Other

When one is a displaced person nowhere is ever home. We know no one here, there is no family, and those that we do meet there is a strange desire to cling fast...yet we hold back because we know we will be disappointed ....and that is true..... hold back and when we do venture a test footings we are never disappointed. We stay the "other". That is why people from other places tend to clump together, even when, if they were in your home town, they would never be desired for friends but the shared fear, the shared isolation, the feeling of being "other" allows the standards to be dropped and welcomes anyone who knows who you are. That is one reason we love our pets and we fuss about getting them to be with us no matter where we end up. That cat or dog is family and is there with us being company during the long dark times when the only people you know are those your pay. We can never go back, we can not stay here. The situation is still the same as when we became refugees. Two things happen one clings to stuff since stuff is never judgmental, it never disappoints and it is always there when needed. Like the fallen friends before we were displaced. Some traditions are kept close while other tradition need to be tossed aside as too much baggage for the journey. The second is fear. fear of loosing what we have left, each other, what little health and becoming helpless in a strange and for all intents and purposes hostile land. We will be the first to be singled out since we are not from here.
One thing that many will find odd or bizarre is when one of out pets dies there is the anxiety of having to leave their bones behind when we realize that this place is not our place to settle. We will never be able to visit a grave, like we can not visit our parents graves, our friends from the life we once had.
It is this that makes grief that much more intense.
Other......I enjoy the scenery, the weather is not bad.....but I know it can not become home since that choice has been denied us....we still need to go a little farther down the road, further still until be too die but then our bones can rest since we are back to the beginning ......