Ever since the day you went away
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Maria and her dad on the beach in Spain on Christmas Eve (Picture: Maria Eilersen) We always listen to this Starbucks CD of jazzy Christmas songs, and honour my mum by listening to Carol of the Bells even though my sister and I don’t particularly like it, because she loved that song. To celebrate her, we always raise a toast when we go out for dinner on Christmas Eve, and inevitably talk about her when the three of us are together, sharing memories and holding space for our grief. I miss my mum every day, and Christmas is no different. This year, they’re coming to visit me in Portugal. Our travels include a US road trip, sailing around Mexico, skiing in Japan and exploring Andalucia in Spain. We’ve since then been traveling somewhere new almost every Christmas, creating a new tradition instead of trying to recreate the past.
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We created some really special memories on those trips being together just the three of us. We wanted to do something completely different because it would never be the same without our mum. Growing up abroad, she would always make the house feel cosy and festive, and make Christmas Eve feel special during the years we didn’t travel home to spend it with family in Denmark.įor the first five years after she died, my dad, sister and I escaped the northern hemisphere and its traditions to go sailing around the Whitsunday Islands in Australia. It means so many things to so many people according to their own lives and frames of reference.Maria (right) goes travelling every Christmas with her dad and sister (Picture: Maria Eilersen)Įver since my mum passed nearly 11 years ago, we haven’t celebrated Christmas the traditional way.Ĭhristmas was her holiday. “I hear from people who’ve played it when their father died, when their dog died, when their boyfriend left them. That’s what so great is about some songs. “It became an anthem when Princess Diana died, I remember going to luncheons for people with AIDS and I got up and sang it to them every year, it’s had a few lifetimes. “Over the years this song has had many incarnations,” Matthews says. It doesn’t explain a damn thing it just says there he is.” Sometimes I change it to ‘with a xylophone’ or whatever live. Wendy Matthews insisted on keeping that part of the song in her version too “That line culminates the whole story for me. I met some Australian people a few years ago and we were talking about the song and the first thing they said was ‘What’s that bit on the end with the groceries and sleeping bags about?’ The last line of the song is “he’s on the buses and the aeroplane, with some groceries and a sleeping bag” Johnny Male says “That part comes from me being at college and at the time people were going away on gap years, backpacking around the world, so it’s about people travelling around Europe. Wendy Matthews recorded and released her version in 1992 and it because the biggest selling Australian single and won an ARIA award for Song Of The Year.
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I had the title, I had the clouds in the sky line, I liked the theme that it’s a beautiful day but I’m sad.” When they released their song it did not chart.Īs Johnny Male explained in an interview with The Herald Sun “The themes in the lyrics are mixed up from things in my life, but they’re the themes that classic records tend to deal with.” ‘The Day You Went Away’ was originally written by Johnny Male in the late 1980’s while he was studying at college in Manchester for his band Soul Family Sensation.