BB Grey–musings

“The years apart folded into a single breath,
and the greater homecoming—
to her, to Him—
lit the universe with a quiet, unending hello.”

It’s been twenty-five years, give or take a shimmer,
since I last saw your shadow spill across the floor,
a silhouette I knew for thirty-three tender turns of the earth.
I’m older now—older than you ever carved into time,
a clock that stopped for you,
its hands frozen in a gesture I trace in the dark.

This year, the year you slipped away,
keeps folding back into me,
a paper crane of memory,
its edges sharp with the realness of you—
not some phantom spun from dreams,
but the you who fretted over bills,
who marveled at the smallest spark of the world’s unfolding,
who laughed at the body’s slow betrayal:
a knee that groaned,
a shoulder begging for oil,
a heart that beat too fiercely for its frame.

You were my age now,
not some distant star I’ll never reach,
but here, in the marrow of today—
your thoughts as vivid as mine,
not draped in the gauze of what-might-be,
but stitched into the now:
the thrill of a new idea blooming,
the ache of watching children grow wings,
the quiet pang as those we loved
slipped beyond the veil,
their echoes starting anew in a place I can’t yet see.

And yet, I think of her—
Mom, Maria, your compass and your shore,
tallying the years like a rosary,
thirty-six when you left,
sixty now in the ledger of her heart.
She whispers it sometimes,
“This would’ve been our diamond year,”
her voice a thread pulled taut across decades,
fraying but unbroken.
Twenty-four years she’s carried you,
not as a ghost, but as a pulse—
a longing so deep it hums beneath her skin,
a want that bends the air,
a yearning that paints the horizon gold,
a patience woven from starlight and grit,
and an expectant joy,
fragile as a moth’s wing,
fierce as the sea.

I see it—
the moment time unravels its knot,
when she steps through the mist of years,
her knees buckling under a happiness too vast for words,
a crumbling of the soul into light.
And there you are,
your face a map of all she’s dreamed,
creased with that half-smile I remember,
saying, “Hi, Maria, it’s been a minute,”
as if you’d just stepped out for bread
and not into eternity.

The angels pause,
their wings catching the breath of the moment,
a stillness rippling through the ether.
You take her hand—
your touch a melody she’s hummed in silence all these years—
and say, “Welcome home.
Our place is just over here.”
The air shivers with your voice,
a sound like wind chimes on a summer porch,
“I have so much to tell you,
but first—
there’s someone you must meet.”

And there He stands,
Jesus, radiant as a lantern in the dusk,
His eyes holding the weight of every tear she’s shed.
“Jesus, this is my wife, Maria,” you say,
your pride a soft thunder in the heavens.
“Maria, this is Jesus,”
and she laughs—
a sound like bells spilling over a hillside,
like the first note of a song she didn’t know she’d forgotten.

The whole of heaven leans in,
a chorus of light and shadow,
welcoming their newest thread into the weave.
The streets gleam with gold,
but it’s the ordinary gold of her love,
polished by years of waiting,
that makes the angels sigh.
You lead her past gardens where flowers bloom in colors
no earthly tongue can name,
past rivers that sing of every moment you shared,
and she sees it—
the house you’ve built,
not of stone, but of memory and grace,
its windows open to a sky that never fades.

I can only imagine,
my feet still tethered to this spinning world,
how your young heart—
my age now,
so alive, so real—
must have leapt at her coming,
how the mundane ache of a failing body
dissolved into the elation of her nearness,
how the years apart folded into a single breath,
and how the greater homecoming—
to her, to Him—
lit the universe with a quiet, unending hello.

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