Moving on

Dear Editor,

Moving from one location to another can be painful.

It is the death of the life with the people you knew in one place and a starting over from scratch in another.

In his book Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World, writer Scott Russell sanders says a "house is a garment easily put off or on, casually bought or sold; a home is a skin. Merely change houses and you will be disoriented; change homes and you will bleed.

When you change residences, you will have learned where all the light switches are, find a place to put everything and then remember where you put it all and somehow arrange all your furniture and belongings into a meaningful whole.

You'll need things like new curtains and an end table or perhaps something new to hang on the wall.

You may sense at first that things don't quite fit or have the feeling for a few months that you're living in someone else's house, but eventually, you take ownership of your surroundings and they become the new clothes you show the world.

But leave a community you felt bonded to, whose values were your values and people you held in high esteem and you will lose skin -- perhaps several layers -- and you will bleed.

Leaving a place you were profoundly connected to can trigger a mourning period, because it is an end of a life you held dear. A recovery period is then necessary before starting over.

Frederick Buechner echoed this same theme when he said, "When a man leaves home, he leaves behind some scrap of his heart."

Janine Hall,

McCook, Neb.