Going Home

Without a doubt the hardest thing we have had to do so far is making the decision to move Mother to  assisted living and then to the nursing home.  Leaving the home she loved was absolutely wrenching for her and for all of the family.  Her home was more than just a house and a piece of land.  It was and is who she is.  Her identity is rooted in that soil, distilled into that water.  Her spirit was fed by every tree and animal and bird in the woods and meadows.  She walked the woods and fished the pond.  She chopped the wood and cleared special areas for sitting and communing with nature.  She planted her garden and made a home made swimming pool out of boards and black plastic that the grandchildren thought was better than any pool they had ever seen.  She taught her grandchildren about God and about nature in the woods.  She roasted pork loins over an open fire pit she built herself.  At 70, she was on the house putting on new shingles.  She never wanted to be gone from her home.  She even wrote a song about her home in the woods.  Sometimes we thought she might love that place almost more than she loved people.  It has been everything to her.

Now, she often doesn't remember it at all.  If you ask her where her home is, she names her childhood home. She can go months without talking about it.  But when she does, I once again experience the ache and the gut wrenching feeling that I have somehow betrayed her.  Yesterday when we visited she grabbed our hands and asked to go home.  She said she had to get out of that nursing home and go home.  I told her I really wished I could take her home, but I just couldn't.  Then she held my hand, leaned forward and said. " Pleeeeeeeease.  Oh pleeeeeeease.  I am so homesick."  My heart shattered into a thousand sharp fragments. My heart was broken, but I heard myself saying, "It is too late.  We can't go.  I wish I could take you, but I can't."  The look on her face pierced me through.  I comforted her with hugs and told her that my sister looked after the place.  I assured her that we put the light bulb in the well house, swept the porch, and  cleaned the house.  She smiled and said okay. That was it.  The thought of home was gone, and today she was happy.   But my heart still aches today.  I can't get the look on her face as she pleaded with me out of my mind.  I would give anything to be able to restore her to her home and her mind and her life.  It is a bitter heart ache, and I mourn for her loss and for the pain we share together.