HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS

Looking back over the years as a young man many were the times that Mom and Dad were there for me. As I aged and married they seemed more important to me than ever before. I can remember visiting them when Dad finally retired and I would see him in his flannel shirt, so comfortable in his retirement and enjoy his life with Mom as she made him something to eat that said: “I love you, too!”

The feelings seem to me to stick in my heart and soul and have lived on forever. The is a great song sung by Kenny Rodgers that shares to some degree that sentiment called the Green, Green, Grass of Home.

Many times like that train that Kenny Rodgers steps down from, his mamma and papa are waiting for him, just as mine did so long ago. There was a certain comfort that emanated from the view as they looked out the car window waiting for me. Unlike our hero in the song, I never hung from that old oak, but have lived in the shadow of despair all too often.

Recently, a tragedy befell my family, a great one, one that will live with me forever until my dying day. Its horror so complete and the worst part is it affected my son. It is his tragedy but it is mine too. He lost a wife, his children lost a mother and I watched my once child, a grown man and father walk in pain from grief. But there is a realization there I overlooked, that being the ‘green, green, grass of home’. What was that home, it was the amazing and overwhelming pouring of support and love, just like mamma and papa, as friends, relatives, and parents helped him with his burden, just like mamma and papa?

We came as soon as we could, we gave him all we had and he knows that love is something that we don’t discuss, we just do, just like all the amazing support he got from his friends and family, they just did it because they wanted to and know the healing powers of love.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MPf5gdYh88