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The word is place

A Longing For Home

We sat together outside his apartment on the bench. An independent living facility had been their home for a few years now. They had sold to a family member so they could still keep the attachment. It’s hard to leave a place where voices and handprints from infancy to adulthood still are embedded in the walls. Somehow you tell yourself you are taking them with you, but you know the solidity is in the place, for when you return and touch and smell, it all races back.

And he is progressing in his Alzheimer's now. His memory for past days is clearer. He talks about his trip to Ireland, the Homeland of his parents. When I ask him to describe it he pauses, and then “It’s a place”. That's all for his answer. And I thought, hmm.… it’s  a place. No memories that would stick, just a place to visit and then leave.

He went on talking about the train he took to work, the flowers he grew in the back yard, the summer picnics and his wife and their four children. This was more than a place. It was where his fondest memories were, and in his mind, he was there right then.
Sometimes we long for home, and the memories are different than what we really left behind. Because the reality is still there.

As a Christian I long for a home I have never seen, Heaven. My mind pictures and conjures up all kinds of images that I think it will be like. The Bible doesn’t really describe it much in detail. Streets of gold and a crystal Sea. There will be no darkness. There will be no tears nor sadness. There will be perfect love. Isn't that a place to call home!