Little Chirp and his dad took care of the kittens and Trooper while I was in South Carolina. I returned early to attend funeral services this afternoon for Melissa, a childhood friend.
I texted Little Chirp’s dad this morning about needing help with the cats again this afternoon and tomorrow morning. I stopped myself as I was typing the text; I stopped myself from saying the words, “I am leaving to go home.” When we were married, he did not like that I referred to where I grew up as home as opposed to where we lived. This morning’s reference to home felt natural, yet was I not standing in my home? Was I not already home?
When I get to the town of Marion this afternoon, where I grew up, where exactly would home be? It has been more than two decades since my parents lost the home that I grew up in. It has been seventeen years since my father passed away, and more than a decade since my mother passed.
I will always remember the feeling that walking into my parent’s home gave me, the secure, peaceful feeling of being home. Whether I was gone for an afternoon or weeks, my parent’s home always gave me that assuring feeling of being home. There has never been another place that gave me that feeling each and every time that I walked into it.
Now, the feeling comes in fleeting waves at times in different places. My sister’s restaurant is the place that most often brings me that peaceful feeling of home, but not always. The home that I live in now sometimes gives me that feeling after I have been away for awhile. That is special in the fact that no other home that I have owned gave me that feeling.
I look around, Potatoe is snuggled up underneath my desk. He waits patiently for the run that he knows we are going for in just a bit. The kittens are running about the front room where I am working. Every five minutes or so, they hop up into my lap for more cuddles. Trooper is asleep on the living room couch.
In a minute, I will get up from the desk where I am working to get another cup of coffee from my coffee bar. I will walk into the kitchen that I was in the process of remodeling this time last year, to decide what is for breakfast. I will find the fridge filled with Little Chirp’s beloved Aha sodas. If I walk down the hall, I will find his perfectly organized study that he decorated himself. I will find his clothes laying on the floor of his room, with his bed made in a half hazard manner. I will almost certainly find he left a light on.
Sitting here right now, with the kittens perched on my desk watching me work, and Potatoe poking his little head up from underneath my desk, begging for a scratch behind the ear. Is this not home?
I will go for a run, and then I will put on a dress, and I will text my sister that I am on my way home, as in, on my way to Marion. If Marion is home, where exactly in Marion is home?
For me, in my life on Earth, home is a feeling. For the rest of eternity, home for Melissa is in the arms of the angels. I imagine Melissa entering the gates of Heaven, and the secure, peaceful feeling of home will fill her heart. Her trials on Earth are done. We are not ready to say goodbye, and I know my sister is filled with deep, uncontrollable sorrow at the passing of her best friend. Yet, Melissa is home. For Melissa, home is now where the angels are.