couldn't figure out why marriage with Keri was so hard. Deep down I knew that Keri was a good person. And I was a good person. So why couldn't we get along? Why had I married someone so different than me? Why wouldn't she change?

Finally, hoarse and broken, I sat down in the shower and began to cry. In the depths of my despair powerful inspiration came to me. You can't change her, Rick. You can only change yourself. At that moment I began to pray. If I can't change her, God, then change me. I prayed late into the night. I prayed the next day on the flight home. I prayed as I walked in the door to a cold wife who barely even acknowledged me. That night, as we lay in our bed, inches from each other yet miles apart, the inspiration came. I knew what I had to do.

The next morning I rolled over in bed next to Keri and asked, "How can I make your day better?"

Keri looked at me angrily. "What?"

"How can I make your day better?"

"You can't," she said. "Why are you asking that?"

"Because I mean it," I said. "I just want to know what I can do to make your day better.

"She looked at me cynically.

"You want to do something? Go clean the kitchen.

"She likely expected me to get mad. Instead I just nodded. "Okay."

I got up and cleaned the kitchen.

The next day I asked the same thing. "What can I do to make your day better?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Clean the garage."

I took a deep breath. I already had a busy day and I knew she had made the request in spite. I was tempted to blow up at her.

Instead I said, "Okay." I got up and for the next two hours cleaned the garage. Keri wasn't sure what to think.The next morning came.

"What can I do to make your day better?"

"Nothing!" she said. "You can't do anything. Please stop saying that.""I'm sorry," I said. "But I can't.

I made a commitment to myself. What can I do to make your day better?""Why are you doing this?""Because I care about you," I said.

"And our marriage."The next morning I asked again. And the next. And the next. Then, during the second week, a miracle occurred. As I asked the question Keri's eyes welled up with tears. Then she broke down crying. When she could speak she said, "Please stop asking me that. You're not the problem. I am. I'm hard to live with. I don't know why you stay with me.

"I gently lifted her chin until she was looking in my eyes. "It's because I love you," I said. "What can I do to make your day better?""I should be asking you that.""You should," I said. "But not now. Right now, I need to be the change. You need to know how much you mean to me."She put her head against my chest. "I'm sorry I've been so mean.""I love you," I said."I love you," she replied."What can I do to make your day better?"She looked at me sweetly. "Can we maybe just spend some time together?"I smiled. "I'd like that."I continued asking for more than a month. And things did change. The fighting stopped. Then Keri began asking, "What do you need from me? How can I be a better wife?"

The walls between us fell. We began having meaningful discussions on what we wanted from life and how we could make each other happier. No, we didn't solve all our problems. I can't even say that we never fought again. But the nature of our fights changed. Not only were they becoming more and more rare, they lacked the energy they'd once had. We'd deprived them of oxygen. We just didn't have it in us to hurt each other anymore.

Keri and I have now been married for more than thirty years. I not only love my wife, I like her. I like being with her. I crave her. I need her. Many of our differences have become strengths and the others don't really matter. We've learned how to take care of each other and, more importantly, we've gained the desire to do so. Marriage is hard. But so is parenthood and keeping fit and writing books and everything else important and worthwhile in my life. To have a partner in life is a remarkable gift. I've also learned that the institution of marriage can help heal us of our most unlovable parts. And we all have unlovable parts.

Through time I've learned that our experience was an illustration of a much larger lesson about marriage. The question everyone in a committed relationship should ask their significant other is, "What can I do to make your life better?" That is love. Romance novels (and I've written a few) are all about desire and happily-ever-after, but happily-ever-after doesn't come from desire-at least not the kind portrayed in most pulp romances. Real love is not to desire a person, but to truly desire their happiness-sometimes, even, at the expense of our own happiness. Real love is not to make another person a carbon copy of one's self. It is to expand our own capabilities of tolerance and caring, to actively seek another's well being. All else is simply a charade of self-interest.

I'm not saying that what happened to Keri and me will work for everyone. I'm not even claiming that all marriages should be saved. But for me, I am incredibly grateful for the inspiration that came to me that day so long ago. I'm grateful that my family is still intact and that I still have my wife, my best friend, in bed next to me when I wake in the morning. And I'm grateful that even now, decades later, every now and then, one of us will still roll over and say, "What can I do to make your day better." Being on either side of that question is something worth waking up for.

Love is patient, love is kind, love endures, blah blah blah, isn't it all wonderful? Vowing to persevere through sickness and health and in wealth and poverty is tradition, and it's comfortable when associated with lace and roses. But hasn't it proven to be fairly useless when it comes to forging marriages that last forever? How many people have mouthed the words, "until we are parted by death" while privately plotting to move on as soon as a more attractive option presents itself?

Here's a set of wedding vows with practical merit. They might sound unconventional and unromantic. They're certainly not poetic, but these promises, if kept, will go far in sealing a marriage for the ages.

1. I promise to clarify my expectations.

A marriage ends because a spouse has failed to meet the expectations their partner brought to the marriage. Expectations are unique, and come packaged inside your fiancé's brain. You may think these things are obvious or universal, that "everyone knows" what makes a good husband, what makes a good wife. But the truth is, your expectations are yours alone -- spawned from your experiences and locked in your head. There is nothing you can assume about your partner's idea of what a good marriage looks like. No harm will come from being very specific and concrete about exactly what you want, not just in bed but in the bank account, at the dinner table, with regard to parenting and everything else. If you're too shy to mention what you believe is the right way to behave, and you're hoping everything will become obvious as time goes on, you're not ready to get married. Get it all in the open, and keep putting it out in the open. If someone fails you, they should have to do it by choice, and not have ignorance as an excuse.

2. I promise to give you the benefit of the doubt when it comes to money.

One of the biggest adjustments when entering marriage is joint finances. From being on your own and subject only to your own ups and downs, you're now responsible for another person, or you're depending on another person. That can be scary. Here's a vow you can make that will help: If your spouse spends a lot of money on something, trust that they know what they're doing. Trust them until it becomes impossible not to trust them. Don't come out of the gate suspicious. Here's why you can do this: You didn't marry an idiot. Right? If you think they're overspending this month, chances are they're expecting a special check, or they're compensating for underspending last month, or something else. This is not a fool; this is your spouse. Surrender the worry that they're going to drive you into financial ruin. Give the benefit of the doubt. If they really do appear to be ruining you, then the last benefit of the doubt you can give is that they don't know any better and need help. Help kindly and respectfully, not with judgment and blame.

3. I promise to make sure I'm not just hungry before I yell at you.

Do your wife or husband a favor: Eat your favorite sandwich and then come back and yell at her/him all you want, if you still feel like it.

4. I promise not to give in to you for the sole purpose of using my compliance against you later.

Some people call this passive aggressive behavior, but this is a very specific maneuver that you can understand and avoid: Being the good person, even though you don't want to, is not always good. Being so compliant and docile that a halo pops out of your hair and lofts itself over you, bathing you in its golden light, is sometimes a trick, and you really intend to strangle your spouse with that halo somewhere down the road. Being so good that next time there's an argument, you can point back to this moment as an example of how your goodness practically rent the sky in half -- that's not goodness. Don't do that. It's not going to help in the long run. If you don't want to do something, fight not to do it. If you want to do something, fight to do it. Be honest and don't posture.

5. I promise to defend you to others, even if you are wrong.

Your spouse is going encounter plenty of haters and critics. Don't join them. Ever. In the privacy of your pillow, or your sofa, or your minivan, you can have conversations that need to be had, if there's really something that needs to be addressed. But you don't need to agree with someone who's calling him a boor, or her an idiot. There is nothing uglier than watching a husband degrade his wife or a wife demean her husband in front of other people. It doesn't make you smart or funny. It's just a low behavior. Your spouse's criticism hurts plenty, even if it's private and kind. If it's public and rude, it's almost unbearable.

6. I promise to try to put you before the children.

This is tricky, because your biological imperative will be to put the children first. Your physiology will be directing you to eat the face off your spouse if he or she threatens the children's progress and happiness in any way. This is why it's possible to make this promise to each other: to really try to prioritize each other sometimes, even though the children are absorbing so much of your life. In reality, if you truly prioritize your spouse and leave your children out on the porch in a dirty diaper in the rain, the police will come. But because you're a normal person and not some child-abusing monster, you're not going to do that. Making this promise might actually result in some time spent together as a couple, some choices made for the benefit of Dad's or Mom's agenda and goals instead of the kids' activities all the time, and some needed balance.

7. I promise to do the stuff neither of us wants to do, if you really don't want to do it more than I don't.

My husband hates to do the dishes. He really hates it and thinks it is disgusting. I do not like to look at spreadsheets or think about money. At all. It gives me panting fits. Now, I don't especially want to do the dishes either. Nobody wants to do the dishes. But I'm okay doing the dishes -- yes, every single time, even if I also cooked the dinner, even if he left a plate full of gravy and broccoli bits hardening in the sink. I don't really care that much, and I'm not going to stand on principle to try and chase some goal of "fairness" and make him do the dishes half the time. If fairness were what we were after, then I would have to pay attention to the checking account and have a budget and worry about mortgages. And I don't. That's not fair either. But we don't care because we've made this promise:

8. I promise not to keep score.

You can't win marriage. There are no points. Any reckoning or score-keeping on your part is only going to result in told-you-so trumpeting or sad dissatisfaction. Not keeping score means you don't have to pay back the good stuff, and you don't get to punish the failures. It also means you can give freely, and that you have a soft place to fall when you fail yourself. There are consequences for every action -- good and bad. That is true. But "forgive and forget" works two ways -- you forget the good stuff you did and the bad stuff he/she did. In return you can expect your bad stuff to be forgotten, and your spouse to give you good stuff without measure.

9. I promise to not care if you get fat or skinny or old.

I'm talking about getting fat, people. Butt, huge. Arms, wiggly. I'm also talking about hot bodies wasting away to nothing. Boobs, gone. Butt, gone. Can we talk about hair falling out? Not just boy hair, but girl hair too. Weird moles developing. Facial hair getting thicker or thinner. Googly eyes. The truth is, you don't really care about these things. Your favorite person is your favorite person until the end of time, even if their head falls off or they grow a third leg. Even if a dragon comes and eats off the lower half of their body or they turn purple or get warts. You know what matters is on the inside, and you can articulate it. If you want to utter the most romantic words a woman will ever hear, say, "I will love you forever, babe, even if you get wicked fat." Trust me. Your skinny fiancé will love you for this.

10. I promise to put your happiness before mine.

Really it all boils down to this, doesn't it? You promise to subvert your needs, your wants, your goals and priorities, to those of your spouse. And he or she does the same for you. If you're both working for the other's happiness, earnestly and sincerely, then you're both going to be ridiculously happy. Here's the key though: It's not enough to sublimate yourself and be a virtuous martyr for his/her dreams to come true. You also have to allow your spouse to do the same for you. You have to be able to say "Okay!" when he says "Go!" To say "Thanks!" when she says "I don't mind!" And trust that when it's your turn to reverse roles, you'll do the very same. Because in the end, it's not even selflessness. It's working for the common good. And if you can't say you'll do that, then "until we are parted by death" is just going to be a long, dull, sad life sentence.

In my opinion, if you can't wholeheartedly vow these things, you shouldn't be getting married. Yep, it's a little tougher to promise "in fatness and in emaciation, even if my mother hates you" than it is to promise "in joy and in sorrow, forsaking all others." But which is really braver, and what promise more meaningful?