Lou Reed's Death: Wife Laurie Anderson Calls Late Rocker 'a Prince and a Fighter' - People Magazine

By Tim Nudd

11/01/2013 at 11:20 AM EDT

Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed

Paul Hawthorne/WireImage

Tributes poured in from all corners of the globe after Lou Reed died Sunday at the age of 71. Now, the woman closest to the legendary rocker – his wife, Laurie Anderson – has penned her own short, poignant remembrance: an obituary in their local newspaper.

"Last week I promised Lou to get him out of the hospital and come home to Springs, [N.Y.]. And we made it!" Anderson, 66, wrote in The East Hampton Star of her fellow musician and partner of 18 years, whom she wed in 2008.

"Lou was a tai chi master and spent his last days here being happy and dazzled by the beauty and power and softness of nature," she added. "He died on Sunday morning looking at the trees and doing the famous 21 form of tai chi with just his musician hands moving through the air."

Anderson called the former Velvet Underground frontman, who succumbed to liver disease, "a prince and a fighter," adding: "I know his songs of the pain and beauty in the world will fill many people with the incredible joy he felt for life. Long live the beauty that comes down and through and onto all of us."

She signed the obituary "his loving wife and eternal friend."