Homesick
- Emma
- Jun 5
- 3 min read
People haunt us long after they leave us.
Mom and I just returned from Helena, Montana. We took a quick trip to celebrate my cousin’s wedding and made some great memories with Mom’s side of the family.
Because we live nearly a continent apart, I don’t have the opportunity to see my aunts, uncles, and cousins often, so it was special to be able to spend some time with them, though it’s strange catching up after not having seen them in several years. I’m always surprised by the subtle changes in appearance—graying hair, crinkling eyes. Their youthfulness immortalized in my memory fades in real time.
No matter where you go in Montana, the state lives up to its nickname—Big Sky Country. The sky extends for miles, only ending when the horizon is divided by the snow-capped Rocky Mountains, which are sharper and balder than the mountains here in Appalachia.
While people live in the valleys in Montana and populate the pockets of flat land insulated by the mountains, people on the East Coast live in the ranges, building their homes in small valleys called hollers or directly on the mountains. It’s impossible to see very far unless you’re on a summit because of how hilly the terrain is over here. In Montana, you’re acutely aware of how big the world is—and how small you are.
As we drove back to our hotel after the wedding, Mom was quiet. Sad. Her blue eyes glistened as she took in the landscape. I asked her what was wrong.
“It’s always hard to leave,” she said.
She experiences these feelings of homesickness every time we take a trip out West. Even though she did not grow up in Helena, the mountains are familiar—close cousins of the ranges 200 miles north in Kalispell. But I know it’s not just about the location. It’s the memories. The people.
My mom has lived on the East Coast twice as long as she lived in Montana, but some of the people she loves the most in the world are in Montana. The people who remind her of her mom. The people who remind her of a simpler time, of happy memories.
I don’t know how many times we visited Grandma K in Montana when I was a child, but I distinctly remember her condo—the piano in the living room. The carpeted floating stairs running up to the second story. The latch hook rugs on the floor. The dinosaur slide at the playground down the street.
I remember these things like dreams—in pieces, jumbled and jagged. There’s no way to know how much of these memories are true and how much are daydreams made manifest.
There are pieces of Grandma K in my house that haunt me. Pieces of Nana, too. These mementos provide comfort, familiarity. Like Grandma is watching over me through the black-button eyes of the stuffed cow she gifted me for my birthday.
Being with my family is being surrounded by Grandma K. Her legacy. Her warmth. Her clear blue eyes. Her sharp, German nose. There are pieces of her in each of my uncles and cousins.
I’ve never lived in Montana—I’ve lived in the South my entire life. Yet when our plane climbed from the Helena Valley and became part of that big sky, I felt homesick, too.
I feel this way about Minnesota. I've never lived there, but I used to spend a weekend there every summer, and it's one of the places where I feel at home.
Enjoyed this. Felt the homesickness for my own home. I grew up in Chicago, had family there, my mom and dad, and my sister and her family, and so many friends. I haven’t been back in 10 years. My parents have passed and it’s hard for me to travel. But I miss it.
This made me tear up. I’ve been my usual post MT visit sad self this week. You put a lot of emotions into words with this one.