The long road home... and back again.

I am on edge. The whirlwind should be about to end, but then I think it's really just beginning. We are back home, in Northern Cali, from home, in Southern Cali. It is amazing how much we were able to fit in the span of a week. Old friends, scattered family, digging through relics of another life, another time.

Our trip back home was an effort at allowing Dustin to say "goodbye" to anyone who wanted to hear it. The truth of the matter though, is that I still am not quite sure this is happening. And in fact, it may not happen. Our finances are a shambles and that may be enough for the military to decide they don't want Dustin and all the bills that come along with him. Our house is on the market, but we are behind on the payments. It appears we are being foreclosed upon, with a sale date to be set at the end of December. The papers arrived in the mail while we were down in SoCal saying our (premature?) goodbyes. I have heard that a foreclosure will inhibit your chances of joining the military. Dustin was supposed to hear back as to whether all of his paperwork had passed through all the necessary military channels last Friday. He received no answer and so called back yesterday, one week prior to his ship date. Still no answer. Perhaps he'll call today and there will be an answer? While this waiting game frustrates me to no end, it is not a surprise. This is the military after all.

Over the course of the last few months I have been helping to plan another get-together for my high school classmates. Littlerock High School's Homecoming game fit into our SoCal schedule almost perfectly. I only say almost because Dustin's aunt and family were having their annual Halloween party on the same night. We had to skip the party so I could catch up with some old friends... some I haven't seen in nearly 15 years. The organization and planning were a bit overwhelming with all that is going on in life right now, and I have to confess that I really didn't do all that much. Lawrence is in this planning business just as deep as I am. I know he and I both take our responsibility to our classmates seriously. As silly as it may sound, when we were elected Senior Class Officers for the 1994-95 school year, we knew that 10 years after graduation we had to get everyone, or as much of everyone that we could find, back together. Here we are 14 years later still keeping up and putting it all together. Stacia on the other hand had no real responsibility to our class and yet she has come through for all of us. Lawrence and Stacia really did the leg work for our homecoming gathering and I am thankful that they did. It was wonderful to see everyone who showed up and while there's never enough time to catch up and talk with all who show up (Lili, April) it is great to see familiar faces and look into eyes that remember and be reminded of who I was and where I came from so many years ago.

My mother's house is loaded with the remnants of my grandfather's life. The trip down gave me a chance to look through his life in a more personal way than I would have had he still been alive. My Grandpa was good at sharing the answers to whatever I asked, but you never really know what you want to and need to know, until someone is gone and all that's left behind are unlabeled pictures, collections, notes, jewelry and unanswered questions. His funeral was to take place yesterday, but the woman at the mortuary made a mistake. A mistake that may keep me from being at the funeral when it does in fact happen. After cremation my grandfather wanted to be placed in a wall at a Veteran's Cemetery. The cemetery that my mother chose, based on the options given, does not have a wall for internment. The mortuary woman was remiss in her duties when she failed to inform my mother of the nonexistent wall. So now paperwork has to be redone and more time will pass before my Grandpa can be "laid to rest." As far as I'm concerned, he's been resting now for a few weeks. What's a few more?

Adam and Avery came home with pieces of their great-grandfather's life: a pair of cuff links each, art supplies, a couple of elephants from a collection of hundreds, and sports memorabilia. Taluelah only met the man once but she has an elephant to help connect the dots as she gets older and wonders from where she came. Dustin brought home my grandfather's military ribbons, a belt buckle and a Zippo. And I have walked away from my grandfather's death with a few old family pictures, one of his original art pieces, a family of elephants, his rosary and the knowledge that how you live this life greatly influences the way in which you leave it.
In between trying to spend time with my over-worked mother, going through a life's worth of memories and riding around my old high school's football field on the unmarked alumni float (which had the current students labeling us the "old people"), we were able to visit Dustin's aunt, uncle and cousins the day after their Halloween party, spend the night with one of my favorite friends in the world and meet her newest sweet pea, talk via Skype with my Uncle Sean and cousins in Ireland and have a day filled with my sister, aunts and uncle and families, plus meet my mother's boyfriend and his beautiful daughters. It's been a long time since we were all in the same room at the same time talking and laughing and enjoying each other.

We took the long road home yesterday just to arrive right back where we started. I sometimes find it strange that no matter where I am at in California, north or south, I always feel like I am at home... leaving home to find myself back at home, with stops along the way to visit those who matter. If Dustin does depart next week and if we do follow him to whatever base he is stationed at I hope to find the same comfort in my new surroundings and in my new friends that I know here in Cali. If not, I always know I can come home.