What is a home, really?

When I was little, I was lucky enough to get to grow up in the same house my entire young life. We actually had that house all the way until after my last parent, my mother, passed from this life five years ago. And I remember when we finally sold that house, it felt as though one of my tethers to this world somehow was gone.

More recently my husband and mother-in-law both passed from this life last year. As part of his grief process my father-in-law gave up the big old family house where my late husband had spent the majority of his childhood. And though I know this one is much more difficult for other members of my family, even for me it feels as though another tether has released.

Just this week, one of my sons actually screamed and cried for twenty minutes during our drive here because he didn’t want to come to Pops’s new house. You see, while some may see a house as just bricks and mortar and wood and insulation, the truth is that it also holds the people and therefore the memories of all that has happened and will occur throughout our lives. In many ways our houses live and breathe as much as we do – they bear up our past, they hold our present, and they vouch-safe our future.

Unfortunately, at some point, all of us will lose our hold on our childhood homes. That is just the way of it. We may even lose many of the people who live with us in them. However, what I have found is that the important cities still hold such a vast array of memories and stories that they make it much easier to keep memories alive. And for me, the best way to do that is by sharing them with the next generation or new additions to the family. Ensuring that the love keeps going.

Because at the end of the day a home is where the love is.