Home-Going

I’ve been thinking a lot about home. About what it means to go home. I’m heading back to Montrose, Colorado, a town of about ten thousand nestled in the San Juan Valley of the Rocky Mountains. I was born and raised here. My parents, now in their 80s, have lived here their entire lives. They no longer stray too far. For them, there is no going home. There is only home.

Their brothers and sisters are here. Mothers and fathers and stepfathers and friends died here. I’m here for one such passing - my aunt and godmother, Mary. She was a believer in Heaven, and maybe to her, dying meant going home. I didn’t get to ask her.

My childhood home is full of ghosts and memories. It’s still a small place but it’s not the same place. I don’t recognize anyone. I barely recognize my own relatives. I visit once or twice a year, and when I do the math on how many more times I’ll likely get to see my parents, the sum is sobering.

I feel guilty for this. My parents raised me to be independent, and so I wandered - living in a dozen places over the past two dozen years. A town of eight hundred people, a city of eight million. I look at the relatives that stayed close to each other, and that proximity seems to earn connection. I get the news through the phone, from my mother - the listener, the connector. The stand-in mother when someone could really use a mother. Sometimes I wonder if she took up that mantle because my distance deprived her of that role. Or because I never had kids of my own for her to grand-mother. But when I’m home, she is still my Mom, and Dad is Dad, and I’m their son, and I feel loved. The miles between us are swallowed in a welcoming embrace.

But what is lost when we stray? What memories are never formed? My family doesn’t know my life in Portland - has never met my friends, or seen my favorite spots, or the work I’ve done to my house to try to make it feel like home. Would they sense the empty space the way I do? The spirits that used to wander there? Would they see changes in me that I’m too close to see? Who would I be if I never left? Or if I brought family with me? Not the same person. I shaped my life without them. I chose new friends and loved ones. Sometimes I’ve even called those people my ‘new’ family.

So why do family bonds still pull so hard? It’s like the iron in my blood has a magnetic pull back to the place of its origin and its people. The people who watched me become who I am. Who knew me when I was a cocky and volatile kid, then a people-pleasing overachiever, then a wanderer and a risk-taker. Home shapes us. So does time. Our origin story matters. Some parts of us can only be understood by people who’ve been there long enough to watch us change.

Sometimes I forget the many people I’ve been. Sometimes it’s only bearable to look forward, and only just so far ahead. Sometimes it’s easier to call what’s withered dead. But not this day, as we bury my godmother’s ashes. I did not see her in her last days the way many of my relatives did. Did not say my goodbyes, hold her hand, help her to the hospital. I didn’t see the body minus the soul. I have to reconstruct the love she once radiated. I’ve been too far for too long now to feel its warmth.

Family isn’t the only thing that pulls at us. If it were, I would never have left. Place is its own opposing magnetic field.

I often wonder: did I choose the place I’m living now, or did it choose me? Did I hear a call and answer, or just get tired of searching? I dream about the high desert, a place I’ve never lived but where I feel alive. Creosote, cactus, and sage. Coyotes, hares, grouse. Open skies and sunsets. Seeking shade beneath twisted trees. Yet we don’t always end up where the landscape calls us. Sometimes we follow people instead.

I came to Portland out of loyalty—to bring a loved one to the place where she felt safe, a place she once called home.. So I was surprised when I found a sense of steadiness here that I hadn’t known I was missing. Don’t we all deserve to find a place that feels safe? That brings us to life?

I feel conflicted. I was born in one place. I built a life across many others. I don’t fully belong to either. Humans crave connection — to land, to people, to purpose. But we cannot hold them all at once. Belonging always asks something of us. To stay is to give up one life. To leave is to give up another. We grieve what cannot come with us.