‘Home is where the heart is,’ but I can’t always take her there

I can still remember the phone call from Evelyn’s 80-something mother one afternoon more than 20 years ago.

“It’s getting late here, and I don’t have a car,” she said, and then her voice rose higher. “I need someone to take me home!”

My reply seemed to shock her into silence. “You ARE home,” I said, a bit sternly.

Her call interrupted our day with a request we couldn’t meet, because she phoned from her apartment in the assisted living facility that had been her home—her only home—for several weeks. Not many months later her dementia required full-time attention and she was moved to the memory-care wing.

I think I would be kinder, calmer, softer with my answer today. She didn’t mean to be difficult. She was only experiencing the agitation felt by many with dementia, an urgent impulse to go home.

Surprised

I know that now, but still I was surprised the first time I heard it, so many years later, from my wife.

My support group’s facilitator encouraged us, when faced with the request to go home, just to take our patient for a ride around the block and then to announce when returning to the driveway, “OK, here we are. We’re home!”

But that wouldn’t have satisfied Evelyn. She wanted to go her childhood home. She wanted to be with her mother and her father.

“I went to see my parents, but they weren’t there,” she told a friend who gave me a break by taking her to the beauty shop one day.

“I want to go home, but nobody will take me,” she has said to me more than once.

“Do you mean your home where you grew up in Clermont County?” I asked her one night close to bedtime when she couldn’t be consoled.

“Yes!” she said.

“Well, I can drive you out there Saturday, if you’d like. We can’t go tonight, but we could go then. Would you like that?”

“You’d do that?” she looked up at me, hopeful, at least a little relieved.

“Sure,” I said, counting on her to forget the promise by the time we got to the weekend. She did. My stock answer if she brings it up again will be, “Not today, but maybe tomorrow.” Counselors advise, “Don’t argue. Try to divert.” I’m not sure that will always work.

Prodded

Meanwhile, this experience has prodded me to think more about home, the idea of home more than where it’s located.

“Home is a concept,” our support group counselor told us, “more than a place.”

When a preacher I know asked Facebook friends to tell him what comes to mind when they think about home, most of their answers confirm that idea.

“Home is where the heart is,” some quoted. Others said “Security.” “Safe place.” “Peace.” “Refuge.” “Love.” “Rest.” I can’t help but believe all these touch the compulsion Evelyn sometimes feels, especially when she’s in some physical discomfort or confused about what’s happening now or next. When life seems too much, the place to find comfort is home. Because of the short circuits in her brain, she seems to feel that back there, away from the mishmash she’s facing here, is the only place to find relief.

Longing

I remember Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan and the wrenching depiction of soldiers storming Omaha Beach on D-Day. Many were slaughtered, but not all died quickly, and through the carnage, we hear one young man in agony groaning, “Mother . . . Mother!” In his cries we realize a universal longing for home.

I want Evelyn to feel that refuge here, with me. I think she does, most of the time. “Who will be at our house with us tonight?” she has asked me on our way home from an evening with friends.

“Just me, Baby,” I tell her with a smile.

“Will you be staying at home with me tonight?” she may ask on another occasion.

“Oh, yeah, Honey. You won’t get rid of me!”

I can’t imagine feeling the uncertainty that drives such questions.

Even sadder, of course, is the insecurity about home felt by many not afflicted by a brain disease: children shuffled from house to house by their addict parents, afraid of what they’ll find with a dad who’s been drinking, saddled with the duty of caring for siblings ignored by their mother. Like Evelyn, they feel a longing for safety they can’t satisfy. What does it mean to grow up with no warm memory of “home”?

It can be a problem for the rich and famous as well as the down and out. In Being the Ricardos, a writer for I Love Lucy spoke of Lucille Ball’s longing for home. “Lucy had three houses,” she said. “But she never felt she had a home.”

My wife’s parents were certainly not perfect, and for years we’ve regaled friends with stories of their dysfunctional quirks. But they created a home that Evelyn now sometimes wishes she could revisit.

I’m hoping we’ve done the same for our kids. I suppose the challenge for any of us is to create a sense of safety and refuge for everyone living with us under the same roof. When they’ve forgotten almost everything else, we want them to remember home.

Photos by James Lee at Unsplash. com, Jessica Lewis Creative at Pexels.com, and courtesy of Amazon Studios via Wikipedia Commons.