Hi Karen (and all)
I'm just back from one of my semi-annual visits to the States to see my father, who is in a nursing home there. I can certainly relate to everything you've been discussing about being away from family when they are doing poorly.

My father refuses to deal with a computer, but I have found a staff member at the home who will take my e-mails, print them out and give them to my dad to read as "letters" - though she says she can't print out letters with photos (not sure why not). Dad also does not want to have a phone in his room - he's rarely in his room anyhow, so I suppose that's just as well.

Add to it all the fact that I'm an only child, and Dad's closest sister is in another nursing home - so he doesn't get many visitors. I've got all the expenses of hotel, car rental and of course the plane fare when I do visit, so I've just kind of worked it all into the budget - and I have an account in the US to tap while I'm there.

But face it - we all have our lives to live. My aunt's grandson doesn't get over to visit her all that often, even though he lives only about 10 miles away. So when I'm there, I take her out to go visit my Dad and both of them really look forward to that.
Cheers,
Bev