My brother's visit

Day 658 - One of my brothers lives abroad for many years and this week he is here with his children and wife for a visit. I just came back from meeting them. It's been a few years since we last met and it's so sad. I love him and his family very much but we don't see each other at all. It made me think about my parents, how difficult it must have been for them with me and my family, three of their grandchildren, in one continent too far for them to travel, and my brother and his family in another continent, closer but still far. Two children and 6 grandchildren all too far to really keep family ties how lonely did it get, how much they must have missed them/us. but also how much our children missed with no family around, never having grandparents like other kids and even when we came here on a visit it never felt real; it was always too short and did not leave time for the invisible strings to grow. So both sides were never close and never had the experience of having a whole family around. coming here at such mature age as 18 it was too late for my daughter to make up for the lost years and lost affection. I think she'll always feel a little removed from her grandparents and It makes me so sad to think that I took part in this thing. I cannot change it but I am sorry for it, I really do. I think we deprived our children and our parent of something very precious. I know how much better my life was for having my grandparents as part of it for my first twenty years; my kids cannot say the same. and the same goes for cousins and nephews that they are not close and had we stayed here they would have been. And now I see my brother speaking the way I did years ago, talking to his children in a foreign language, listening to his mediocre one and their perfect and polished one and knowing how much they miss, how much we miss. a broken family on a totally different scale and meaning; the chain was broken. It is so easy to do it now a days and we don't get to see and feel the consequences for so many years that by the time we do, it's so late, almost too late.
  
I am thankful I got to see my brother and his family, so wonderful after such a long time. I am thankful we met and were able to talk freely without awkward moments or nothing to say. I am thankful for lovely company, for laughter and love. I am thankful I can go to sleep now, I am so tired; I'll check the election results when I wake up.