I’ve written before about the processes of grief when you lose a loved one, navigating the pathways of grief are the sorts of roads to which I’m accustomed to. But this week I was, and I guess still am, grappling with a different kind of loss. When your loved one is very much alive, but moves thousands of miles away with no idea if, or when, they’ll come back.
Last week, my sister, after years of wanting to, finally took the plunge with my niece to follow their dreams and move to America. Both, thus, taking on the status of our parents and grandparents… she’s becoming an immigrant: with the trappings and derision the word can encompass.
Being the child of immigrants means that the story of migration is one which I know well, both in terms of the positives it brings to both the individual and the country to which they move, and the negatives in terms of the constant barrage of stories told which centre those who choose a better life elsewhere as the villain. But I guess I’d never looked at it in terms of those who are left behind.
My parents and grandparents come from big families in Jamaica (much like my sister comes from a big family here in the UK), and the decision to leave was not an easy one for either side. The lure of a better life abroad, and the call from the “Mother Country” was one they eventually couldn’t resist, with both sides of my family becoming part what is now known as the “Windrush generation”. But both left countless family members behind, especially on my mothers’ side of family – her sister Eleanor was the first to leave Jamaica with my grandparents, and the other siblings followed one-by-one once my grandparents could afford the flight, and when they had a bit more space for them to live in.
It was the norm back then, as it still is for many immigrants, even now, when they choose to move their families abroad. But for those siblings left behind, the longing and heartbreak is hard… and that is the, until now, unknown feeling that I hadn’t really contemplated before.
The feeling of loss caught me unawares really. The build-up to my sister and niece leaving had been carefully orchestrated with an array of lunches, parties, a weekend away, quiet drinks: with me ignoring the reality of no longer having my sister a drive away for the first time in our lives. But it was when I burst into tears on the morning of her flight, literally standing outside my son’s classroom on the school run, that the penny dropped that I was, in a way, grieving for the loss of one of my co-pilots in life (and yes, it was as mortifyingly embarrassing as it sounds).
As the week has progressed, it’s got me thinking about the immigration story that’s rarely told: those who are left behind. The families who work hard to maintain the bonds of blood when there’s an ocean that separates them. Something my parents did in bucketloads with various family members who were left behind in Jamaica when they made the move. They worked really hard to make sure those bonds were maintained, and now I understand why…the loss hurts. Having a person you love leave the place you call home, hurts. My parents and grandparents left so many people they loved when they left, but irrespective of that they wanted something more for their families, and they believed that feeling of loss and discombobulation was worth it: like so many millions of families who migrate to somewhere new each and every year. My sister and my niece now one of them.
Although it takes strength and courage to up sticks and start again thousands of miles away, a modicum of that could also be attributed to those who are left behind: those who want to drop to their knees and beg their loved ones not to go. But, instead, stay silent in their grief and their loss because they are but a footnote in the life of someone else’s bravery.
I know this feeling in the pit of my stomach will lift, but never completely, but that’s the reality of those of us who are left behind. And there is beauty in that. Whether you are from a family of immigrants or new to the club (welcome, if you are), it makes you realise the depths of love are such that no matter how wide the ocean or the duration of your immigrant status – the bond, despite the grief, remains.
My sister has moved abroad. Why am I grieving?
7
1
21.01.2024
I’ve written before about the processes of grief when you lose a loved one, navigating the pathways of grief are the sorts of roads to which I’m accustomed to. But this week I was, and I guess still am, grappling with a different kind of loss. When your loved one is very much alive, but moves thousands of miles away with no idea if, or when, they’ll come back.
Last week, my sister, after years of wanting to, finally took the plunge with my niece to follow their dreams and move to America. Both, thus, taking on the status of our parents and grandparents… she’s becoming an immigrant: with the trappings and derision the word can encompass.
Being the child of immigrants means that the story of migration is one which I know well, both in terms of the positives it brings to both the individual and the country to which they move, and the negatives in terms of the constant barrage of stories told which centre those who choose a better life elsewhere as the villain. But I guess I’d never looked at it in terms of those who are left behind.........
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