Homeless

What is it that makes home, home?  Is it the location?  The roof over your head, the bed to sleep in? Is it a certain smell as you open the front door?  Is it the feel of that chair at the end of a hard day? Is it the company; the routine; the familiar faces as you eat your dinner?  Or the conversation; the easy silence as you sit at the table?  Is it familiarity?  Comfort? Safety?

I imagine it is indeed devastating to be without a roof over your head – the loss of somewhere to go at the end of the day.  I don’t mean to make light of it in any way.  But could a sense of homelessness not also come from other circumstances beyond the bricks and mortar?

A child neglected by drunken parents.  An adult orphaned. A wife abused by a violent husband. A mother grieving the loss of her children’s father.  An unmarried pensioner whose friends are too busy with their grandchildren these days.  A younger sister frozen in time in the minds of siblings who moved away.  An older brother who has to clean up his brother’s mistakes.  A grown daughter the only one left living where she grew up.

Some of it is just how life goes.  Paths merge and divide, cross and pass…  Some of it comes through mistakes, some through fault.

But I don’t think its just losing a roof that makes you homeless.