When you can't go home again

Those of you who have experienced selling your family home will understand when I say it is an intensely emotional and wrenching experience. I have just been through it, and I am feeling uprooted and slightly adrift.

Two weeks ago, my husband, son and I slowly walked through my childhood home for the last time. I opened the hallway closet door and told my son about the years of Christmas gifts that had been hidden there. I showed him the apple tree that produced the best applesauce, and the cool basement stairs where I used to hide during a violent thunderstorm. As we drove down the driveway for the final time, I felt as if my heart were being torn from my chest. My dad built that house. My mom brought four children home to it. It was the setting for my childhood, a silent companion and protector that I can only now fully appreciate.

I know that Ohio's Passport program is designed to support older people by supplying the services they need to remain in their home, but I think it is an equally important support for their families.

We act as if an elderly parent should simply go gracefully from a dwelling that has been their home for many decades, but we fail to recognize that it is the context for their lives and, often, their last physical connection to a spouse and a once-thriving family. Being able to prolong the years they can remain in their home is a huge comfort to their family and a chance to maintain the family roots -- that "home base" -- a little longer.

I will always be grateful that both my children knew my childhood home -- smelled the lilacs in May, knew where the cookies were kept, played with the same handmade toy cupboard that I did as a child.

Life is a river that flows only forward, but how lovely it is to get to pause a little longer in the middle of the stream.