Thank you for being open-minded enough to understand. In life there are many self-imposed halo effects on the people you love. I believe this is one of them. Honestly I've had too many deep stare-downs in the world of addiction, sickness, and loneliness - I choose to forget many of them. There has been a Molly (though we never married) in my past, too. But 20+ years forward the effect she had on me has eroded and left behind a truth of who she really was that's raw and unforgiving. But I want to remember the "Molly" of my life that was fun and carefree. And maybe I'm casting my own experiences here on the author, most likely I am. Things like this are hard to put into words.
I read "The writing is so reverent and personal, that a reader wonders if they are reading about the subject, or about the writer."
It's a reasonable question, but not an important one -- the reverence is the whole point. GP alludes to this in their last sentence, I think.