"Going home"

Every day, Ma Schmidt makes remarks about "going home."

"Mom is coming to get me and take me home."

"Is it time to go home already?"

"Can we just go home?"

And every time, we remind her that she already is home.

But yesterday afternoon (I mean Friday) I had a phone call with Debbie. She spent twenty years as an oncology nurse (or close to that), and she told me about one of her oncology patients who kept insisting that he needed to get out of there. He referenced every form of transportation known to man. There was a car coming for him. He had to catch a train. He had to catch a plane. He had to catch a boat. She didn't mention a horse and buggy, but that was probably on the list too. It got to the point that the nurses kind of joked about him: "Old Mr. So-and-so just told us he's got to leave again." To be clear, the nursing staff confirmed with the family that all of these appointments were purely imaginary.

But Debbie said, they may have been imaginary but that didn't make them untrue. It's just that they were metaphorical. Three weeks later, he was dead. So he really did have to "leave" soon. He just had the conveyance wrong.

I've been thinking about that story as I listen to Ma.