WALKING IN GRACE

I never dreamed I'd ever leave the hills of West Virginia,  but life has a way of changing things forever.  I often dream about going home again,  but now I know that although I miss the family I have left behind,  the true reason my heart ached to return home so often was to see once again the world as I knew it.  I still see my Mama in her kitchen making breakfast , or on a Sunday afternoon setting her table to serve her famous  fried chicken.   I still see her chopping cabbage with an old can cream can that she had heated on the stove and popped the top off of.  She said it was the best chopper in the world  and she used it to make sour kraut,  and pickililly,  and corn relish.  I still see her with flour all over her face where she had rolled out home-made dough for her famous Strawberry-Rhubarb pie,  and her sweet Pecan pies,  and all the other fruit pies that she made a labor of love to create for holidays and special occassions,  and sometimes just for no reason at all.  I still smell the aroma of  food cooking on her stove that made my mouth water everytime I  stepped through her doors.I still see her every Christmas sitting around a huge Christmas tree  waiting to unwrap the gifts she had been given  and Mama was always just like a child.  Her eyes would light up with every perfectly wrapped present.

I often dream of going home again...but that is all I do,  because the harsh reality of life tells me that Mama is absent from the old homeplace.  Her children are old in years and I often cry myself to sleep at night wondering if I will ever get to see them again,  wrap my arms around them with a big bear hug,  and whisper how much I love them.  The fact that Mama would not be there to greet me at the door,  makes me all the more sure that I will probably never return to the world I left behind so long ago.

My Mama passed away in January of 2006.  My life changed forever.  Home without Mama is not home.  My West Virginia homeplace has long since been sold and life as I knew it will never be again.  All I can do is spend time with Mama,  here in my mind.  I run home to her after school,  I take her shopping at all her favorite stores,  We go out to eat at her favorite resturants,  and I watch her playing with my newborn baby,  and then I watch my little girl in the last days before she went away, spending time with a grandmother she really never got to know.

My life has taught me that Mama is waiting for me and that one day  I too will be Going Home.  I wonder if my little girl will sit back and reflect on the life we had together.  I wonder if I have created memories in her life that will make her remember me in fondness when I too bid her farewell.  I sure hope so.  Because life should always be about  something worth remembering.