Notes On Grief/Missing Eddie

He is the love of my life. But, he is gone.

How does one write about grief? What voice do I use to capture the anguish? Do I reach deep into the past and channel the howls of ancestors snatched abruptly from one another’s arms? Are there words sufficient to explain the loss, so profound that it feels as if someone has ripped my heart out, torn my fingers loose from my hands, preventing me from scanning the keyboard, emptying my grief onto the page?

How do I tamp down my eagerness to capture the physical traits--his scowl of a smile? His voice? The things that are left to memory, now altered by his leaving? How do I assemble these losses to tell the story of my sorrow?

To summon the words I must recall his last breath, a gasp for the air that eluded him. Air is something we, humans take for granted, though I don’t think I can ever look at it so cavalierly again. Eddie’s gasp was not desperate, rather it was the reflexive act of a man for whom oxygen had become critical, but whose body was working against him.