That Wasn't the Whole Point... Longing for Home, part II

Frederick Buechner is wonderful- I used to want CS Lewis to be my grandfather (in addition to those that I already had, plus Mr. Wickman, my high school Calculus teacher), but now I think that the extra-grandfather-that-is-a-phenomenal-Christian-author spot is going to have to be filled with Mr. Buechner (ok, I'd take either).

The used copy of Longing For Home that I was given from Jon Birney a few years ago is now marked up with colored pen, pencils, and food smudges (the latter being unintentional). And it's a book wholly appropriate for me at the moment, for several reasons:
1. I have no idea where I will live next year
2. There are 3 places that have very much become home for me (Kansas, Slovenia, Nova Scotia), but those are not the places I want to teach for now.
3. Graham Ripple, who knows me (though not in the biblical sense) wrote me this question a few months ago: "Do you feel like you are supposed to find "home" or create "home" for people."

Both, Graham, both.
I want to be present where I am, and in order to live fully as myself, I have to be myself, and to do that, I have to feel at home.

It's strange to be home at the moment: Here in Kansas. It's wonderful- I love my family, and I love my friends, but of course home has changed. It's strange to sit around the table and feel the absence of grandpa, dedek, babica, and in a different circle: Brianna, Kevin.

Buechner, in a beautiful chapter entitled "The Journey Toward Wholeness" writes of visiting his grandmother in a nursing home- it turns out to be the last time they see each other, and everyone is aware of that from the get-go. Her name is Naya, and he describes how she is able to see them without being overcome with grief at possibly seeing each other for the last time. Frederick writes:

She did not lose sight of us by focusing on her own predicament, as I am quite sure that in her place I would have done. Instead it would be more accurate to say that she lost sight of her own predicament by focusing on us, and I believe that the capacity for doing that is another mark of her wholeness.
To be whole, I think, means among other things that you see the world whole. She wrote of the ignominy of having become an old woman in a nursing home instead of the Naya of legend, but because she was able not only to identify the ignominy but also not to be overwhelmed by it, she revealed herself as still the Naya of legend even so. At the same time she identified what she called the joy of seeing us without being overwhelmed by that either, overwhelmed, that is, in the sense of losing track of the joy in the realization that she was never going to experience it again. In other words, she was "all there," as the saying goes. She saw both the light and the dark of what the world was offering her and was not split in two by them. She was whole in herself and saw the world as whole.
-page 108-109

I wish that I had words that were equally beautiful as Buechner's to describe how this section makes me feel... However, Buechner never did become my grandfather, and I am simple folk :) Still, I want to live in this beautiful truth when I grieve death and change. To take grief at loss and joy in memories as a part of the same stride and still not feel lost in my emotions.