Seven years after John Ritter's sudden death, his wife Amy Yasbeck is opening up about how she and her 12-year-old daughter Stella cope with the change. "After he passed away, of course there's no instructions for how to live your life," Amy tells Rachael. "You have no idea, but I'm thinking maybe he left clues?"

She found clues, and chronicles her experiences in her new memoir, With Love and Laughter John Ritter. The first step for Amy was to look to John's life as inspiration for raising their then 5-year-old daughter. "He had already kind of programmed her and me," she says sweetly, noting his parenting experience. "He was much more open about things because he had three big kids already [including] Jason Ritter."

Amy takes pride in the work she and her family are doing to prevent other people from suffering from the heart condition that claimed John's life. They established the John Ritter Foundation for Aortic health and the John Ritter Research Program at the University of Texas to research and prevent thoracic aortic disease. "So many lives have been and are being saved because of the awareness," Amy says. "[If] you can find [the problem], you can fix it!"

Ultimately, she thinks the best way to honor a loved one's memory is to live the way they encouraged you to go through life. For Amy, that means celebrating the amazing sense of humor that earned John millions of fans as Jack Tripper on Three's Company. "John was not 'normal', so my sense of normalcy was skewed," Amy jokes, while adding he encouraged everyone to take time out each day for random acts of silliness and goofiness. "It makes you feel better!"

Related Links

The John Ritter Foundation for Aortic Health