With Everything He Had

“What would he want us to say about him?” Tom drummed his fingertips on his knee and avoided looking at the others.

Dan strummed a chord on his guitar. “Maybe there’s a God above and all I ever learned from love was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you...”

There were some thoughtful hums of assent. Rob had always loved the song, sung it lovingly from beneath the shadows on open mic night.

Emma cleared her throat. “How about something a little more epic?” She sang, “It’s the pain that cuts a straight line down through the heart. We call it love. We wrapped our arms around each other --”

Hugh threw a pen at her, his aim half-hearted. “Inappropriate, given how many of his aged aunts love him.”

Dan set his guitar aside, played a brief, minor glissando on the keyboard. “Well I’d rather bleed just to know why I die. Do you know why I die?”

“A little too direct, I suspect,” Tom said. He thought. Music was the only way to honor Michael and the life he’d led. None of them were talented enough to write a song for him, but they could sing one. As much as Michael had loved foreign music, the lyrics for this song had to count. He began humming a tune, one that had been hovering in the back of mind since they’d laid Michael’s wife Gina to rest a week earlier. One by one, the others began picking it up, and their gazes met as they caught onto the lyrics he was thinking of.

“...When you’re worn out and tired...when your heart has expired, oh lover, I’ll cover you...”

“He loved her with everything he had,” Emma said, “and he died for her. The world should remember that.”

(299 words)