Home of the Grave

I renounced my citizenship in the State of Maine twenty-eight years ago, when I moved away after college. Locals will tell you I’m not a real Mainer anyways; I was still “from away”, having lived there only 24 of my first 25 years.

When I left, I was eager to leave the land of poverty, ignorance, and racism behind me and start a new, adult life in Boston. I did my best to sever all ties with the land of my youth; but there was always one obligation that kept pulling me back: my parents.

For more than two dozen years, I continued making regular trips north to visit. Going back to Maine was always uncomfortable for me, like perpetually picking at the scab covering the many reasons why I’d left; it never fully healed.

That obligation to keep returning came to an end in January, when my mother passed away. My only remaining duty was last week’s interment ceremony, and the brief family gathering in her memory.

So now I can turn my back and leave Augusta for what might well be the very last time, and say perhaps my final farewell to the State of Maine.

I suppose it’s a major life passage. I left three decades ago, but this is truly the final severance of my ties to Maine. It’s the cause for a little bit of melancholy, but a much larger sense of closure, relief, and joy.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t really hate Maine… I carry treasured memories of some of the people and places and experiences of my childhood. But that chapter ended thirty years ago, and there’s no point in lingering in the vicinity of long-past adventures.

It’s futile to cling to people and places that have already undergone three or four decades of change; what’s truly important are the memories I have of them, not the present reality. And unlike the present reality, I can carry those treasured memories with me, no matter where I go.

It’s also ironic that my trip home from Maine involved driving to Boston and flying out of Logan airport. You see, my mother’s death also removed my biggest reason for coming back to pass through Boston.

So this trip was a farewell to Boston, as well. Unlike Maine, Boston is a place I dearly love, where I feel at home, and have lots of recent history that I chose to create. So I’m hoping there will be reasons to visit that bring me back in the future; I just won’t have the convenient opportunity provided by flying in on the way up to Maine.

But even in Boston, a lot of what I loved here is history, and many of the people have moved on. I guess it’s one of those lessons that only comes when one has lived long enough: that clinging to people and places from the past is futile, and the part that matters most—your memories of them—can be taken with you, wherever you choose to live.

Even if you were never to return again.