Julie Helen: Families come in all shapes and sizes..I'm so proud of ours

We had a visitor from Australia last weekend, my second cousin Dan. His grandfather Dan Bowe had emigrated to Australia. He died in his thirties, leaving four children and his wife Mary in the 1970s.

Not long after he died, Mary packed her four kids off and brought them to Ireland to see where their dad came from.

Mary is still going strong now and has a very strong connection to all of us, and still stays in touch even though she is well into her nineties now. She raised her children and now has a gaggle of grandchildren and great-grandchildren and she is their matriarch living near the sea in Melbourne.

Sadly, the original Dan Bowe had two brothers, Phil and Jimmy who both also died in their thirties. Their sister, Kitty, lived into her nineties and died a few years ago. Any time she spoke of her brothers, her eyes immediately welled up.

We always asked her about them because she was such a tangible connection to our story, our past, a jigsaw piece in who we are.

When my granny died, I was 20 years old, but it was my first experience of death. Kitty sat with me and held my hand during the wake and I remember really understanding then that she belonged to me. Phil Bowe, my grandfather, died just before my mum was two years old and my granny was pregnant with my Uncle Phil.

I imagine Mary Bowe, arriving in Ireland a bit more than a decade later, got great solace from being with my granny who had already grieved a husband too. Jimmy’s family, most of them living near the original Bowe home place in Kilkenny, have also been very close to us.

Dan Hornblower, now 31, grandson of Dan Bowe, made contact a few months ago to say he would like to come and meet the Bowe clan in Ireland. He is not the first by a long shot.

In 2007, we went on a family holiday to Melbourne and met all of our generation and Dan Bowe’s children, and of course Mary too. Since then there has been a pretty steady stream of Aussie cousins making the pilgrimage to see where their grandad came from. This time, Charlie, who is ten months old, came too, the first great grandchild to land with us from down under.

We had a gathering when Dan, his lovely wife Casey and Charlie arrived in Cork. At one stage, my own brother Phil, called after Phil Bowe and Dan, also called after Dan Bowe, were standing chatting in the lawn. Phil had his daughter Katie on his hip and Dan was holding Charlie. The physical similarities between Phil and Dan, as I could see them, were striking. Their side profiles, the way they were standing, the way they were holding their children in their arms.

Their grandfathers were shining in them both and it was a very grounding thing to see.

When we were sitting at dinner, Dan was telling us how he was bowled over by the welcome they had received from all the branches of the Bowe family they had met before they had got all the way to Cork. He mentioned how he had been nervous to get in contact before his trip because he barely knew anyone. I am old enough to have heard my granny talk about her husband dying, how lonely it was, how scary it was, and how important it was to keep our Bowe connections.

Families come in all shapes and sizes and our Bowe one is a big, beautiful, blended family we are all very proud of.