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The old adage “Home is where the heart is” recently took on shocking meaning for me when my 89 year-old mother told me she wants to be “home for Christmas next year”. She meant her home in heaven.
My thoughts and emotions surged, almost choking me, but I managed to tell her it was okay to go “home” if she was ready. I thought I was calm. I thought I told her what she needed to hear.
Who was I kidding?
It isn’t okay with me.
Without Mom I can’t go home anymore. I have lived apart from her over thirty years, but I still phone home to mother. I send letters and postcards home to her. I still travel home to visit her, though I have a house my kids call home.
But she insists I be prepared to let her go. She is most excited to see the face of God.
She tells me she is ready to go “home” to heaven. Her body is wearing out, though her mind is sharp as ever. She has been ready to go “home” since Dad died a dozen years ago. She is looking forward to being with him again. She, herself, has been an orphan for almost 60 years and is ready to be “home” with her mother and father.
It hurts so - to face her going “home.” It is painful to think about life on this earth without her, because then, I will be a “home”less orphan.
But it's magical, the way she turns any place she lives into home just by being there. On earth as in heaven, a building does not make a home. Most of the houses that were Mom’s earthly homes no longer exist. They have been worn away by time, or torn down by farmers who turned the place into a crop field. The truth is: she is the heart of home.
She lives a thousand miles away from me, but wherever she is, is home to me.
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