It must be painful..when one's own children avoids visiting their parent(s) for several years and the parent(s) realizes this or the visit(s) cannot occur for various reasons.

I didn't do alot of stuff with siblings when I lived in the same city as they and for latter 10 years, when all of us had our individual homes before I relocated far away. I would hear /see from an immediate family member every 3 wks. That is about the right type of frequency such as ours, especially when my parents were younger.

Different from some people who seem to do ALOT of stuff several times per wk. with a sibling..when each person lives at a different address.

While there are certain things /facets of me that my own family would not understand, there are other parts of myself where it would be a family member that would sense/understand without much analysis, a sense of mutual understanding within a framework of long family historic living together.

We are not the type of family that all of us as adults could live happily ever after under 1 roof. But proof, that we can with sanity and peace, live in the same metropolitan city and still keep in touch, with variations of closeness/distance amongst family network.

The latest is another sister, doesn't want to participate in annual Christmas get-together this year. There's nothing i can do about this without creating further messes because I'm so far away geographically and cannot assess the situation correctly.

Very bewildering..especially when my parents are getting older, not younger. Knowing my mother and her temper, she is probably puzzled and hurt and this can manifest into something unpleasant later in huge guilt trips ..unless things sort out. Which they might.

Also being part of a large family, but far away, some miscommunication and huge missing gaps of information. Person X assumes I was told, because it was such big news to Person Y.

I don't agree with the whole concept of a family all living and dying in the same tiny geographic area and only seeing each other plus 1-2 friends. A family grows in understanding and awareness of the world, when each person is loved and set free to become the best of who they are and they come back to share something new with other family members.

Could I have done so much cycling and seeing different parts of North America, if I stuck to my family circle as a social circle? Most likely not..