‘I’m going home’

For the last few years of his life, my dad suffered from dementia. I won’t go into details about how hard that condition is on the immediate families of its victims, except to say I have the highest admiration for folks who deal with it every day, like my mother did. In spite of the continuous drain on her physical and emotional resources, I never saw her give in to despair, even in the most difficult of circumstances.

And there were many, like the one which follows.

One evening a few weeks before he departed this life, my mother found my dad shuffling down the lane away from their house toward the highway.

“Where are you going?” she asked. “I’m going home,” he said. When I first heard this story, it broke my heart. My dad was headed away from his house and people who loved him, in search of “home.” How could he possibly hope to go home if home was behind him? It didn’t make sense.

And then I got to thinking. What, exactly, is “home”? Isn’t it a place where we feel comfort and contentment? Isn’t it a place where we feel safe and secure? For whatever reason, my dad no longer felt these things in the house in which he lived, so he took off for “home.” He intuitively felt pulled toward a place where he could rest and be at peace without being surrounded by strangers who seemed intent on managing every aspect of his life.

And a few weeks later, he found that place.

Now I’m sure we’re all at this point jumping to the obvious conclusion: Dementia. But what if it’s more than that? What if my dad’s condition had opened his eyes to a world the rest of us could not see? What if he felt instinctively drawn to that world like migratory animals are drawn to their destinations?

We’ve all heard stories of “near-death” experiences, in which people who are clinically dead perfect“dead.” The descriptions often seem miraculous in their accuracy. And just as often, there appears to be no naturalistic explanation for their occurrence. Could it be that within each of us is a sense of other dimensions? Dimensions outside the physical world around us? Could it be that certain conditions make it possible to, in some way, perceive those other dimensions?

Yeah, I know. All of this is speculation. And I don’t really know if any of it is accurate. But here are a few things I do know.

I know the essence of each of us — our soul, if you will — occupies a body, but isn’t the body itself.

“For we know that when this tent we live in now is taken down — when we die and leave these bodies — we will have wonderful new bodies in heaven, homes that will be ours forevermore, made for us by God himself and not by human hands.” — 2nd Corinthians 5:1 (TLB)

I know that the place to which believers go when they leave this world is one of unimaginable beauty and peace.

Oh. One more thing. My dad wanted to go home. I know he’s there.

“For we know that when this tent we live in now is taken down — when we die and leave these bodies — we will have wonderful new bodies in heaven, homes that will be ours forevermore, made for us by God himself and not by human hands.”

— 2nd Corinthians 5:1

(TLB) ly describe conversations and events that take place during the time they were

Doug Chastain is a retired teacher and is currently a largevehicle transportation specialist for the Siloam Springs School District. (Okay, he drives a bus.) He is also a grass maintenance technician at Camp Siloam. (Yeah, he mows the lawn.) You can contact him at dougchastain@gmail.com. The opinions expressed are those of the author.