To mourn is to be eaten alive with homesickness for that person.
― Olive Ann Burns

This is my family home: 611 West 27th Street, Kearney, NE. This is the house where my mom made a real home for us, the place where, even now, I return to as a refuge; where both my dad and mom spent their final days; where my siblings and I shared so many moments which have become inextricably bound to this house.

Upon leaving after each visit to my family home, my mom and dad would stand at the curb, watching and waving until I turned the corner and couldn’t see them any longer. I am homesick for these waving parents. I am homesick for the respite they gave me from the busyness of my life as mother and teacher. I am homesick for their unflagging belief in me, for the hours of unadulterated love. Most of all, as I mourn both their losses, I am utterly homesick for them. American author Olive Ann Burns understands well the mourning which eats you alive with homesickness–not so much for a place but for a person.

In his 1982 novella, The Breathing Method, Stephen King writes:

Homesickness is not always a vague, nostalgic, almost beautiful emotion, although that is somehow the way we always seem to picture it in our mind. It can be a terribly keen blade, not just a sickness in metaphor but in fact as well. It can change the way one looks at the world; the faces one sees in the street look not just indifferent but ugly….perhaps even malignant. Homesickness is a real sickness- the ache of the uprooted plant.

The notion that homesickness can be a terribly keen blade is not lost on those of us who grieve. Although I confess to moments of nostalgia, an almost beautiful emotion, there are just as many moments during which the terrible keen blade of grief slices through me. Deftly, decisively, it flays the hour, spilling the guts of all the pain I’ve stuffed inside. This is the terrible side of homesickness which often comes upon me quickly and without warning. Of course, I know that my experience is not unique, that all those who grieve feel the blade of homesickness in some way and to some extent. Still, those who grieve also understand the individual and solitary nature of their homesickness. This is a path they must ultimately walk alone, aching as uprooted plants.

Homesickness, however individual, is also born from emotions which are fundamentally deeper and more universal. Author Anna Quindlen describes the homesickness she experienced after the death of her mother:

[After my mother died, I had a feeling that was] not unlike the homesickness that always filled me for the first few days when I went to stay at my grandparents’ house, and even, I was stunned to discover, during the first few months of my freshman year at college. It was not really the home my mother had made that I yearned for. But I was sick in my soul for that greater meaning of home that we understand most purely when we are children, when it is a metaphor for all possible feelings of security, of safety, of what is predictable, gentle and good in life.

I like this so much. For me–and I suspect for my siblings– my family home in Kearney, NE is truly representative of all possible feelings of security, of safety, of what is predictable, gentle and good in life. In this place, we held glorious celebrations: birthdays, holidays, Friday nights of popcorn before the television. In this place, we laughed together, long and hard, sharing the kinds of family jokes that live happily in your soul for years to come. In this place, we cried without shame, bearing our greatest fears and failures, releasing them into the safe and gentle arms of family. In this place, we grew up, testing the waters of convictions and dreams. As such, I realize that, in truth, I’m most soul-sick for the greater meaning of home.

One of my favorite childhood characters, Winnie the Pooh, exclaimed “How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” As I left Kearney last weekend, I felt lucky, indeed, to mourn so hard for my parents and my family home. Such is the nature of my grief: that from its cold earth springs an insistent joy which blooms, season after season, pushing its way into the light. In The Return of the King, J. R. R. Tolkien writes:

Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? It’ll be spring soon. And the orchards will be in blossom. And the birds will be nesting in the hazel thicket. And they’ll be sowing the summer barley in the lower fields… and eating the first of the strawberries with cream. Do you remember the taste of strawberries?

Yes, I remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo. And yes, I can feel the coming spring and taste the first strawberries. I’m homesick for all of it, and for this, I’m more grateful than I can say.

I know I shall be homesick for you... Even in heaven. (Beth March to her family on her impending death)
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

--for my sisters
Dear Louisa May Alcott,

In waking and sleeping, 
I can’t stop wondering if my mother—
just one month dead—
is as homesick for me as I am for her. 

For I am Beth,
as I am all your little women:
homesick in death and in life.

Do you see how I stand at the edge of my hours, 
homesick for what has been
and what will be?

Do you see how I am forever walking
through my mother’s door where,
cat on lap, she is always there,
filling me well beyond the measure of my worth?

So, who will fill me now?
Who will keep the happy home of all my days?

Who will purple my meadow with wild lupine
and hang a clear, wide sky of hope above me?
And who will be my plumb line, keeping taut
these loose ends flapping feebly in the wind?

Louisa, I am homesick for things I can’t yet name.

But this, I know:

     How in the center of all these nameless things, 
     my mother holds court,
     all her little women at her feet, 
     each content to know there’s nowhere else
     they’d rather be.