On Home and Hearts

Sherwood.  That was my mother's maiden name.  Her parents, Sue and Robert Sherwood, are both buried in Park Lawn Cemetery in Bennington, Vermont.  My grandfather, Robert, died in 1961, when I was just seven.  As his grave marker reminds all who see it, he was a veteran of World War I.  He was in the Medical Corps, and a corporal when he got out and finished his studies at Harvard.  My grandmother Sue lived another twenty-seven years and was a major part of my young life.  I had the honor of officiating at her funeral, next to my Dad's, the hardest funeral I've ever done.




I visited their graves this week while on vacation in the Berkshires.  My mother, who was raised in Bennington, moved away in the early fifties, and never lived there again.  To the best of my knowledge, we have no living relatives in Bennington. And while I visited often in my childhood and young adulthood, I never lived there myself.  But I've moved around a lot over my lifetime, and Bennington was a constant.  It was the closest thing I had to a hometown.




As my wife Linda and I placed flowers on my grandparent's graves, I offered a brief prayer of thanks for having had them in my life.  My grandfather's love of literature, my grandmother's concern for the environment--things that remain with me to this day.  But as I reflected on how spread out my family is--Nebraska, Kentucky, Michigan, New York, Massachusetts, Florida--I realized that home is indeed, where the heart is.  And my heart is in many places.  Not divided, but rather enriched by the diversity of people and places that are a part of my life.