‘I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen’ : Immigrants: The soul can sicken if it finds no traces of the old soil in the new land.

I’ll take you home again Kathleen,

Across the ocean wild and wide,

To where your heart has ever been,

Since first you were my blushing bride.

She was an attractive woman in her mid-30s. She was earthy and full of life. But the day she came to see me, she certainly didn’t feel full of life. Everything hurt, she said. Her stomach, her shoulders, her head. Sleep wouldn’t come, or if it did, it was broken and unrestful. Life was not worth living, but she couldn’t escape and leave her four little children alone.

Her husband worked all day and half the night trying to provide the necessities for his family. Left alone with only babies for company, not knowing the language of her new country, scared of the traffic, the noise, the gangs and drugs in her neighborhood, she took refuge in pain. It became her only comfort. Pretty soon even marital pleasures became unpleasant, and so she tried to escape these, too. Her husband became angry. The only adult she could talk to became part of her problem.

The roses all have left your cheek.

I’ve watched them fade away and die.

Your voice is sad when e’re you speak,

And tears beat in your loving eyes.

Things went from bad to worse. All her tests came back negative, and it didn’t take much for me to realize that her illness was one of the spirit, not of the body. Meanwhile, friction with her husband threatened to spill over into the children’s lives. No, he never hit her. Never belittled her. He just seemed never to be there for her. She reacted with anger and further conjugal distancing. There was no way they could afford marital counseling, and the pain was growing worse. I finally decided to try a stab at counseling myself.

It seemed to be a disaster. He obviously was too macho to listen to a female physician, and all I could do was relate to him his spouse’s side of the problem. It didn’t take any great clinical acumen to see that life was not easy for him either, but as a man, he could not admit his own pain. He carried on his shoulders the whole responsibility of nourishing his family in this new and harsh land. Our meeting came to an unsatisfactory end. I was left with the unsettling feeling that I had somehow made the situation worse.

Oh, I will take you back,

Take you back, Kathleen,

To where our hearts will feel no pain.

And when the fields are fresh and green,

I will take you to your home again.

I didn’t see her for several weeks. When she did come back, I hardly recognized her. Her cheeks were pink, her face full of happiness, her manner animated once more. She had come to say goodby.

She and her husband had talked. This country was not for them. It was making both of them sick, and destroying their love. They needed to go back to their little village in Mexico. With this decision made, predictably, all the pain she had, all her marital problems disappeared. He loved her enough to take her home again, to where her heart would feel no pain.

I’ve seen many Kathleens in my work with people new to this country. Elderly Vietnamese women with intractable and clearly non-organic stomach pain who have dissolved in tears when I talked about how missing one’s homeland can make a person physically sick. Africans whose ulcers and hypertension cleared up once they made the decision to return to their country. Even a senior citizen from the Deep South whose yearly family reunion in Louisiana produced marked improvements in her arthritis, diabetes and hypertension.

America is a land of promise and opportunity, but its cities can be cold and frightening places for those who have just come to its shores. No matter what oppression the new immigrant has just escaped, his birthplace is imprinted on his soul. And his soul can sicken if it finds no new soil in which to grow where traces of the old soil are preserved.

That old Irish ballad truly has a universal wisdom.