Snow Melt

Going Home

19 Rahmat 164 BE – Thursday, July 12, 2007 1:08:37 PM PDT

I’m not sure when I realized that I didn’t want to go home again. My childhood and teen years were traumatic. The only things in Blackwell that I really ever cared about were my Grandparents. After I graduated from high school in Shawnee, I moved back to my grandparent’s house. They died, then a few months or so later I left and came to Las Vegas. If my grandparents hadn’t died when they did I wouldn’t have left Blackwell.

There was a time when I thought I’d like to go back and see what the town looked like. See my grandparents’ graves and put some flowers on them. However, I don’t feel that way any more. I haven’t felt that way since I turned 60. Maybe it’s the age that makes me feel that way or something else, but I no longer have the desire to visit the city. If I want to know what it looks like, I can look its website up on the internet. If I want to put flowers on my grandparent’s graves, I can do that over the internet as well.

Now Las Vegas is home. If I ever move somewhere else that will be home. Blackwell was just the city where I grew up. It cemetery is the place my grandparents dust is buried. The part of my grandparents that made them what they were, their souls, has passed into the next world.

So what brought on this bit of nostalgia? A story written for "Daily Flash Fiction Challenge"   [13+] by Arakun the Twisted Raccoon called "Invalid Item"   [] by A Guest Visitor . I’m not sure what it was about the story that made me realize I was home and going back to my childhood wouldn’t work. Maybe it was the speaker returning home to an empty house, her parents had gone shopping, that make me realize how empty returning to Blackwell, Oklahoma would be for me.