Lou Reed's wife sheds light on singer's last days

Lou Reed's wife, Laurie Anderson, has written a touching piece for the East Hampton Star about the rocker, who died Sunday at age 71.

Anderson -- a performance artist and musician -- called Reed "a prince and a fighter" as she shed some light on the singer's last days.

To our neighbors:

What a beautiful fall! Everything shimmering and golden and all that incredible soft light. Water surrounding us.

Lou and I have spent a lot of time here in the past few years, and even though we're city people this is our spiritual home.

Last week I promised Lou to get him out of the hospital and come home to Springs. And we made it!

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. 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.

Lou was a prince and a fighter and 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.

-- Laurie Anderson

his loving wife and eternal friend

Reed and Anderson started dating in the 1990s and wed in 2008. Reed died in Southampton, N.Y., after suffering from complications from a liver transplant he had earlier this year. He Reed and Anderson shared a home in the Southampton area of Long Island.

Fellow musicians, along with actors and others, expressed their condolences earlier this week.