So the time is here that I always feared.
With both parents gone, I lack the desire to travel home from Boston for holidays, birthdays or funerals. It’s a strange feeling, but if I’m honest, it is also liberating. Now I can choose to go back to Ireland for a visit whenever I like, rather than on someone else’s schedule. Now I can spend more time visiting places I last saw as a child when touring the country in a Morris Minor with a caravan attached.
Yes, it’s sad, but the quality of my trips home had rapidly deteriorated. Flying from Boston to Dublin was met by a short bus ride in the pre-dawn hours, followed by four or five days of intense caregiving before driving straight back to the airport. Since then I’ve met a number of friends who are going through a similar ritual, as transatlantic caregivers.
I didn’t see this coming. It seems like yesterday I was met at the airport or in the hallway with smiles and jokes and hands rubbing together with excitement.
“How was the flight, the weather on leaving, and what time is it there?”
“What time did you leave at?”
“Was it a full flight?”
The same questions were asked, and mostly the same answers were given. But that didn’t really matter. The question was how long could I stay awake without them noticing I was about to collapse.
The later years made for sad departures and some tears on their side. I could see them welling up at the front door, as the cold dawn broke and the fumes from the idling car became annoying. I refused to show emotion but would say I’d be back in six weeks on another business trip. It was a lie, but a believable one.
I got the word in Frankfurt on the way home that she was gone. It was too late. I was in the queue for a Starbucks when I got the text. Funny how you remember the exact time and place. A glance at the phone and your world changes forever. No panic but a numbness and silence all around, as people go by going about their day. I just sat down and watched the planes take off and land for what seemed like a long time.
The house is now quiet, the hallway and rooms empty and silent. A memory of my childhood fills my mind: second cousins returning from America to visit the empty houses of their youth. This could never happen today but the waves of emigrants of the 1980s are finding themselves more and more in this situation. Who looks after the home place as the family is scattered across the globe?
The world has changed and we find strength we never knew we possessed. We move on but are never the same. I no longer look at the Aer Lingus fare sales for those seven day fly-drive packages and stay in a castle deals. Instead, I ask the siblings to visit New England when possible, and we plan our next visit to Rome.
