It has been twenty years
since you stepped beyond this world,
not lost, only hidden
from the reach of our eyes.

Yet you remain.

Not as memory fading with time, but as living truth within us, eternal values carved into our souls, quietly shaping every choice, every becoming.

Your voice still echoes,
not in sound alone
but in the strong pull toward what is right,
toward kindness,
that most excellent of virtues you lived.

You taught us how to be.

So we do not grieve as those bound only to flesh, for what is grief
when love has not ended,
only changed its form?

No, we do not grieve. We celebrate.

Because we know where you are.
Not diminished, not gone,
but gathered into a greater reality, alive in a way this world could never contain.

And this is not farewell.

It is a pause in the story.

We will meet again, but not yet.
We will meet again at that incomparable resurrection, where time gives way to eternity
and separation loses its meaning.

We will meet again
at that great celestial celebration where all realms converge and joy is full and without shadow.

Clothed in bodies untouched by decay,
whole, radiant, eternal,
we will stand together again.

In the new heaven and the new earth, on that long-awaited day
anticipated by all creation.

Until then, you are not gone.

You are ahead Mrs. B.C.