Forever Home

Recently, I was asked to complete a drawing commission for a special anniversary present, from husband to wife. The landscape scene was the “blue-tiful” Avalon Blueberry Farm near Sproat Lake, Vancouver Island, BC.

A reference photo was provided, but having not yet been to the blueberry farm, I had to envision the feeling of this space from within, asking myself the question of “what invokes the emotions of a sacred space to call your own forever home… what is a forever home?”

I pondered this as I started the drawing… thinking about my own home growing up. Home in that sense was often migratory (we moved a fair bit), none of the homes were my forever home, they were more temporary landmarks of the soul, with a forever feeling. I yearn for those days, ‘back home’ – family, siblings, childhood friends, the sweetness of forever summer days running around the neighbourhood scraping knees and falling out of trees. Home changed over the years, many houses became our homes – where we laughed, we cried, we screamed; other friend’s homes became our homes; the welcoming and memories spent together. I remember each of those spaces as this all encompassing feeling of something I couldn’t quite put my finger on back then but knew it was important, it was everything, it meant something, and still does to this day. I go back to home regularly – I call my Mom, to share love and find that sense of home through our conversations across the provinces; I visit when I can, here and there, the people and places that made my home sweet home city. The times have changed, but nothing erases that sense of home being the place you want to run to, the people you want to reach out for, and hold tight. The place where you return, even if only in your mind, if only for a moment in these whirlwind days.

Is home forever? I think it is, I want it to be, though forever’s have different meanings or context. I mean, we don’t live “forever”, so there’s that big elephant in the room on the day to day. Forever while we’re here sounds perfect. Eternal, there’s another thought… does forever become eternal? What’s beyond us. Many people have wondered this through the ages… what’s next, is it heaven, is it hell, is it nothingness, is it light? Who knows? Do you wish you knew? Would it change much, knowing? We’d just think about it all the time, or maybe gather a deeper awareness to live each moment, carpe diem-ing the way from dawn to dust, but in all reality, it doesn’t quite work that way in the human existence, flawed, chaotic, unsure… things end, time passes, realities endure, homes often become places and spaces that once were. But when we have grasp on our forever homes, what that means to each of us, we hold them closer. If not, we let it go. Forever has an impact. In the now, and in the future now. We have moments, hopefully many, many, where bliss swoops in and we are grateful, tucking each one of those joys safely within our hearts, where we can savour when we want – like a ripe blueberry that bursts in your mouth. That flavour lasts forever and we are forever home.