Kontan.

I spent twenty years tryin’ to get out of this place- I was lookin’ for somethin’ I couldn’t replace- I was runnin’ away from the only thing I’ve ever known…Who says you can’t go home? There’s only one place that calls me one of their own.

Who? Me.

At the beginning of the summer I went home. It wasn’t home. I don’t know what has happened, but it just flat out is not home. Maybe it was because Jem was not there. I hope, but I don’t think so. Life is so different there. Priorities are different. We are not better, not worse, just different. It is a sad realization, but I guess everyone establishes life as they know it and it becomes home for them. Prior to NC it was exciting to go home for a weekend. Now, not so much. I find it difficult to justify our ideas and our choices. We aren’t that “out there”. We go to church, we encourage independence in our children, and we strive to eat right and do right. Really, it isn’t that crazy. Home just wasn’t comfortable. I look back at a previous visit and realize this was coming.

It was great to visit with family. I was able to visit my elderly aunts. When I was a small child I lived with the younger (at 89) for several years. I remember riding on the back of a four wheeler with the elder (at 92) when she was in her 70s. I had to ask her to slow down. Both suffer from Alzheimers. I wrote about my visit last year and one has progressed deeper into AD, while the other seems the same or better. Aunt N, the younger, is sinking deeper into the disease. I don’t know if she recognized me, or grasped the memory of my name. She did not speak much and is having trouble keeping her head up. I’m told that swallowing is difficult. She is very bothered by the unfamiliar. She was more responsive when I visited her in January. Aunt H, the elder, was as spry as always. She was still carrying her favorite picture, taken almost 70 years ago. She not only named everyone in it, but she told a story about her sister who eloped on the evening that the picture was made. The girls were highly entertained by her. I explained Alzheimer’s as a disease similar to what Dory experienced in Finding Nemo. The long term memory is there, but the short term is not. Aunt H proved my point as she noticed the girls there and asked who they were five times during the visit. When I stood up to leave I had my back to Aunt H and she popped the back of my knees, saying she just couldn’t resist. She is extremely cute and just takes life as it comes. After saying goodbye to my aunts the rest of us gathered at the door to say farewell. It was then that Aunt H went over to her sister and they started playing together with a toy car. There is something cute about two ninety year old women playing with a matchbox car. It is also very sad to see what AD has done to them. Two very intelligent and driven women are losing themselves. One just goes with the flow and the other is extremely bothered by what is happening to her. It would be much easier if AD treated every victim as it does Aunt H. Unfortunately it is different for everyone.

The visit was not awful and I do not regret it. It was simply different and just that, a visit. Home is now somewhere else. In some ways it is sad, but we are happy where we are and to me that is most important.

I’ve been there, done that, now I ain’t lookin’ back.
- title and quotes credited to Bon Jovi