"Heimweh"

The German word for homesickness is Heimweh, which translated literally means hurting for home. In English we are homesick. Our longing for home makes us sick.

My first experience with homesickness happened when I was nine years old and my family left our home in Paraguay to find a new home in Canada. The world as I knew it until then consisted of a small village of 30 adobe straw-thatched houses, 15 on each side of a dirt road. In the middle of the village was the school which served as a church on Sundays. That small village called Einlage (named after a village the refugees remembered from Russia) was the only home I knew. Hacked from the jungle by a people dispersed and longing for home, it was a mute testimony of courage, strength, and resilience. I remember every family that lived in that village. (Gerhard Ratzlaff's book Vater Abram includes a chart with the name of each household; almost half of them were headed by widows.)

Country bumpkin that I was, my world cracked wide open on that trip to Canada. I got a crash course on river boats, airplanes, automobiles, trains, cities, hotels, elevators, white bread, spicy soup, and chiclet gum! All this was very exciting but also confusing. I missed the soft and familiar Plautdietsch we spoke at home. I missed our little village school and my friends. I missed the hymns we sang on Sundays. For a while I was sad, but within a year or two I had almost forgotten because there were so many new things to learn.

Our family moved to a small town in Alberta (Didsbury), close to my grandmother and her siblings who had emigrated from Russia in the 1920s and farmed in the area. We lived there until I finished high school, eleven years after we arrived in Canada. Following graduation, my father persuaded me to go to Winnipeg and move in with relatives (whom I didn't know!). He suggested I look for a job there; the family would follow within a year.

Although I loved my job (in a small Christian bookstore), homesickness hit me full force that year. I did not love being with my relatives and moved out after six months, renting a room in a house across the street from a colleague at work. This woman was very kind to me and I usually spent Saturdays with her family, but I did feel lonely on the weekends, especially on Sundays. I think it was the longest year of my life, even though I had the opportunity to go home twice that year, once by bus and once with friends. During my absence, my little brothers had grown taller than me and my friends had also left home. I was delighted when my sister joined me in Winnipeg a year later after graduating from high school. In summer my family moved to Winnipeg and we all crowded into a small bungalow in North Kildonan. It felt like home and I was happy again.

 

Catalano Bruno's "Noémie"

I never again experienced homesickness to the degree I did that year in Winnipeg, away from my family and friends. In 1969 my husband and I left for Africa and that became our home for almost twenty years. We had little access to the outside world, and in many ways that experience can be compared to my life in Paraguay. Ours was a simple lifestyle and we depended on the people living around us for emotional support, practical advice, and help when needed. I missed my family, but not with that terrible ache in my gut. I always looked for someone to replace my mother, but no one could ever quite fill that void. We returned to Canada every three years for a few months during that time and I got my fill of parental indulgence.

In 1984 we moved back to Canada and, although we originally thought we would be living in Winnipeg, Hardy was invited to join the United Bible Societies Americas Translations team which happened to have its offices in the Kitchener-Waterloo area of Ontario. There I finally fulfilled my dream of higher education at the University of Waterloo. Still far from where my parents lived, we did see each other once a year.

In 2008, several years after Hardy's retirement, we moved again -- this time back to Winnipeg where our daughters and their families had by now made their homes. My father passed away in 2005 and my mother died early in 2008, just before we moved.
We will not move again! We discovered that it takes much longer for seniors to adjust to new places and make new friends. We still miss Ontario and the many friends we have there. We go back once a year because one of our daughters and her husband returned to Ontario with their four children (half of our grandchildren!). When we do that, I always ask Hardy to remind me again just why did we leave Ontario? Some people we know call Ontario "God's Country" but I've heard Altona (Manitoba) called that as well (seriously!).

Homesickness is a force to be reckoned with. That is why it is called a "sickness." It is a longing so profound that you can actually become ill from it. I think it usually has less to do with the place you leave behind, and more with the people who are no longer with you, although both play a part. You can long for a place with an ache in your heart, but if your family left it with you and are surrounding you, the place gradually becomes a pleasant memory, something you recall fondly, even to the point of embellishment.
I sometimes wonder what it will be like to leave this world, the only home I have known, and return to the true home from which I came.


"I do believe that we come from God and are returning to God, but we need a softening of the heart in order to see again and find our way home. I know of no way for hearts to be softened other than by a combination of love and suffering."   -- Ruth Patterson