When we talk about a gathering, we are talking
about people coming together. Throughout 2013, as part of a tourist-led
initiative, Ireland is opening its arms to friends and family across the globe,
calling them home to ‘gatherings’ in villages, towns and cities.
The
Irish diaspora is not unlike the Chinese diaspora whereby economic turmoil in
generations past had forced the people to leave their homeland in search for
survival and a better future. Over 70 million people worldwide claim Irish
ancestry.
A scene in Strokestown
Amidst a rich culture of song
and stories, one of the gathering’s most poignant returns took place in
Strokestown, Co.Roscommon in July. The scene whereby the descendants of an
Irish Famine boy was welcomed home 167 years after his family had to emigrate
was emotional and heart moving.
Daniel Tighe was
12 when his family was forced to leave Ireland in July 1847 when his father died and his mother Mary Kelly, in an
act of trying to hold the family together, left the country with her five
children.
Famine monument in Sligo
She boarded a Famine ship for Quebec , never to reach there. She and three of
her five children died on the journey and only Daniel and his sister Catherine
(9) survived. When Canadian farmer Francois Coulombe needed a boy to help on
his farm outside Quebec , he chose Daniel and Catherine became
hysterical and clung on to her brother’s leg, sobbing. The Coulombes said,
“We’ll take them both.” And they did. Daniel’s descendants still live on the
farm today and the Canadian parents allowed the children to keep their surname.
Daniel never forgot the image of corpses being thrown overboard before coming
into Grosse Ile, one of the islands located in Gulf of St. Lawrence Quebec Canada .
Families get separated all the time – usually
for economic reasons, where one generation wishes another generation a better life, a greater head start. My
father came from China
for the very same reason, and now I see many young Malaysians leaving the
shores of the country they call home, never to return.
There is yet another type of separation which I feel
is equally as painful and costly – that
is the separation by choice or because of bad blood. Family feuds have left
members estranged from each other, with no resolution but only that of great
remorse when one of the parties lies cold in the casket and there is no turning
back in time and no more opportunities for apologies.
We all know of at least
one relative who is not speaking to another, one son who has left home with no
forwarding address, one aunt who has not
seen her niece, one child who has never known she is adopted, one parent who
has never met the child she gave up for adoption. So there is a mushrooming of agencies trying
to put families together, societies committed to tracing the family tree and
lots of money spent along the way for that bit of essential information which
could hopefully close the aching chasm within.
In fact both my parents were adopted so I never
really knew who my biological grand parents were and even my surname is not my
grand dad’s surname. If I had my ancestral roots documented, I can imagine the
stories I could write about, the streets of the little village out in China
somewhere where I could trod. I can also
know whether I inherited my artistic bent from any of my grand parents.
I do not want my children to go through that, so
I have put together bits and pieces of trivia as well as significant
information about who they are, who their parents are and who their
grandparents are.
And they are all packed in 3 plastic files with
their names on them, together with mittens, hand prints cast in plaster and the
first lock of shorn hair.
Source: Columnist, New Straits Times, 20 October 2013
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