Home is where the memories are.

I spent a few days back where I grew up and helped my mom do some chores around the house. One of them was cutting the front bushes and adding mulch to the flower beds. Not a big job, a few hours at most, but it made a big visual difference with the house. We both thought the house looked great and that this was the photo that we would use if we ever sold it. It got me thinking of what it was like to grow up in this house and a few things stood out.

To most people this is just some old broken steps, made in 1954. But this is different. These steps were put in to connect the back yard of our house to the back yard of our neighbors. We had another one on the other side that connected us to the Muldowneys. These were made so it would be easier for us to connect with our neighbors and their houses. I live in California and the thought that you would have stairs and concrete paths that connect you with your neighbors wouldn't even be thought of for the front yard, let alone the back. In California, there are walls or fences that are at least 5 feet high between each house. By order of the homeowners association, you cannot even take them down. It wasn't that way when I grew up, not on Poe Drive at least.

Just a pad of concrete you see, right. Not to me. This is the concrete pad that my dad and I were working on in 1972 when he had the heart attack that ended his life. We had just finished raking the stones that were used as a base for the cement when we took a break and rested in the back yard. That is when he had the heart attack. Not a great memory, I'll admit, but some day we'll sell this house. Someone will tear out the steps to the neighbors, probably remove this unused pad of concrete, but I wanted to remember it. You see, the house where I grew up in has good memories and bad. But it is still where I grew up. There is the old expression about never going home again. It's From "A Death in the Family" by James Agee. The full quote is:

"How far we all come. How far we all come away from ourselves. You can never go home again."

It's a story about a family dealing with the accidental death of the father. The story is about a husband and father is called out of town to be with his own father, who has had a heart attack, and while returning is killed in a car accident. James Agee patterned the story after his own life. The story is about a boy who is the same age as James was when his father died. James Agee was six when his father died. I was ten when my father died.

The issue is that you can go home, you must go home, eventually. Running away, as I did as a child when my father fell to the ground, and as an adult leaving for California, doesn't work. Every demon, every bad memory, must be addressed. For me, these aren't bad memories now, they are just part of my past that shaped who I am. I was there when my father died. I was at my brother's side when he died. These are terrible moments, but they make us stronger when we have the time and space to understand them. No one is devoid of these type of memories. Most people have much worse memories that they have to face. But God allows these to happen to us. He does not cause them. He allows them. Our eventual decision is how will we react to them. Will we become "bitter" or will we get "better?" It's a choice. It's "Free Will." It's God's Plan. I read the Book. I know the ending.