Long Time Passing

This is part of a letter my great aunt Mary Ann Maloney received from her never-seen-again cousin in Ireland. How did they all do it? Go years and years without seeing one another and finally die, one or the other of them, the news of their deaths not reaching across the ocean for years, sometimes even for decades?This lady you see below on the right - the one with the strong chin - she was Mary Ann, the recipient of this sad letter. She lived all her life a spinster as Mary Ellen did back in Ireland. Perhaps it seemed to them the safer way. Perhaps it was safer, because of  those losses that came when there were children. I study the picture below in which Mary Ann's mother Katherine is seen holding her first grandchild in 1904. Look at her face; look at the way she holds or rather doesn't hold the infant. Maybe you'd have to know that seven of her children died young, five of them as children to understand that look.Life was hard enough for people 100 and more years ago without their being cut off entirely from the world they used used to know. Every time I see happy people recrossing  the waters in today's swift carriers I think 'Good for you for going and returning! Good for you for spending the money to go back and keep alive the family bonds!'