So here I am back “home” in Southaven, Mississippi. I had lunch today at Krystal Hamburgers; not gourmet by any stretch of the imagination, but a vice I miss despite the evolution of my palate since I moved away.

Originally I was not planning on any visit here this holiday, but my fathers mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a few weeks ago, so I had to join the parade of relations and friends coming to pay respects to the dying. Last night my brother, niece, and I went to visit her in the nursing home where she is currently staying. It is down the street from the hospital my father died in two years ago this time of year. Nothing like déjà vu all over again, but this time was different in that the nursing home, while high quality, was a good first approximation to an antechamber of Hell as we walked through the hallway to my grandmothers room. The soundscape was one of moans of the damned coming from twisted mouths in ancient visages gnarled with lines of pain, fear, and age. Eyes uncomprehending peered out of faces draped with tubes running from mouth or nose to sources unknown intended to aid but resembling instruments of torture. Perhaps sometimes aid is torture.It seemed a hall bounded by rooms populated by denizens from a medieval painting showing the souls of the damned at the base with the triumphant Jesus surmounting all at the peak, raising up those deemed by the Church worthy of Heaven.

I had been warned my grandmother was occasionally disconnected from reality, a temporary dementia induced by waste products building up and other chemical imbalances in her body. She instead seemed lucid and as connected to reality as she had years ago, although she has lost a lot of weight. Given that I have had little to say to her over the years, there was not much for me to talk about now once the brief discussion of the state of my family in Austin was over, and most of the time we spent was with my brother talking about friends and relatives in town that he had seen or spoken with.

I put “home” in quotes because I do not enjoy my visits here, and it is difficult for me to believe at times that I grew up in this area. Despite new construction and the ubiquitous presence of cell phones, time seems to have stood still here, with the radio stations playing the same rotation of songs. I am always greeted when I first turn on the radio with the subtle nuances of Steve Perry fronting Journey in a song with all the emotional depth of a mud puddle with aspirations of becoming a lake. Although decades have passed since Jim Crow was rejected by the nation, there are Confederate battle flags displayed proudly on front license plates on trucks, flying in front of houses alongside a Mississippi state flag in a pathetic display of defiance towards those who tried to get that ugly legacy removed from the upper left of the most visible representation of the state.

My dislike of visits is not one of a simple distaste of memories of an unhappy past revived because of the static nature of the culture;it arises from the sense of decay that envelops everything, even things new. This is not the genteel decline depicted in the Southern Gothic stories of thirty and forty years ago, it is the rotting of something dead. I encountered 400 year-old buildings in France that had more vitality than the newly minted shopping center that hosts the bar where I am writing this. There is no life here, just rage mimicking it, an anger of origins old but continually renewed with each collision between black and white. The race hatred here does not spark the violence like the riots that have broken out in other cities; instead it has turned within, destroying any public spirit. The corruption here is omnipresent, but it is not the roguish style of New Orleans where public works get accomplished through the bribery, it is destructive, murdering any chance of progress. The decay is one of exhaustion.

I hate this place.

I miss my wife and her kids.

(How does one talk about step-children? Saying I miss my step-children simply doesn’t sound right… I guess all the connotations arising from the archetypal evil step-parent prevent the phrase from conveying positive feelings.)

Now, twenty years later, I see what drove me to leave at the first opportunity, despite the fear of the unknown that had governed my every decision. The nostalgia of high school reunions is not for me, nor a yearning for the idyllic lazy days of childhood. I knew then what I know now, but I did not know that I knew it, I only felt it. That was enough for me to be on the outside looking in, and I did not realize what a blessing that truly was. I have no home in the sense that those who sadly realize they cant go home again discover when they revisit the places of their youth.

It is 2007, and I am sitting in the closest approximation to a bar that I can find, listening to music that was popular twenty-five years ago, thanking God that I wasn’t forced to listen to the entire song Christmas in Dixie that started playing in a store when I was leaving after finishing a bit of Christmas shopping. I can’t find a wifi connection anywhere, and even my iPhone cant get a good data link, despite having a good cell phone signal.I have lost my accent over the years, and I continually get the “you ain’t from round here” look (cue the banjos and squeal like a pig) as I ask for things out of the local ordinary.

No, I ain’t from round here, I wasn’t even when I was growing up here.