Home Again

I arrived in the middle of the night. The past couple of weeks have been nothing if not surrealsitic. I've stepped into my past. The visit home was good for my soul. I was able to go back to the places that I lived when I was growing up. I drove those old familiar streets and gazed upon the houses that I lived in when I was little, seeing them through my adult eyes was such a differnet perspective. The houses that once seemed so huge to me now seem so small.

The house that I was born in has now been razed and the corner lot is a vacant expanse of grass in an otherwise full neighborhood. I was told that it burnt many years ago and had to be demolished. Still, I took a picture of where it once stood.

I took many pictures on my trip. I'll share them soon.

But for now I'm working my way back to normal. It was wonderful to feel the embrace of my family. It was even more wonderful to look at the old family photos.

Thank you all for your love and support.





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Grandmother

I started writing this last night...
But my grandmother passed today at 4PM.
I'll be back soon. I'll finish it when I can.


Grandmother is hanging in there. She's doing that thing that we've seen in the medical field. Rallying one day, then steep blood pressure drops at night. Then she rebounds for a day or so. I haven't told the family because it would break their hearts, but I'm sure that this is the pattern I saw in my paternal grandfather. His last rebound was lovely. He sat up and ate with my grandmother, they talked for a long time, even staying after visiting hours were over. She was so happy when she got home that night, sure that he was on the mend and she would bring him back home soon. He had talked to her about their life together. He said all that he needed to say to her, the things we forget to say, about how much she had brought to his life, they reminisced their humble beginnings and all of their adventures along the way.

In the morning, as she was dressing to go to the hospital, the phone rang. It was the hospital calling to tell her that he had passed during the night.

She said she went to the closet and grabbed a handful of his sweaters and just stood there smelling them. Smelling him. For months she did this. Opening the doors and burying her face in his clothes so she could smell him.