The End

I sit in front of my computer and I want to write more. I want to write from the heart. For a while I thought I could do this but how is that possible when your heart has been ripped out.

I came back from Malaysia late in 2006 to help my folks pack up the farm, because I wanted to pack up the farm as well, because it was time to leave Malaysia, and I was ready for a change. So I started this blog and kept it going for very nearly a year. The blog started out being about home and how home is a destination on a road. I was on a road and I was going home. I was going home to say good-bye. A year and a half later, home is long gone.

I had tried to keep writing even after it was over, and Morocco became a fun way to decompress after that experience. Morocco is long gone too now. Funny how that happens.

I have avoided my own blog for a while now and then tried repeatedly to write with no success. I have felt that I have nothing left to write about. Where, what, who could I write about compared to what I was writing about before. Nothing, so I will end this blog with a few short stories about what has happened in the last year.

Months ago, my uncle took pictures. He went back to the farm and took pictures. He took pictures of nothing. The nothingness that was left. The ground where house had been, the tree beside it which still stood on its own. The area where the shop stood. When he sent them to me, I look at them and immediately felt sick...Even now, I imagine myself standing there looking though the open air at a place where a house should be, and tears run down my face. This is the first time I have cried over the loss of that home since we left it on December 27th, 2006. I have almost cried before but I have never let it come out. In each case it has almost come as a result of lilacs.

Lat year when lilacs cam into bloom down the street from my parents rental home in Niagara Falls, I walked past and smelled them and then buried my face in them and just felt an overwhelming sadness. I did that this year as well when I smelled them, fresh cut in a vase, at a friend's house. In each case, I buried my face in them, the smell demanded some sort of physical experience. I needed to hold onto something real, because home wasn't real anymore. Home was gone. Home ...is gone.

This blog has been a journey about finding home. Now, I have to find that all over again. Like my family did 200 years ago when they first settled in Port Colborne, I am going to have to start fresh.

Home has to start with me.

I would like to thank everyone has ever taken the time to read my work. Your feedback has been invaluable. There may be blogs in the future but it will be on different topics and different pages. This one is ended.

May home welcome you back with strong open arms, sweet memories of the past, and hope for the future.

The End.


Mark Augustine