I am Home

The sense of home is important to me. I’ve heard, home is where you hang your hat, home is where the heart is, home is where you are (referring to a loved one), but to me the word home was deeper than that and I felt lost without the place I called home.

I have struggled with a sense of home for years. Being a survivor of divorced parents I moved some place between 20-24 times as a teenager into my twenties. To cope during that time I chose my Grandparents house to be what I called home. It granted me stability, warm and fuzzy feelings, and it filled the need I had to call something home.

My husband and I moved our family to a different state a few years ago around the same time my grandparents passed away. And I felt myself losing my sense of home.

When they passed, the farm in which I called home was no longer available to me, and I didn’t know what to do. Here we were in a new state, in a new home, with number three baby on the way, and I felt homeless and disconnected.

I found while grieving my grandparents I was grieving their home too, because it was my home. It took me years to realize that my memories although tied to my grandparents and their house, were my own, not a place at all.

I noticed in my grief I would remember little things in detail about their house, like the contents of a junk drawer, or a random corner in their basement and I would get frustrated with myself for remembering such things, because the reality was that those drawers would never again be seen by me, what use were those memories?

I now see that they are apart of me, even though the house is owned by another, and the drawers I remember are full of other things, and new memories are being played out over top of mine, my memories will live on forever in me.

I do often wish I could visit the old house to help me remember and bring to life the  memories of that beautiful place and the wonderful people who made it home for me, but I realize it doesn’t matter where I live now, home is in me. I am home.