🕊️ The Woman Who Named Every Wing

She always knew when the hummingbirds were coming.
Not just the season—the day.

She’d open the blinds just a little wider. Fill the feeder. And wait.
Not with impatience, but with joy so pure you could feel it rise off her like morning light.

And when they came, she lit up.
“Lucy’s back!” she’d whisper.
Then, as they flitted and zipped and hovered midair like magic, she’d rattle off names like a teacher taking roll.

“Charlie, Midge, Petunia, oh look—look! That one’s new.”
“Maybe he heard I make a mean nectar blend.”

She was part snow white, part stand-up comic, part bright spirit too soft to ever sit still.
A social breeze. A walking smile. A woman who noticed everything.

People, too.

She’d remember the name of your cousin’s dog from a story you told once in passing.
She’d ask about the thing you forgot you mentioned.
She made every room feel lighter just by being in it.

And when it was her time—
God, it hurt.

But even then, I remember thinking:
She didn’t belong in a hospital bed.
She belonged in the wind.
In the trees.
In the high blue sky.

So now I keep her close in something as light and lovely as she was—
a tiny glass hummingbird, filled with part of her and all of what she loved.

I hang it by the window.
It catches the light and flickers just so.
And sometimes, just sometimes, I swear it moves when there’s no breeze at all.

I think she’s still visiting.
Still watching.
Still naming every wing.

And I hope—
I really hope—
that wherever she is,
she’s finally flying with them.

-Grace E.