How do you deal with the 'missing family' aspect of immigration? - Page 2

This is possibly the down side of webcams etc. It keeps the relative right there with them, in a virtual way, and no doubt saying how they miss them etc etc. There's a lot to be said for birthay and christmas parcels, letters and 3 or 4 phone calls a year!

I have been living away from my home country (not by choice) for nine years. And its still hard, after having children it got worse. I come from a country where infrastracture has broken down and phones calls and letters are almost non-existing. My three year old who has seen my Mom 5 times is always asking when he's going to see her again, he thinks she lives round the corner. So anyone who is close to there family, don't bother immigrating, nothing is worth not having your family around.

Girlie shopping trips, Sale shopping with the girls, girls nights out! i miss them all, you never get that same bond again with anyone here, you have no history with anyone here. (well, i dont anyway).

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My husband is having to deal with his mum being rushed to hospital recently, she has pneumonia! and is very poorly! then you ask yourself when is the right time to go home????? you cant keep going back when people are ill???? its hard. a long way and lots of australian dollars!

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I'm close to my family and I thought that would make it easier but apparently it hasn't. My parents came out to Oz and stayed with us for a month which was fantastic. However now my Dad has been diagnosed with depression and they have requested that I only contact them by email. No phone or Skype. Going back to the UK is not an option for us since we've settled here.

I knew there would be some emotional tough times but I wasn't expecting this.
I'm posting this to find out if anyone else has had this situation develop and if so how it was sorted out.

My first instinct was to fly back to the UK for a holiday but I'm concerned that it would make my parents worse when I left again.

I have been asking myself if I knew this would happen would I have moved? Some of you may think this harsh but I think I would. We had planned this for so long and have such a better quality of life here that I think that if I stayed in the UK or went back now I would just be so unhappy and resentful.

I agree that I haven't made the same depth of friends here that I had in the UK, but then I'd been friends with some of them for over 30 years in the UK and I've only been here 8 months

Regards,
Karen

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Hi Karen

Is it cause of your Dad's depression that he doesn't want you to phone. Don't mean to prey but is it sadness over your moving away, if so maybe thats the reason. I too have depression from moving away from home and sometimes speaking to my Mom astually makes me feel worse as I know I can never be with her.

Hi Byo,

Yes I think that's it. But it's strange in that I phone them more than when I was in the UK, see them more (yes I know it's through Skype), and I actually listen to them, whereas before I took them for granted. However I don't see how not talking to me at all is going to help the situation. We feel sad because we love each other, but I know (and hopefully they do too) that we will see each other once or maybe twice a year. When we do see each other it's for a month at a time and it was so fantastic when we took my parents to the Grampians and they saw kangaroos and emus etc.

I would rather have the sadness and the love than not have the love at all. If that makes any sense.

And you're not prying. If I didn't want to share I wouldn't have put it on a public forum Thank you for sharing what you feel too. You obviously love your mother too.

Karen

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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

Quick update:

I rang my Dad on his birthday and I spoke to him and my Mum for about an hour.
I did arrange the call by email so if he didn't want to pick up he didn't have to.
It was a good call and we realised how much we had missed talking to each other.

Not sure when we will talk again but it's a step in the right direction.

As Bev says we have to live our lives and enjoy them!

Regards,
Karen

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