Screenshot
If my heart could tell a story for Greg,
it wouldn’t begin with the ending.
It would begin with your laugh –
the kind that entered a room before you did
and changed the air.
You were never small,
not even as a boy.
You carried wonder like a compass,
angled toward what was true, kind,
and quietly brave.
You loved books and animals and far-off places,
but you loved people best –
steadily, without performance,
in a way that felt like home.
You grew into a man
who noticed the overlooked,
who knelt instead of towered,
who listened with his whole body.
You chose loyalty.
You chose tenderness.
You chose love – again and again –
even when the world made that harder than it should have been.
Here the language thins.
The story resists.
You were complete, which mattered too.
There was no unfinished version of you.
No missing chapter in your becoming –
only in my living without you.
It shattered my heart.
Not metaphorically.
Not gently.
It shattered it.
Every beat now carries your name.
Every breath learned a new weight.
Grief did not visit –
it took residence.
Still, this story does not end in darkness.
Love does not die when a body does.
You appear in quiet signs,
in dreams, in sudden warmth,
in strength that arrives
when mine is gone.
You are not gone from me,
only gone from my sight.
You mattered.
You matter.
You always will.
I will carry you forward –
in how I love,
in how I speak your name,
in how I live on this side of heaven
with courage shaped by loss
and hope shaped like you.
If my heart could tell a story for you,
it would not end with goodbye,
but with until.
Copyright © Joy M. Mills 2026
MJM (TM)