What Is Seen Is Temporary

I recently moved back home. By “home,” I mean the city in which I was born and raised. It’s where I have always wanted to be—the place to which I hoped I would eventually return. And now I have. I am loving it, I really am.

However, I have discovered that coming back holds both joy and grief.

While I expected some mixed emotions, what I have experienced is far more unsettling than I could have anticipated. My parents are gone.

So, too, are my beloved grandparents. I miss them all dreadfully.

I pass by their homes regularly, the one I lived in longest with my parents and sister—almost daily. Up until two months ago, I was able to look at the arborvitaes my dad and I planted. Now they are all cut down. What a strange feeling! They were some sixty years old, and now they are no more. Whenever I drive by, if the man who lives there now is exiting the driveway—my driveway!—I am thrown for a loop. The playhouse my dad built for my sister and me is missing and has been for some time. But I can still see exactly where it was, and it is still there in my mind’s eye. The various schools I attended and the churches are all present but different somehow. Most of the physical buildings and stores we shopped in are still standing, but many no longer house the same stores. My childhood friends, their houses, the parks I loved, oh, my! I can see them still, present or not. The Blue Mountains, favorite walks and drives from years gone by. Such sweet memories! I can still hear the laughter, feel the love—even though so much has changed and is now missing. And that bothers me more than I thought it would.

Fortunately, this life is transitory at best.

There is better—much better—to come.

It is good to remember that.

One day, there will be restoration, renewal, and reunions.

That is a day I very much look forward to seeing.

I hope you are too.

Carolyn K. Karlstrom