A 92 year-old Lady In Her Home Place, With a Sense of Place

While in Bangladesh last week, it was a privilege for me to meet the 92 year-old mother of my co-worker, Kohima.  Her hospitality was striking: she moved quickly to make sweet tea for us, her guests.  Even more striking to me was the sense of being at home in her place that I felt in her presence.  I reckon that the “learning every day” lesson she makes me ponder is about ending life in the place where one has ties and finds contentment—in the place one has cared for.

I wonder if this sense of place is a special gift that the indigenous people show us European-extraction white folks.  The elderly mom her is a Garo tribal lady.   I remember a similar sense of being at home in his place from my wife’s 84 year-old grandfather, when I met him in his Mayan village in Belize—where he was ran his little grocery store and lived with his fruit trees until he died.