My beloved, A year ago at this time, just shy of 3 AM, you might have been awake, sleepless, knowing that, if at all possible, this would be the day you left this incarnation.
Erupting from new depth, the volcanic sound of my heart’s desolation. Seismic enough to raise eyebrows on other planets I shouldn’t be surprised. My dogs sure looked at me funny. Ten months since Dear’s suicide, I got why some people are pulled to follow their beloved in death.
“There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes,” wrote the recently departed John Prine in one of his many songs that illuminate the landscape and humble those of us who attempt to speak by written word. That sliver of Prine puts him among those generous souls from whom I have received a
Instantly upon my beloved’s suicide, our home fell silent as an empty recording studio, a familiar sound-proof space in my career where even the roar of a hundred low-flying elephants can’t penetrate. The quiet I’m speaking of, however, was not so much in the home itself as it was in me. Some fraction of
My beloved and I had a child who never assumed human form, in our lives at least. We felt he was a boy, though the name we gave him wasn’t dependent on that eventuality. Theoria Star. Theoria meaning in union with God. Theo for short. One of the things we loved about his name was
Two days ago, a song I’d never before heard arrived magically on the six month anniversary of my beloved’s conscious step into the light. The storm I’ve wept since suggests a theme of her heart’s farewell. An anthem of my journey forward. The linked video, displaying the lyrics below, may afford the most complete experience.
I’m grateful that I didn’t discover my beloved in the barn hanging but not quite dead. I know what I would have done. I would have sat with her as she died, surrounding her with my love. She knew I wouldn’t waver in supporting her choice. Serving the call of the other’s heart was the