Sometimes You Just Can't Go Home Again.

Sometimes my mom will look around the apartment and say that she wants to go home. For a long time I would tell her that this was her home and she was at home. Not really knowing what she met but I just tried to reassure her basically that don't worry she is at home and safe. That usually worked at least for a couple of hours or so until she asked again when can she go home.

So, the other day I asked her what did she mean when she said that she wanted to go home, hoping that she didn't mean heaven. She gave me a "Don't you know what I am talking about look" and then took a deep breath and I braced myself for the answer almost sitting at the edge of my chair. A few seconds later she said that when she says she wants to go home it is not that she wanted to die or anything but she wanted to go back to her childhood home where she and her brothers and sister moved to when their mom remarried back in the 50's. The house is in a good neighborhood where nothing really happens. Back then it was hard for them buying a house in that neighborhood for  many reasons. But, they did and that is the house she spent all of her teen years in and beyond. When my father was in the Air force  we stayed there with my grandmother and step grandfather until after my little sister was born. We moved from there when my sister was around a year old and I was almost 4. That was the house that we all would come to for every holiday and special occasion and that is the house where my grandparents lived for over 50 years. That is the house that was supposed to stay in the family after they were gone. It was supposed to the family home for next generation and the generation after that. My grandparents took great pride in that house that they had made a home. In every nook and cranny of that house you would be reminded of them and the life that they lived in that house and in every room there was something of everyone whether it be a picture on the wall or a favorite toy that was decades old there was always something to make you smile and remember the good old days. Even in the backyard the flowers and trees reminded you of my grandmother who loved to garden until she got too sick to do it anymore.

My step grandfather was a pack rat, so he had papers and books and pictures from every decade that they lived there. We never got to really clean it out the way we should have after my grandmother died in 2005. It would have probably taken about five years or so to do it properly. But, we didn't have five years we were rushed and pushed and pulled in every direction that you can possibly imagine. And the reason was nothing more then and nothing less then American Greed.

So, sometimes when my mom gets that look in her eye and says she wants to go home I know now what she is talking about. She wants to go back and spend another minute, another day, another year, another decade in the house that she called a home.

Unfortunately, she can't go home, or to that home again. Someone else lives there now and has made it their home. We don't have anything tangible from that home the only thing we have are memories and the memories take over and are overwhelming at times, the memories of home.