Mommy Diaries: Saying goodbye to family just gets harder and harder

While I understand your feelings, you have a job and many of your co-nationals there are taking the emigrant trail to Australia, Canada etc. Now is not the time to attempt to return back.

Muris, thanks for that lovely poignany memory! Also true words from bkarnes. April best of luck with it all, you sound like a wonderful family.

You will never regret putting family first.

My Mom was like all tyhe other mothers in Gorta Dubha. They all saw their children leave. 20 young men & women left that year fro the West Kerry Gaeltacht area. I was 18. I shook hands with Dad and with Mom. No hugs and kisses beacuse I was a hard man heading for Camden Town in London so ú'd never know, someone might see me kissing my Mom goodbye. She was stoic as well. 20 years after when I came home from America we sat by the fire & she told me then, "ú know Muiris, the day you left for England I came back up 2 the house after the cows were milked and cried all day by myself." I hugged her and kissed her then. I wasn't a hard man any more. Buiochas le Dia. (Thank God)

You don't have to go back and forth to Ireland to miss family. We lived in GA, folks were in OH and it was a 12 hr trip each way one to two times only per year. When they got sick, it was fast trips by plane for me only. Dtr now lives in CA and it is 4 1/2 by plane plus the trip to the airport and all adds another 3. I am not sure what her point is but she is not alone and there are thousands of Americans who go thru this all the time. Be glad you have jobs.