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Home Is Where the Heart IsBy Marilyn Gillis
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The proverb "Home is where the heart is" has become increasingly more relevant to my life as I have grown older. As my parents aged, I gradually came to realize how important their "home" was to them. They wanted to continue living in their home no matter what, and they wanted to die at home. Their lives, emotions, memories, in other words their hearts, were inextricably entwined and embedded in the physical home they created and shared for more than fifty years. As I visited and talked with them, I realized just how important their home was to their physical and psychological well-being. I am sad that my parents are no longer alive, but I am grateful that both of them died at home.
After my parents' death, my brothers and I had the task of selling their house - the home we had all grown up in. Faced with the realization that once the "house" was sold, I could never really go "home" again, I truly began to understand my parents' feelings. I knew how much of my heart was also embedded in and attached to that home. The layers of hearts under the houses in my quilt represent the many feelings and memories I have carried from the home I grew up in to the home I have created as an adult. |