Where is Home?

Home is a short, simple word. Yet it carries enough baggage to outfit a marching band. It can mean anything from a master web page to the goal of the runner on third base.

For those fortunate enough to have a happy childhood spent in one location, a visit to the old house can fire up a constellation of wonderful memories. How wonderful it must be to spend Christmas eve in a girlhood bedroom of years ago--perhaps still frozen in time with white furniture and a canopy bed. Home is represented by a physical place for some, but for many others only the concept has substance. Home is often a dream of the place we want to be, a place where we are welcome, secure, and loved.

As my father sinks deeper into Alzheimer's dementia, he constantly expresses the wish to go home. Sitting securely in the place where he lives surrounded by kindness, he often asks questions such as, "Where am I? Do I live here? When can I go home?" He asked those same questions inside his own home, before he moved to what is euphimistically referred to as memory care.

Occasionally Daddy gets up in the middle of the night and starts packing, preparing to go to a destination he cannot describe in any way. Often he will assure me his own long-dead father dropped by to visit yesterday. On another day, he will peer at me blankly and say, "Who are you?" Soon, he's back on the issue of wanting to go home.

It's some comfort to realize Dad will someday go to that eternal Heaven where finally he will be at peace. When he walks through that door of no return, he will again recognize who he is and where he is. He will know he is home at last.

Carlene Havel,author of "A Hero's Homecoming"
http://www.prismbookgroup.com/AHerosH...