A song for a wife who is gone is what you say to her now that the room is quiet. It is what you knew about her that nobody else knew. It is the version of her that lived in the way she said your name. The forge writes it as a love letter that survives.
What this kind of song holds
These songs hold the marriage as a daily practice — the small kindnesses, the running joke, the way she carried the family through a hard year. They hold the woman she was when nobody was watching. They hold what you would say if you could say it once more.
What to put in the intake
Give us her hands, her laugh, the meal she made when no one else could. Give us the way she changed your life and the way she pushed back on it. Give us the song you sang together in the car. The smaller the detail, the truer the song.