Painting the Steps Red At Home

Every now and then my mom will say that she wants to go home. She will tell me that this is not her home and I would have to agree. I don't know what home she is talking about but I am assuming that it the home that she used to live in with my grandmother. The home that we "lost" after she passed away due to old fashion American Greed. I think that is the only place she considered home. Now, we are in this "home" which is not really a home it is just a roof that is over our heads to keep the rain off it and the sun and the elements. Home is a place where you feel like you should be it feels good to come home kick off your shoes and relax knowing the walls that surround you are yours the roof is yours everything in the walls is all you. You have turned an address into a true home. I remember when I was watching a special on Maya Angelou a few years back and she said that she didn't  buy a house she brought an address and she turned it into a home. I like that.

When my grandmother passed we lived there for about 2 years or so but in that short amount of time we never really got to make it a true home. It was still my grandmother's home where she lived with my step grandfather for over 50 years. It was their couches, their pictures on the walls, their beds in the bedrooms, their rugs on the floor, their stuff in the cabinets, their paint on the walls, their tables and chairs and dishes and plates and lamps and TV's and papers and junk it was still theirs. It still had their names on everything. When you walked in the house you saw them through the stuff in the house through the paintings and pictures on the walls and the couches and the rugs on the floor and the tables in the dinning room and the whole house. Everywhere you looked it was them not us. It felt like home in some ways and in other ways it didn't. We were supposed to spend years in that house, my mom was supposed to spend her lifetime in that house the way my grandmother wanted it. She wanted it to be her home next. For her to paint the walls, pick out new drapes, put on a new table cloth on the tables, for her to clean out the backyard and plant new flowers where the old ones died years ago to plant a new tree, to claim the space in the carport. She would have wanted for my son to run around in the backyard and later mow the lawn when he got older. She would have wanted us to have cookouts and camp outs back there and look at the squirrels and the birds and to grill corn and ribs and steaks and burn hamburger patties and hot dogs like my grandfather used to do. She would have wanted us to take walks to the downtown library and check out books like she used to do with us when we were small. She would have wanted us to paint the steps brick red like she let me do when I was  little and spent the summer there and when she asked me what I wanted to do I said paint the steps and she had no problem taking me to the paint store and letting me pick out the reddest paint in the store and together we painted the steps.  The next summer they were painted back to white.

My mom had the big bedroom and during the day she would come downstairs with us and my brother would go in the big bedroom and spend the day. The big bedroom was the size of this whole apartment that we are living in now. It had it's own hot tub, bathroom and view from the deck. My mom loved that bedroom and so did my brother. It was kind of both of their rooms. Nobody went in there much except to use the bathroom if someone was in the other bathroom.

So, when my brother went to the hospital before he passed away my mom said through tears that she wanted him to just come home. She asked God to bring him back home to us and not to take him. But, God took him anyway and he never came home again. He never walked through the door again and we will never see him again or hear his voice again. We made all the arrangements for cremation and it took longer then I ever expected to get his remains or cremains as they call them and the final piece of paper that will probably ever have his name on it, the death certificate. He came home on Monday in an urn. Not the home the way that we would have wanted him to come home. But, to the last "home' that he knew.

My mom talked a lot today about buying a house, a home. I wish that it was that easy or at least easier to do it. I wish that she didn't have to loose the only home that she ever had and I am hoping that before she leaves this earth that she will have a new home a house that he makes her home this time. My mom said she has had enough of bad luck and death and living her last years out here in someone else's place. All I could do was agree. I too, have had enough of the bad, enough of death and enough of living but not really living our lives to the fullest in a place where we can paint the steps bright red.