"I want to go home."

On August 20, when Mom was in the hospital, a doctor told me Mom was going to die. I told Mom ... and almost her first response was, "I want to go home." By which she meant ... as she meant whenever she said these words, and she said them often when we were out ... that she wanted to return to this house, this home, that she and I have shared for the past 6 or 7 years.

Thanks to Hospice, she was able to return home that afternoon. And on August 22, she died. At home; where she wanted to die.

Over the previous 6 months, there were many times that she and I might be out driving somewhere when she would say to me, "Let's go home."

Home was very special to her ... and to me. And remembering this helps me to be motivated even more to work towards purchasing a full interest in this house ... so that this home can be maintained. This means a lot to me. Here ... this place, this house, this home ... is the place I think I'm meant to stay, God willing. Death is in this house, perhaps, but there is far more life in this house.

I'm guessing ... as I think I said a few days ago ... that something like this is how traditional families viewed their family homesteads. Well ... me too.

When the dog and I are out, with me driving her to take her for a walk, I sometimes say to her afterward, "Let's go home."

Amen. Amen.

Let's go home. To this home that is only a mundane but very dear icon and image of our true Heavenly Home.

O Lord, let me keep coming home to this home in the here and now.

And of Your Great Mercy, allow me some day to go home to my true home with You ... and, I hope, Momma ... in Heaven.

Charles Delacroix
Eve of 29th Sunday of Ordinary Time