One of the troubles you face when someone you love dies, is that they’re no longer there to love.
You have no place to put all that love you have inside. It just fills up until you feel a sort of soft, permanent, empty ache.
Since Ed died, our house is much quieter. Our routines are very different. Our time moves more slowly.
Ed had a huge personality, just enormous. He loved life and wasn’t shy about it at all. His zest was truly infectious.
Toward the end, after he lost a leg and his cancer returned, his love of life was just as fierce. A lesson to us all.
Along with life, Ed also loved music, so our mornings always started off with some songs. (Specifically Chris Stapleton and Kacey Musgraves.) The two of us would lie in bed and I’d rub his achy body and sing him happy tunes in my peppy but remarkably off-key voice.
Then we’d head outside. Slowly, carefully, but happily. Followed, of course, by Ed’s breakfast.
And because Ed had issues with his esophagus, he had to eat in what we liked to call, his throne. He needed to sit upright to eat and then lounge in his throne for an additional thirty minutes or so. We did this three to four times a day.
Truth be told, I absolutely loved feeding Ed. He was always breezy and feeling fine and I’d get to play more of our favorite country songs and hold him in my arms and sing my heart out. He was the biggest (and frankly, the only) fan of my voice. I would tell him how much I loved him and how my world was far brighter because he was in it.
I like to think that he understood every word.
Evenings were when he got his best walks. And when Ed could no longer walk much, we zipped him around in his stroller.
Near the end, his ears and eyes began to fail him as well, but the guy could smell a treat a mile away. On these strolls, Ed would lift his head up high and take in deep breaths of the world; the grass in the park, dinners cooking in nearby homes, the scent of seasons changing.
And then, as too often happens in life, we had to say goodbye.
So here we are. With far emptier mornings, with extra room in our bed, with songs left unsung, with our never-ending love searching for a place to land.
And with Ed’s achingly empty throne.
But, as Ed would gleefully remind us, life is meant to be lived. Joyously, colorfully, and with passion. And, of course, with a lot of good country music.
We’ll get there. We have to. Ed showed us the way.
