It’s strange how morning light bears its own indifferent serenity. It was pouring into Eric’s room though a wall of windows and painting so perfectly everything in its path. There dear Eric lay in his over bleached gown, fighting through his sleep and his stupor with all of his remaining core strength to draw his next breath. There was a clear plastic ventilator strapped to his face and upon each labored exhalation two puffs of steam emerged from each nostril making him look very much to me like an old dragon at the end of his road. As I stood over Eric I noticed that all of his pictures had been removed from the walls. Only my love for him and the gravity of the moments held at bay my infuriation for what I felt was the hospitals abject inpatients for his passing and, the freeing of his bed for the next sinking ship. I stroked what few strands of hair he had left on his head and kissed his forehead and heard myself say to him for the first time “Eric, Its gotten to were you didn’t want it to get to, you know its time to let go, its time to stop this suffering, you’ve been braver and more noble about this than anyone I’ve ever known, its ok to say good bye now, its all ok.” Waves of selfish grief crashed against my heart like meteorites tearing though new life forms on fledgling planets. I held his hand thinking that if in this moment he should pass, perhaps in that passing, my hand, my arm, my heart, my brain, my body might act as a conduit thus channeling his energy back into the universe and maybe, just maybe I could retain some residual signature of that energy, to combine that residual signature with my own energy and in so doing retain a tangible part of Eric Himself. Of course I know that all one needs to retain a tangible part of anyone past or, present is to reserve an honored place in your heart and mind for that loved one for as long as you draw breath, a place within the deepest bowels of your breadth where you with those loved ones will always effortlessly dwell. Perhaps it is that the heart is covetous by nature and some how feels the need to make the divine but ethereal more concrete, to be able to hold in ones hand what they may hold in their heart. Alas, we are all human, silly and simple, no more than the magic of sparks and carbon. But oh that magic that is love that, makes so often pain a more than fair price to pay.
