The Gift

“He was my hero.”

I began the eulogy shaking my head at how cliche it sounded. He would never like this; he was never one to settle for cliches. He was known as being one of the greatest songwriters of our time, and here I am, writing the eulogy for his funeral and starting it off with a lame stereotypical cliche that would have made his fans shudder in disgust.

I'm erasing my words when my phone chimes. Looking over at my screen, a notification appears letting me know a drone package delivery has just arrived. Odd, since I wasn't expecting anything. I stood and headed to the door to retrieve it, relieved for a quick break away from the sorrow-filled writing.

Slipping my coat on, I opened the door and saw a small brown box before me. The sound of a drone whizzing away can be heard in the far-off distance. I've never been a fan of this delivery system. It always seemed so odd and impersonal to me. My mind began drifting away from me - thinking about technology and if it was robbing humans of more personal experiences.

Those thoughts quickly vanished though as I approached the package. It was addressed to me, and upon leaning closer to it, I recognized his handwriting. My breath caught in my chest as my eyes scanned to a delicate yellow flower he had hand drawn on the bottom right corner to signify his love.

The parcel was thin and bound together in the same wool twine he often bundled wildflowers in for me that he collected on his walks through town.

I closed my eyes and hovered my hand over the brown paper. I could feel his energy pulsing from inside it. It was light, radiant, brilliant, and warm, just as he had always been. I feared opening my eyes would dissipate the aura and so I stood there, leaning over it, eyes closed, hand hovering, tears forming, feeling him and his humanity maybe for the last time while I let my heart break on me.

I remembered long ago after we had met for the first time. It happened after one of his shows. He was exhausted, and at the end of his US tour. We had communicated online for a few months, connecting through a mutual friend and bonding over music. He had been a savior of sorts for me. I had just ended a long-term relationship and was totally lost emotionally. Through phone messages, I had confessed my suicidal thoughts to him in the months prior.

We discussed this at length during that first week together and I remember realizing that no human had ever known me better. I related to each of his words and hung on to each of his sentences like my life depended on it, and in a way, it did. He had changed the course of my entire life. And now, here I sat, package in hand, and not a clue of what I was going to write for his eulogy.

In truth, I wanted to scream. I wanted to thrash and pull my hair from my head. I wanted to curse God and damn him for leaving. My heart was crushed and I didn't know if I could continue to even take another breath let alone live the rest of my life without him. All that time ago he had given me the advice that stopped me from taking my life, but it couldn't stop him from taking his own years later, and I stood there hating him for it.

“He was my hero,” I said to myself while picking up the package and slipping it into my coat pocket. I needed a break. I needed to clear my head. I slipped the parcel into my pocket and slid my boots on, zipping up the sides and heading down the stairs to take a walk.

For all he was profound, he was also dark. His music was his soul in the form of sound. When you listened to his voice, you heard his heartbeat. When you heard him play guitar, you felt his presence. When you saw his face, you felt his warmth. In that sense, every one of his fans knew him just as well as I did. They may have never met him, but they knew who he was. They never hugged him, but they felt his comfort. They never had a conversation with him, but they knew what he would say if they had. And I realized that in that way, who he was would live on even after his death.

But that knowledge didn't stop me from hating him at that moment. I wanted just another second with him. Another day. Maybe I could have gotten another month or year even. I knew he didn't have much time left, but in my selfish desperation to cling to him, I demanded every possible second that might be available.

The place we called home was a small one-bedroom loft situated atop a tiny convenience market that sold cheap snacks, cold beer, and fruit far past their ripeness. He had always done well financially and he never wanted much at all, so it might have seemed strange to some that he would call such a place home. The town itself had fallen hard in the economic climate, with most people relocating where life could be lived with more ease. But he had been born here. His parents had grown up here. And here was where he always wanted to go back to. So when he wasn't touring the world with his bandmates, he and I relaxed here and soaked up the peace that would be shaken abruptly once an album was released and promotion for it would need to begin.

During the day we would go for walks, passing abandoned houses on dirt roads, boarded-up businesses on the main stretch of town, and rural farms whose dirt still grew faint and fragile vegetables that would never be harvested. Every year they grew weaker and weaker until fewer and fewer of them existed at all. Their presence was just like a whisper in the wind; there, but too weak for anyone to even notice. The growing decay often made me sad, and I wondered aloud if he felt the same. But he was always at peace with it. He had a way of accepting and embracing change, even if it was somber and sad. Change, he would say, was just the world progressing forward, and clinging to the past would only stunt the growth of something else that might end up flourishing in its stead.

When he wanted to clear his mind, he would walk the same path through the town, and I decided to do the same. Retracing his steps from the street below our home, I took my time crossing the quiet road and into a field where alley cats, possums, and wild raccoons carved faded trails into the brush beneath my feet. I remember late at night we would awaken to the sounds of cats and raccoons fighting over the same discarded pieces of trash. Feeling sorry for them, he would pull a thick throw blanket over his shoulders and slip his feet into house shoes he stole from a glamorous hotel he stayed at on one of his tours. He’d cross the street with tupperwares full of cat food in his arms and he would zig-zag the empty lot, carefully setting the containers down for the critters to devour in delight. I used to chastise him for it, believing he was only contributing to their presence in the first place. But he loved them being there regardless and had formed a sort of friendship with several of them, even naming a few. He always had a way of forming a kinship with discarded and neglected souls and I loved that about him.

As I carried on, I looked for him in the trees he would climb. I searched him out in the dying fields of abandoned sunflowers he would watch during the day as they strained and twisted their heads to follow the sun as it fell across the sky. The doctors told him the sunlight might help with his symptoms, but he knew, just as I did, that no amount of sunlight was going to stop the monster that was slowly eating his body alive.

There was a pub down the street that we would frequent late at night when we couldn't sleep and wanted to get out of the house. The bartender knew us both well and he welcomed me with a weak smile as I entered the dimly lit, stuffy establishment.

“Oh… hey there stranger…” His voice shook.

He must have already been told the news and that settled fine with me as I was exhausted and not wanting to speak to anyone, let alone have a conversation with someone about having just lost the love of my life. I gave a weak nod and took our usual booth in the back where any curious fans would take the hint that we didn't want company, though most people in this small town were so familiar with his presence to care anyway.

Bruce approached as I pulled my thick winter coat off. He set my usual drink down on the table in front of me. I expected him to just turn back and head for the bar like he usually did, but this time he stopped for a moment and gained my attention with an uncomfortable locking of eyes.

“I’m sorry…” he trailed off and picked up again “... he left this for you that day before… well, the day before… you know.”

My eyes darted back up to his as he slowly laid on the table a small bundle of wrapped yellow flowers, the same seen on our walks, and the same he had drawn on the package delivered to me moments ago.

“I… I didn't know he was going to…” he trailed off again, stumbling over his words.

“Oh, uh… Thank you… Bruce.” I managed to whisper as he slowly backed away with sadness and guilt in his eyes.

Hot streams of tears quickly turned into currents pouring down my face, staining my blouse with dark mascara that I didn't bother removing from the night before.

Eyes still closed, the tips of my fingers slowly lowered just barely caressing the flowers, much as I had just done with the stiff-papered parcel he had mailed me. I could feel each fiber, sensing each molecule bound together against one another.

He had once told me, "Every simple moment is like a grand event. Scents, sounds, smells… if you focus, they can all be intensified to a point where they are burned into your memory forever."

My mind snapped forward and I felt a rush of anger build up in my chest. Hot tears continued to pour as rage filled me.

“Fuck you!” I screamed, startling Bruce and his other customers.

My hand slammed down on the flowers and I quickly wrapped my fingers around them aggressively. Grabbing my coat back up, I rushed out of the bar as Bruce looked on with pain in his eyes.

The air outside felt bitter and icy, but I didn't even bother to put my coat back on. Instead of walking, I picked my pace up into a full-blown run. Back passed the farms, apples, and flowers, across the empty lot and discarded food dishes, my body flew until my presence pounded up the stairs and into our living room like a train crashing through a car that had been left carelessly on the tracks.

My body collapsed to the ground and my throat let out a guttural scream of intense pain, hatred, and fear. I felt my voice box strain and my muscles pull tight as the screams echoed out my mouth and stabbed the air around me like the cancer had been stabbing his body before he ended things on his own terms. Scream. Screams. Screaming. They ring out over and over and over until my voice cracks; the last scream stretched out over the air in ripples and waves that crash against the walls of the room. The vibrations seem to shake the foundation and the walls around me. The noise, a physical presence like a hurricane ripping apart a beach house. Hate, anger, rage, and grief spill from my mouth, and my fists pound the very ground we had once made love on.

And then suddenly and instantly everything is still, like time abruptly froze in place. I’m crumpled on the floor. The front door is a jar. My coat on the ground beside me. The package slumped against the wall where I threw it. No sound is heard and the atmosphere is silent minus a small vibration I unconsciously sense coming from the brown paper, just as I had felt it when it arrived.

For a moment I only stared at it, my head barely lifted from where my body lay. I feel the soft fibers of the twine pull me closer, and I slowly allow my arm to extend to it like his whole soul was reaching out to me from inside it.

My fingertips again gently touch the ends of each fiber of the homemade paper just as his hands had caressed mine on our walks. Our skin barely touching with just energy between his hand and mine to create a radiant feeling of love. I’m reminded of how he sang and spoke about feeling each second of your life - not just remembering moments either, but actually taking the time to check in with each of your senses while doing so.

I took a deep breath like he had taught me and began to focus. I could feel the rough paper on my fingers and the hardness of the oak floorboards beneath my body. I could see the individual strands of the twine wrapped around the paper and how they ebbed and flowed into one another. I could see dust particles in the light that shone down in front of me from the front window and its undrawn curtains. I paused to run my hands and fingers through the light, watching the particles bounce and twirl as I did.

I could feel my tears as they slowly spilled over my eyelid. They slipped down my cheek and pooled at the edge of my mouth. Wet, salty, sorrow - an emotion I could taste. The room was silent except for my slow, deep breaths that barely punctuated the air.

My hands continued to play with the light as I brought to mind the scent of the room. Dusty down at floor level, but I could still make out his fragrance of cigarettes and body wash. I’m comforted and calmed and a slight smile creases my lips. I close my eyes and bring him back to mind.

His smile flashed before me followed by his golden giggle of a laugh he made when he was trying to be silly with me. I’m filled with warmth and smile back in return. I can sense him. His arms around me, his kiss atop my head. I allow the memories to replay themselves in my mind, taking time to allow all their scents, sounds, and textures to burn through into this present moment.

I slowly pulled my body to a sitting position and laughed to myself, knowing that maybe not right away, but eventually, I was going to be OK. His body might be gone, but he remains ever-present. I will still always have him. He is here, in this room beside me. His voice is in my speakers as he sings out to me. His image is in my photographs and on my screens when I rewatch his shows and interviews and when I watch our home movies. His scent is in the air as I walk past our favorite pizza joint and I can find it swirling next to smokers taking a break outside the bars at night. I can taste him in the apples he picked for me on his walks through the orchard and in the sour taste of his favorite chewy candies. And most of all, his advice and words are filled in my mind and give me constant reminders about how to live, and how to survive without him.

True sadness is felt throughout the entire human body. It's felt in your heart, your lungs, and in your eyes. It radiates down your spine and takes cover deep inside your gut. It crawls out of your throat and creeps across your skin. Everything burns and aches, and the ache settles deep inside your tissues and muscles. It intensifis to a point where the pain is all you think you'll ever know ever again. It will linger and it will still be there when you wake up the next day and the day after that, too. The only way it leaves is by slowly seeping out of your pores, and being exhaled from your body with each shallow breath that you take. The slow pace of time is the only thing that can take it from you. A timely ticking of a clock and a countdown of days and months passing on their own volition. Nothing other than that can bring a sense of healing and right now, I have work to do.

Picking the package back up, I stand, take a deep breath, and walk back to my writing table. Setting it down next to my notebook, I admire the yellow flower, and I begin again with his eulogy.

“He was my hero.”