A personal essay reflecting on farewelling a friend at Stornoway Airport triggers profound meditation on the Scottish Gaelic concept of "cianalas" – an untranslatable yearning for a place and time that may never have truly existed. The author explores the tension between nostalgic longing for the past and the recognition that earlier eras contained genuine hardships – childhood mortality, disease, and the permanent separation of emigration – which modern sentimentality tends to obscure.

The piece weaves together the author's own memories across decades: childhood moments of safety, encounters with elderly Great War and Second World War veterans bearing psychological scars, the loss of meticulously collected family history when their father destroyed archival documents, and a return to their old school grounds. Throughout, the author reflects on "ghosts" – both metaphorical memories and actual losses of people known, including fellow pupils and teachers – illustrating how the past simultaneously sustains and haunts us, and how our yearning often targets an imagined rather than authentic former era.