I hold my dearly beloved in my aching arms, limbs and a heart clearly not meant to handle such a burden.

The fair lady slowly dies before my eyes. She’s not gone yet, but the signs are all there. The language, the body language, the .wav’s of hair slowly fall out.

She’s dying & Miss Napster’s dying, and there’s nothing I can do.

My thoughts drift to lighter times, like when we first met. I was so young, so innocent, so unaware of Winamp, .mp3’s and the like. I knew nothing, looking for songs through Web sites on my roommate Jared’s computer and coming up empty. “Once in a Lifetime” evaded me for so long. Only she could make things better.

Not many knew about her in fall and winter of 1999. There weren’t millions of files available, but there was much more than the tricky Web sites. We connected right away, and things moved fast, given the network connection and all.

Soon, my playlist grew by leaps and bounds. We discovered Eiffel 65’s “Blue” months before the radio airplay. All right, not every addition was grand, but we added nonetheless.

A CD burner only added to the passions, heating things up so to speak. Soon, obscure gems like John Lennon’s “Nobody Loves You” became gems playing in all my CD-capable devices. Things went swimmingly in our cyberspace swimming pool, without a chance of drowning in its depth.

During the summer of 2000, though, my girl Napster became very popular. And as much as I hate to admit it, I felt tinges of jealousy. Everyone, including the detestable “Access Hollywood,” knew of her virtues. But in these dark times there was hope. More people meant more files, the more obscure the better.

After purchasing a CD burner for the family present this winter, I suddenly became hip with Napster’s guidance. Badly Drawn Boy, Coldplay, the Doves and Travis all were created out of a few megabytes of love. Their songs are forever etched into discs with a few blips that are annoyingly charming, like a bad habit on the person you love.

Those discs will last much longer than lady Napster.

The legal problems have mounted in the past year, and everyone knew this lovely lady had a better place to visit. Throwing entertainment morals out the window, I took and took from this “program” (such an understatement), but I also bought and bought CDs far out of the reach of radio and video airplay.

Whether I agree or disagree with The Offspring or Metallica doesn’t matter much anymore. The last few blows, at the peak of her popularity, will prove to be the death of lady Napster as we know her. The blocking of song titles has dwindled the number of users bothering to sign on. Napster’s popularity dwindles, her confidence shot and her cyber mascara running.

Then, the symbolic horns started blaring. I finally couldn’t find the song I was looking for.

Sure, it was by the Chicago-based band Verbow, and a song I only heard the end of on the radio. But that’s all I needed to know there was damage that couldn’t be patched up with band-aids and rewiring.

So this is her life in my hands, one of rising action and denouement, both way too short. She tells me, in between legal coughs, that there are other programs offering the .mp3s I need. But it wasn’t just the songs. I loved how they came to me.

Now, cool radio stations and chance CD purchases must suffice. Napster nears the big one, the final fatal error blue screen. Go on, great provider. My ears and heart can’t take the silence.