dying
-
Hey Dad!Her tiny voice—a small, blue birdat the nest’s edge.She’d remembered her way home,but her mom wasn’t there,and I hadn’t set footthere in years. Hey sweet pea, great to hear your voice.How’s work, your new place, your husband?It sounded strange—my own words,a slow fall from grace. Chirp, chirp, she went on,a new song I’d never
-
I thought how you thought of yourself as the moon— brilliantly white light, a dot of hope in eternal black. But even your light wasn’t yours. Reflection. And the howling below—that was real. Lobo, me. Smooth surface. You could trick yourself into seeing a smile there. But the truth: scars skip the surface, sink steeply—pieces
-
I had given myself a week to understand dying this time around. The news arrived with a percentage—fifty-fifty—which meant either everything or nothing, depending on how I chose to look at things as they stood. There would be no worrying about having saved enough, no being a burden to my children and what remained of
-
Romulus—the dog that smelled of sun-baked fur and dirt,ten years pressed into the seams of his chest. He carried him through the glass doors,yelling something half-formed to the receptionist,“he’s in pain—just…”and the words dissolved into the silence of strangerswho already knew. Romulus on the cold stainless table,eyes too wide, whites swallowing the brown,staring at him
-
not just one day.. “The Walk Down Gravel”for Mr. Graham, Vietnam Veteran It’s Sunday.The grass glistens with dew—tiny glass beads strunglike prayers along every blade,hydrating the earthfor the coming summer heat. Across the street,Mr. Graham’s black trash can stands at attention—a quiet salute to the curb,ready for duty.Only, it’s not trash day. Tuesday is the
-
It’s 4 p.m., and my inbox is a graveyard of emails that feel important but probably aren’t—digital paperweights holding down nothing but my will to live. The world spins on. Whether I reply today or tomorrow won’t matter to anyone, least of all me. Earlier, I take my mother to the doctor. Routine physical, except
-
it is everythingi can dojust to feel the low humbuzzes behind my eyesand the tearsdo not ask permissionthey fall i wipesalt from my facewith the same handsi once usedto fold in prayer i promised Godi would hold on but i forgethow many timesi’ve promisedand unpromised he got me throughoncethat one timethat almost ended me and
-
Hey Dad, How’s the view from where you are? Is Jesus keeping you company, sharing stories over some cosmic equivalent of coffee? Yesterday was your birthday—eighty-one, if time even bothers to count where you are. Do you celebrate, or is that date just a faint echo of a life left behind? I wonder, sometimes, if
-
I live in a roomwithout a heart—not that I’m gone,but it feels that part. They used to come,“Grandma’s new place!”—a pool, a clubhouse,wide-open space.But had I knownit was a guise,to strip me bareof dignity’s prize,I’d have stayedin my home, my own,where the hallway’s wornby children grown,their racing feet,their candy smears,walls alivewith fleeting years. There, my
BB Grey--musings 