Embracing Healing Horizons: Navigating Life Between Ireland and Australia After Loss

In June 2015 I decided to move to Brisbane Australia for one year on a working holiday visa. Fast forward 7 years and I’m still in Brisbane with an Australian partner, a job I love and a new life. Living in a beautiful apartment with the love of my life, a job that allows me to work from home, a great outdoor lifestyle, fitness practice and the ability to lounge on the beach 80% of the year. What’s the problem you ask? I’m missing home. I’m missing my family, my friends, my culture. I’m missing Cork. The sounds of Cork, the people of Cork, the big town/small city vibes.

It’s the middle of 2019 and I seriously want to move back to Ireland. Now if you know me (which you likely don’t), I can make a life-changing decision in circa 10 minutes and run with it hence how I ended up in Australia, to begin with. The difference this time is that I have made a life in Australia. I have friends, family and a life there! I decide to talk to my partner (with some coaxing on his part) and we decide that we need to seriously think about it and look at all the options. At this point, I thought the only option was to live in Ireland or Australia. I hadn’t thought of any other possibility as my mind wasn’t open to any other possibility.

It’s now the beginning of 2020 and sadly my Mum is diagnosed with cancer, multiple myeloma to be exact. I immediately book a flight to get home to see her. We are told that it is not curable but it is treatable and she will have anywhere from 5 to over 20 years (the longest record for a person living with it was approx 29 years and being an optimist, this is what I assumed would be my Mums faith).

I fly back to Ireland in February 2020 and fly back to Brisbane in March 2020. We all know what happened next. The covid pandemic hit and I was stuck in Australia. My plan to get home again in July 2020 was stopped as I couldn’t leave Australia. My heart was broken but again, thanks to an optimistic head and no other choice, we got through it. I meditated, prayed and did a lot of yoga between 2020 and 2022.

I started planning again for when I was able to leave the country. All ready to go home for my Mums 70th birthday plus more in September 2022. I was so excited. I had my hair appointments booked, nails booked, and all of the lovely novelty ‘holiday’ stuff booked and ready to go. Sadly, at the beginning of August 2020, I got a phone call from my Dad to say that Mum was being kept in the hospital for more than just her normal Wednesday blood work. I got off the phone and immediately booked flights. What was to follow were the hardest weeks of my life. I remember sitting on our balcony sobbing and telling my friend that there was just no way I can do this. There’s no way I can get through this and I just can’t say bye to my Mum. I’m not ready to say bye to my Mum. I haven’t had enough time with her. I haven’t had, at the very least, one year at home to spend with her. I was sitting next to a Swedish family on the flight back and I would just burst into tears and put the blanket over my head to ‘not make a scene’. In hindsight, I think I freaked them out more than had I just sat there crying openly haha.

I arrived in Cork and was greeted by the hottest weather I’ve ever seen. A heat wave. I’m not going to go into the next few weeks in detail as I’m still digesting it but know that I am forever grateful to God that I got to spend over a week by my beautiful Mothers side. I got to hold her hand, stroke her hair and tell her how sorry I was that I wasn’t there. She made sure I knew that ‘that’s life Orla’. And that is life. Life is an accumulation of the decisions we make. I can sit here and be mad at the fact that we had a pandemic or I can be grateful as it kept my Mum isolated and less at risk of infection. It meant I had so many more conversations via WhatsApp with her. It meant that it was another lesson that I would take and bring with me for the rest of my life.

Mum passed away on 17/08/2022. I miss her so much. I feel her around me so much. I see the results of the work she is doing from Heaven. I feel and see the results of her guidance for me and my partner.

Every tear that falls from my eyes is a reminder of the fact that I had such a beautiful, warm, caring and wise Mum. Every time I ask my Angels for guidance I’m reminded of the prayers she taught me as a kid. Every time I see a cute or funny video of dogs on Instagram and I go to send it to her, I’m reminded of the fact that I inherited my absolute love of animals from my Mum. Whenever I see someone with the same hairstyle or mannerisms as she and I’m brought to tears, I’m reminded that this grief will never go away. But each time I don’t burst out into tears and instead smile, I know I’m healed that bit more than I was yesterday. Every time my Dad tells a story about my Mum I’m reminded of how grateful I am to have grown up with parents who were crazy about each other and how grateful I am that I have found the person who we will tell those stories about to our kids.

After my first loss of a parent, I didn’t know how I would go through each day. But my friend was right, you are surprised by how strong you are and you are surprised by how the loss never gets easier but you do get better at dealing with it.

I’m a big believer in not having regrets but rather taking lessons. The lessons I took from this experience:

1. Life is short, truly take each day as a gift.
2. It’s okay to laugh through the hard times. It’s encouraged.
3. Not everything is better in the morning but you are more equipped at making decisions in the morning.
4. Don’t fret about the small stuff.
5. Lean on friends and family. They want to help you.
6. Appreciate life. Your whole world can change in a matter of seconds, appreciate your current problems as you may wish for them in future.

Last year I made the decision that I wanted to split my time between Australia and Ireland. I’m taking the lessons from last year and this year I’m doing it. I’m on leave from work until November and have a lot of time on my hands to finally write. I’m one week into splitting my time and plan on writing about each week as I go.

I was tired of hearing that I had to choose one country or the other. So let’s try to have both!

Watch this space.

Orla Scanlon