I will be celebrating Christmas apart from my family again this year, in what has become the norm for us. The last time we were all together for Christmas was in 2010 in Sydney - and the last time we had Christmas in Ireland was over a decade ago in 2006.
Emigration heartache is magnified at Christmas; a time that connects each year to the last. This year I will fly home from London to Cork to see my mother and elder sister, but my other two sisters and nephews will be in Australia.
We all reunited for the first time in two years during the summer - our second family reunion all together on this side of the world in the last 10 years, since my two younger sisters emigrated to Sydney in 2007.
Each of us made our way by land, sea and air, from Dublin and Cork, London and Sydney. We reunited in a big country house in Wexford by the sea, where we have a long history of childhood summers going back generations.
We celebrated my mother’s 60th, then a trip to London and Dublin, before a week cruising up and down the Shannon with our cousins and our uncle on his Fairline. Then back down to Cork, from where we have all flown the nest.
These kinds of reunions hold a certain amount of expectation, so when we were one-by-one struck down by the Australian flu virus during our first week in Wexford, disappointment is an understated word to describe how we felt. So much pressure is mounted on one week all together for the first time in two years, and when something interferes, the reality of life lived apart becomes even more stark.
My mother waited in anticipation, as we all did, for a year since the trip was booked for my sisters and nephews to arrive home to Ireland. Finally, the time was upon us, but only six weeks later they were back in Australia, and reality injected her bitter sting.
The pain induced by emigration that we all write about and feel in our hearts is often followed by justification of the gains that those who emigrated receive amidst the loss.
But what gains through moving abroad to great countries like Australia, Canada, or the US, are so worthy that they justify and console the loss of the most precious of life’s moments with loved ones?
Emotion manifests itself in bodily pain, most often felt as a burning in the stomach, and what feels like a gaping hole in the heart. It is, as I call it, emigration heartache.
The bronze "Les Voyageurs" sculptures by French artist Frances Bruno Catalano provide a perfect visual depiction of this loss endured by emigrants and their families. Those bodies, with large parts missing, represent that ever-present heartache, the hole in your core that lingers - even when reunited - knowing that each moment together as a family may be the last for an amount of time that nobody knows.
Families are split by emigration, and as my elder sister says of our own situation, we’re like shrapnel. When life is lived apart, reunions hold so much weight - there is an intensity that flows from the need to make up for lost time, birthdays, Christmases, even weddings. It is hard to squeeze years of lost time into only a few weeks, and the intensity can be stifling.
Many Irish people have returned to Ireland in recent years, but for others, they feel it is not an option. There is no resolution; life is lived together only in momentary segments, at least for now.
I moved from Cork to London in 2003, before two of my sisters left for Australia just before the economic downturn. I had never intended it to be permanent - Ireland is where I feel most at home, and one day I hope I will return. But an hour’s flight is no comparison to the 30 + hour journey endured from Sydney to Cork.
We live for every other summer now, when God willing, we will all reunite again. The intensity and expectation pressurises like the run-up to Christmas Day, but it also makes one realise the great importance of family and the precious moments shared at this time of year.
Emigration heartache prompts artistic expression. While the ghosts of Christmas past linger at this time of year, and nostalgia looms, the ghost of Christmas present reminds us, with glimpses through recent memories, of how bountiful life can be together and how painful it is when apart. If there was nothing lost, we would not write.
