Delphiniums in the vase fill reception on my way to the library this morning. The heavy blue colour takes me back to the photograph in the garden where my Auntie Ellie stands among her family.

It was on this day in 1905 that she sailed from Cobh, heading for New York. My memories of the garden continue to give me solace, a place full of colour among a path of boxwood, peony roses, sweet pea, lupines alongside raspberries and a sweet apple tree.

Today, I wonder how my Aunt coped with leaving her family of seven children, and she the eldest, moving to a high-rise enormous city, searching for work, later sending home parcels and money, which helped her siblings keep healthy.

Returning for a short holiday before she married in 1910 she never made a trip again, but her family line have come to visit a few times during our last century, Patrick and Paul, her great grandchildren arriving last year, sitting around the home she left and all of us speaking about how Ireland was then, James Joyce leaving to do his writing, my cousin Larry lecturing on the history of Boston and the many Irish Politicians who helped to shape much of America.

Now better-off here in Ireland, we depend on immigrants to do some of our menial jobs, as our own people are better educated, work for Google and other technology companies. Many immigrants have left harrowing and traumatic times and are prepared to work hard. It is only a century and a half since so many of our ancestors left our shores, sent home money as our new immigrants do, to their homes hoping they can return with some help from our new Ireland.

I will pass those Delphiniums on my way home this evening and will remember my Aunt Ellie’s kindness to my Father, my Mother and my family, we need to thank the country that helped her settle, raise her children.