The emotional toll of living so far away: ‘Someday, something dreadful will happen to one of those at home I love’

If we’re honest with ourselves, everyone has moments of fantasising about leaving it all behind.

Occasionally, the ‘it all’ includes family. Whether you have difficult relationships or ties that can occasionally feel too close for comfort, we’ve all sometimes craved a bit of space. Maybe from the uncle who got drunk at your wedding and had to be discreetly removed by a couple of hefty cousins when his loud conspiracy theory monologue showed no signs of ceasing to drown out the speeches. The mother who unblinkingly tells you every single time you visit that the Murphy’s son Joe just passed all his accountancy exams or that the neighbour’s daughter (the same age as you) is having her first baby and sure couldn’t that be you if you got your act together and stopped living with your friends up in Dublin like you’d all the time in the world altogether? You protect your mother from the knowledge that you are obliged to live with ‘your friends’ (one of whom is a guy in IT who doesn’t speak to anyone in the house and you are beginning to suspect may have committed a spate of local cat stranglings) because you can’t afford rent otherwise. Also, much as you love them, the idea of moving back home with your parents makes you feel as though the skin on your face is seething with fire ants.

In this sense, there is a peace gained when you emigrate to Australia. I now live 11 hours in the future. As a result, everything that happens at home is at a slight remove. Joe Murphy’s accountancy exam news loses some of its bite this far from home. You won’t be expected to attend your third cousin’s baby’s Christening afters. That school reunion is too far away to worry about. There won’t be any debate about whether you should pay your respects at the funeral of your parents’ neighbour who once took a Stanley knife to the ball you kicked into his garden back during that summer when you were convinced you could make the senior team if you only practised more. As an emigrant, you have distance from whatever embarrassing thing an Irish politician has reportedly said, be it about the merits of Lilt or a senator claiming “water doesn’t just fall from the sky” (lest we forget).

The price emigrants pay for eluding some of the challenges of family is being on the outside. You also miss the things you’d love to be there for and if there is an emergency, you’re not guaranteed to get back in time to help or comfort those you love when they might need you most. I considered this when we left London at the end of August to travel to Australia. I thought of my great-great-grandfather leaving Tipperary for Australia and the voyage of months he would have suffered. I feel far from home now, but there are video calls and Whatsapp, social media and constant videos and photos of my niece and nephew to keep me connected to their lives. I know what people are doing at home, when a new shop opens in Limerick and how everyone is, despite, in physical terms, being more than 30 hours from home in travel time.

‘The goodbyes tear me apart and yet something instinctive pushes me back to sea - it’s where we belong’

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The distance forces you to immerse in to your new life and setting, but it also cuts you off from the present, your loved ones and can bring a sense of powerlessness with it. This week, when my three-year-old niece was hospitalised with pneumonia, I woke on the hour to see if there were any updates on how she was doing. My brother would send news when they had it, pictures of her unusually pale face and soft little body so uncharacteristically still in her hospital bed.

Known by us all as a tornado of energy (she’ll challenge you to a scooter race within seconds of meeting you – it’s kind of intimidating), it was concerning to see her so unwell. Of course, if I were closer to home I would still be relatively useless – all you can do is try to support where you can. But to be unable to hug my brother and his wife, to offer to stay with my baby nephew while they were at the hospital with a sick child or to feel at all useful to them just exacerbated the distance. When people you care about are suffering in another hemisphere, you carry it without any real outlet.

When my niece was discharged and back at home, I did what any self-respecting aunt would do. I sent her a large box of inflated balloons to cheer her up (and to give my brother and sister-in-law an impediment to walk into face-first as the balloons linger in the kitchen, drab and increasingly flaccid, for the next month or so while in the generally rational manner of energetic three-year-olds, my niece refuses to allow them to be disposed of. The balloons did not help anyone but me, really.

That is one cost of emigration.

My niece is healthy and back to challenging people to scooter races with flashing eyes now, thankfully. Someday, though, something dreadful will happen to one of the many people at home who I love. When you leave people behind, this is an awareness you live with. Hopefully, the children will continue to thrive, but especially for aging relatives – there will likely be diagnoses, illnesses, crises. If you stay away long enough, there will be death.

This is inevitable, so far from it all, a fear that sits in my chest and simply has to be managed as a cost of the choice I have made.

Sometimes, though, it would almost make you wistful about missing your third cousin’s baby’s Christening afters.