Home, but not home....

A few years ago I was driving the eleven mile stretch between Fairview and Sidney, Montana.  I had driven that stretch a lot in past years. But now I was unsettled.  I didn't feel like I was home.  This was where I grew up, went to schools in Fairview and churches in both towns.

Now what was my problem?

Suddenly I knew:  Mom and Dad were both gone.  When I drove that road before, they were there.  With me or at home waiting.

The years go by and life changes for all of us.  I'm so thankful I had lots of chances to help, love and encourage Mom and Dad even though my time at home with them was comparatively brief after I finished high school.  And then later an ocean separated us.

Though I look back and think of how I could have been less thoughtless and more thoughtful, I did write them regularly once a week, helped celebrate special events by proxy and gifts.  Now I have in my possession the scrapbook I made for them for their 50th wedding anniversary, which includes historical material of both sets of grandparents, which is found in no other place. 

As the years go by we live with our memories.  I'm so thankful to remember--instead of the time during my teen-age years when Mom chided "the boys have never talked to me like you do"-- that  in later years she  wrote my Japanese friend, "We can never thank her enough for all she's done for us."  Parents are irreplaceable.  Memories stick with us.