End to separation a cause for celebration

LIKE countless other families across the state, the Marchingos were reunited last Friday night.

Ken and Sharon welcomed three of their children back into their Quarry Hill home, alongside partners and grandkids, with pizza, bubbles and open arms.

Their youngest daughter, Eva, hugged her parents for the first time in almost three months after being separated by the border dividing metropolitan Melbourne and the regions.

While she enjoyed the freedoms granted to Melburnians two weeks ago, Eva said there was nothing like being home.

“It was such a nice announcement, but I just cried because as much as it’s nice to go out to the pub, the thing that COVID has made me realise is that the only thing I want to do is come home,” she said.

“I don’t care about the pub if I can’t see my family.”

The drive back home with her partner, Pat Hossack, was easy. She’d been making at least monthly trips to her parents’ house ever since her move to the state’s capital four years ago.

But this one was, of course, different.

“I remember when it hit over to six o’clock and I turned to Pat and asked him what the time was, and he said 6.01pm. I almost cried because it’s like everything lifted,” Eva said.

“It was a massive weight off our shoulders, just lifted.

“There’s nothing like being home so every step closer you get is just a little bit more happiness that you get back.”

Waiting on the other side of the door for her children, Sharon said the family knew what needed to be done to keep safe as the virus began to spread again in early August.

“It’s just devastating to be unable to have access to your children. Knowing it’s for all the right reasons, that’s the difficult bit,” she said.

“Our family dog passed away two weekends ago, 15 years we had her, so that was really difficult to go through that.

“There were times, honestly, where you thought this was never going to end and it just felt longer and longer.

“The reality is this could happen again, we don’t know, but I think the whole thing makes you realise that whatever time you’ve got together, it’s just precious and you must treasure it.”

Her husband and former CEO of Haven; Home, Safe, Ken, wanted to reflect on how fortunate his family was despite the challenges of another lockdown, and the courage of the everyday citizen.

“For people who are in marginal employment, part-time employment, in the hospitality industry, there’s so many people who have been hurt so badly both emotionally and financially. So many kids at schools who’ve lost two years of schooling,” he said.

“None of these things have actually affected us to any great extent, so for me this has really brought home just how incredibly fortunate we have been.

“It really reinforces just how lucky we are and what the gap is between us and the people who have not done it so well. You start to see what the distance is and it’s a big distance.

“The next challenge is what do we as a family, as a community do when we think about who got left behind, because it wasn’t their choice.”

While home, Eva wants to begin a process of preserving her family memories by compiling her father’s travel books into a novel or recording her mother’s many stories.

As Sharon put it, “family is absolutely the most essential part of being human.”