WORDS for my Bob...

It was little more than a word or two, a tiny introduction when first we met, that lit the lamp between us for all the days and weeks, and months and years and decades, in our half-a-century-plus together until your death.

Words and conversation kept a glow alive through all our years together, and when you entered your last illness, the words continued to maintain us.

We talked, we whispered, I even read to you, and more than once you told me that a blessing in your illness was that you could still enjoy the words between us; and you hoped that, when your final moments came, you would fall asleep forever hanging onto loving words between us;  and that with your last breath, you could send a word of love to me...

It didn't happen quite that way.

In what I could not have known would be your final morning, your words were being lost to me by medical equipment that made the spoken words impossible for you; and my words were being lost to you by all the harsh and rasping sounds of that equipment.

And when I left the room for several minutes, to catch my breath and calm my spirit, you were called into eternity. 

I will always feel grief for the lost words, and I grieve that I could not sustain you in the moment of your passing, with at least one word.

Love.