The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander. She's the poet who read at President Obama's inauguration, and a professor of African American studies at Yale. This is a memoir of the year after her husband died, with liberal side stories from their life together, and a few recipes from his restaurant thrown in for good measure. I've never been so affected by a book, ever, and I can't imagine anyone who has lost someone they loved remaining unaffected. Cried my eyes out for a good deal of it. Definitely the best memoir of this time in life that I've ever read (especially coming close after Jai Pausch's stilted, precious book on the same theme). It was crushing and lovely and hopeful and POWERFUL. Prose, but it reads like poetry. Comes out in a couple of days--it has made my lifetime top 10 books.
Side note: the first person I thought of while reading it was John D. He would have loved this book, even through his tears.