Love After Death: I'll Be Here
Permission and presence after loss | Plus, a Hammerstein crossword and more from our conversation with Nyla Watson
Near the end of Adam Gwon’s Ordinary Days, a woman named Claire stands alone on stage and tells the story of her marriage. She met John on a freezing winter day in front of a grocery store. He slipped on ice, she helped him gather his scattered Froot Loops, he complimented her smile. He asked what she was doing tomorrow. “Because I’ll be here,” he said, giving her a corner, a time, and his name. She went. He showed up. Eight months later he proposed, asking what she was doing for the rest of her life. “Because I’ll be here,” he promised again. “Right beside you as long as you want me to be.”
They married in September. Their first anniversary came quickly. That morning, John had to stop by his office. Claire went walking to a bakery she knew. And then: sirens. Smoke. The last voicemail he left. September 11th, 2001.
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The song “I’ll Be Here” is Claire’s accounting, years later, of that loss, and of what comes after. She’s been dating someone new, a man named Jason who has just proposed. She’s spent the song’s first half explaining to him (and to herself, and to us) why she called, why she said yes, what finally changed. And what changed was this: “As sure as I breathe, I heard John clear as day / Saying, ‘Hey, you’re allowed to move on, it’s okay.’”
The beloved speaks from beyond the grave. To release, not to haunt.
In February, we explored how love persists after death in Passion, Rent, and Hamilton—looking at inhabitation, carrying, and stewardship as the work survivors do to keep love alive. Giorgio carries Fosca’s transformation inside him; Collins performs Angel’s care in the world; Eliza builds Alexander’s archive across fifty years. These are all forms of continuation the living enact. They require labor, choice, the daily decision to carry forward what was shared.
But Claire’s story asks something different: what if the work of continuation feels like betrayal? What if moving forward—toward new love, new promises, a new life—seems to dishonor what came before?
This is where “I’ll Be Here” does its most compelling work.