Living Away From Family
“Families are like branches on a tree. We grow in different directions yet our roots remain as one.” - Unknown
In 1995, my husband and our four children left our home and families in the UK to come and live in Israel. It wasn't an easy decision, and although it was always our ambition, it took us 16 years of talking, dreaming, planning, worrying, and many other emotions before we finally made the move. We had met and married in Israel and only returned to England to be with our families for a while – the idea was to stay for one year. Babies started coming, and as they say – life got in the way.
I was brought up by a mother who was a holocaust survivor and an emotionally unavailable father. It wasn't a happy place, but children accept what they have, and I was very close to my mother, if not a little suffocated. Due to the horrors she had witnessed throughout WWII in Poland, and losing all her family apart from her brother, she instilled in us the importance of family. It wasn't until I was an adult that I began to understand how terribly lonely she must have been all those years when my brother and I were growing up. We always knew there were family members missing on one side, but we just accepted things as they were. Later on, I realised that her behaviour was a legacy of years of having to survive. So, while I might have fought against certain aspects of my upbringing, the importance of family instilled in me is something that I have continued to protect and pass on to my own children.
It had always been our dream to return to Israel, where we felt we belonged and where our children would have a better future. Telling my parents about our plans was possibly the hardest thing I have ever had to do, and the feeling of guilt remained with me for several years. Anyone who has moved countries with children of various ages will appreciate how many difficulties we met along the way. Our third daughter told us straight away that she would return as soon as she left school. We told her that when she is 18, she could do whatever she wanted.
We were lucky that we had some close friends who helped us, and we rented a lovely apartment, found work, and settled down quite well. Socially, the children enjoyed their new life immediately, as personal safety is very high here, and they were able to do things that they hadn't been allowed to do in England. Even so, those first few years were challenging as apart from having to adapt to a new culture and way of life, we were aware of the many family events that occurred in the UK without us. I soon learnt that it was often the small things that I missed the most.
Time passed, the children grew up, milestones came and went; school, army, college, and many visits from family and friends abroad. When my eldest daughter left the army, she went to visit my parents in London for a holiday and decided to stay on a bit… two weeks later, she met the young man she eventually married.
After school, daughter number 3, as she had warned us, left for the UK. It was heart-breaking for me – I felt she was too young and missed her terribly. She had a few rough patches and even regretted leaving, but she also soon met up with a boy she had been to school with – and they too eventually got married.
So now I was in the situation of having two children nearby, and two of them over 2000 miles away. It's not easy for any of us although, as I often told them, love is about feelings, not geography. Of course, we miss each other. I miss not being able to share the small details of daily life with my daughters and their children but we have all reached a level of accepting our situations. We are lucky in that we have good lives, comfortable homes and have kept our jobs during these horrific times. We're apart, yes, but we are happy for each other's achievements and respect each other's choices.
Modern technology helps enormously, and the grandchildren living there have grown up looking at us through a small screen. Up until 2020, we saw each other at least twice or three times a year and never parted without having a new plan to look forward to. 2020 of course, was different – enough said.
I used to get upset when people would say; "England's not far away – just a 5-hour flight." That may be, but to my mind - away is away. After the year we have all had, everyone appreciates that now. If you can’t see the ones you love, it doesn’t matter how near or far away they are. Not being able to pop over for a cup of tea and a chat, or help out when a child is sick can be hard to accept. Of course, there were also financial and time restrictions that dictated how many times a year we could visit or pay for them to come to us. Even though living away from family is hard, I have never regretted our decision to move here, and I feel blessed to have the closeness we all still share.
Something miraculous happened in 2002. My parents, both in their early 80s by then, packed up their home in North West London and came to live in a Retirement Village about a 20-minute ride from where we live. After a few years, my father passed away, but my mother lived until the age of 94, and enjoyed every bit of her new life. Whatever I may have done or not done as a teenager and young adult, I am forever grateful that because we decided to leave our country of birth, my mother’s end of life experience, for many reasons, was of a much higher quality than if she had stayed in the UK.
When we do get to see our UK family, either here or there, we spend a great deal of time together, making memories that we can all look back on. We’re waiting now, as patiently as possible, for life to return to ‘normal’ so we can visit. I feel though that the airport goodbyes are never going to be quite the same – as when I left the UK in November 2019 after a quick visit - I couldn’t have imagined that it would be so long before I saw them again.
Written by Su Newman
I have been a self-employed Marketing Communications professional since 2001 writing and editing material for many different industries. I moved to Israel from the UK with my husband and four children 25 years ago and have never looked back. When not working, I like nothing better than sitting down with a good book; taking a walk along the coast; spending time with my gorgeous (and growing) family, or enjoying coffee and a natter with a good friend. Believing very much in making the most of every day I am always searching for new projects and challenges.