Going east on the turnpike

I'm heading back to my hometown today. It's the first time I've been back since we sold my mother's house in early December. And it's going to be difficult.

For those of you who followed my grief journey last year, you understand. My mother died on January 15, 2013 and my sisters and I sold our childhood home eleven months later. It was heartbreaking.

Now I'm heading back to Manheim. For the first time in my life, I won't have a home to go to there. Someone else is sitting at our kitchen table. Someone else is taking a shower upstairs and screeching when the water goes hot or cold because someone flushed the toilet or turned on the faucet. Someone else is setting off the smoke alarm when they're cooking bacon. Someone else is calling my home their home.

I hope they've felt the home's embrace. I hope they glory in the sun-filled living room as the rays warm spots on the carpet where I used to lie down, imagining I was at the beach, even in the dead of winter. I hope they feel the love we left behind.

I don't know if I'll be brave enough to drive down Oak Street. I just don't know.

Dawn and me 2007 Lititz, PA

What I do know is that I'll be welcomed into another home. How blessed I am to have a lifelong friend who has opened her home to me. We gave Dawn one of the bedroom sets from my mother's house and Dawn used it to create a room for me. A piece of home... different, yet somewhat the same. 

That, folks, is a true friend. And today, as I travel east on the turnpike, I can smile, knowing I'll be walking into a different home... a home called friendship. A home called love.