Coming Home to the Heart of Homecoming

“Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.” — Psalm 90:1

Homecoming was this past weekend, and what a weekend it was.

Between the talent show, catching up with my kids’ friends who were eager to introduce me to their parents, the shop booth at Francis Fest—meeting old friends, past customers and readers who told me they had prayed for our family during Jon’s hardest days, and new customers with their stories, with so many students generously helping set up and tear down—the Festival of Praise (FOP), and as always the most reverent Mass.

As all the festivities of Homecoming weekend unfolded, I kept thinking about that word—homecoming. Not just an alumni event, a parents’ weekend, or a packed schedule, but the feeling of coming home to a safe, beautiful and sacred place. That’s what I felt over and over this weekend. The joy in the crowd, the stories and heart in the people I met—it’s simply unmatched. It gives me so much hope.

There was so much heart at homecoming.

The pure joy of the young adults doing the hard and holy work to become faithful and bold disciples for the kingdom. And of course, time with my kids, seeing them thrive, meeting their friends (oh how I love the many friends, I can’t say it enough) being with them was the sweetest part of all. It always is.

But homecoming and parents’ weekend are also bittersweet. I am parenting alone now, and seeing husbands and wives together in these family moments always stings a bit too much. #widowlife I can’t help but think back to 2021, when Jon and I moved the kids onto campus together and were excited to attend our first college homecoming with them.

Except we didn’t.

We couldn’t.

Jon had already, for weeks—even as we were moving the kids in—been showing symptoms of a growing tumor, and then surgery became emergent and unavoidable.

We never made it to homecoming together. That surgery was the reason we never made it to that first homecoming together.

The kids ended up coming home that first year in school instead to see their dad in some of his hardest moments. I haven’t missed one since. We even brought our shop to the first homecoming we attended together after Jon left us; it was definitely our way of bringing a piece of home and his memory with us.

But I can’t forget how much joy Jon took in knowing this university would be the place our children would call home for the foreseeable future—when we visited for the first time in June, and then when we drove through a tornado watch to move in, not one but two kids, one in a last-minute decision to Go where God called him. I didn’t miss a trick this weekend, either, including meeting the parents of the admissions counselor who had met Jon and helped us get both our daughter and, especially, our son in to the school at the very last minute—where we drove through a “tornado watch.” Spiritual battle much…lol.

Little did we know the next two kids would be as interested in attending the same school, too. I guess it doesn’t/shouldn’t surprise me. This is how the kids roll together, their discernment and decisions only strengthened by the family environment we experienced on this campus and the embrace we have received and been desperately craving.

“The community of believers was of one heart and mind.” Acts 4:32

Although Jon wasn’t there to move our third child onto campus or to sit in the audience at graduation, he was thrilled that this would be their home. He left them there with pride, even knowing he might not return. By God’s grace, he did come back twice—once in February after his stroke, and again that August to move the kids in one last time. Those moments were gifts. I carried him with me all weekend, especially in the field house, where he once turned to me and said, “I wish I went here.”

I know what he meant and what he wished he had in or regretted from his college experience. 

It turns out, the last day of homecoming we shared this past weekend after Mass as we said goodbye, I realized it was the same day Jon had his second surgery and suffered his stroke. Four years ago to the day I return to attend a homecoming and I bring the shop we dreamed up and built together. That memory clings to me, even as God’s closeness carried us through the darkest days.

Along the way this past weekend I noticed little notes from home—like sidewalk chalk that read Fly Eagles Fly...this is home (because of course there’s always a Philly wink), right next to another that said Welcome Home, greeting us as we entered the student center before the FOP.

“There are two ways of getting home, and one of them is to stay there. The other is to walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place.” —G.K. Chesterton.

Now our third is thriving here as a sophomore, our second is working toward a master’s while serving in evangelization, and our youngest, a senior in high school, has already applied and is counting the days until she can join them. My oldest young lady—and first to graduate—visited with friends, fellow alumni and professors between helping under the tent in the shop. Every time I arrive on campus, I feel it: home. The field house roars with laughter at the talent show (this year with our son emceeing), then falls into silence at Adoration—where I sat beside a friar friend who has walked with me as a spiritual father, prayed with Jon during his illness, and concelebrated his funeral—and then overflows on Sunday with students receiving the Eucharist.

The Holy Spirit is alive here. The love is tangible.

Homecoming makes me think about home in all its forms—the one where we live, the one we return to, the one where my children are being formed, and the one we will all eventually walk toward together. Jon may not have made it to a homecoming or a graduation—he had his own special homecoming—but his joy in knowing this would be their home still lingers and gives me a bit of peace and hope.

Homecoming reminds me that every glimpse of belonging, every welcome, every note of joy in the crowd is a foretaste of something greater: we’re all learning how to carry one another toward home.

Maybe that’s the heart of our journey: to carry one another in joy and in ache, and to keep walking one another home.

“The world is thy ship and not thy home.” — St. Thérèse of Lisieux.

Homecoming reminds me that every glimpse of belonging, every welcome, every note of joy in the crowd is a foretaste of something greater: we’re all learning how to carry one another toward home.

Heather Lebano