Today, I was walking with Miss Betty. She was sitting in her wheelchair and I was walking her wheelchair along a small path that leads around a pair of duck ponds. We talked about her long life and we threw a few pieces of bread out to the baby ducks we found along the bank. When we came back inside and got some water to drink, “the topic” came up.

This is one topic that I anticipated would be come up. It is quite possibly the most popular topic among residents of a nursing home. Sometimes, we are caught off guard and we walk right into it. While we were drinking some water, Miss Betty was grabbing the counter beside the wheelchair and pulling herself along. This is when the “topic” came up.

“Where are you trying to go?”

“Home.”

It was her automatic response.

It didn’t even require any thought. It was a reflex. It was something that was so prevalent in her lifelong existence that it casts its shadow onto every other enterprise. It is the simple admission that although the weather was great, most our physical needs are met, and even some of our social, something calls us from the other side. “I want to go home.”