This is not about the death of Edward M Kennedy, although the crocodile grief from that show does make this all the more meaningful.

    I was watching "How Green Was My Valley" last night, and every time I see it, a new observation pops in my head. The story is about the Morgan family, 5 sons and a daughter, living in a Welsh coal mining town in the late 19th Century. In one scene two of the sons lose their jobs at the mine and say, rather matter-of-factly, "Then we'll go to America to find work." Still, you could see the grief in their eyes, and immediately the thought enters your own just how tough that must be, living under the same roof all your life, then suddenly pulling up stakes to find work elsewhere...not in the next valley, mind you, or a day's train ride down to London, but across the ocean.
    Then the camera pans to their mother (played by Sara Allgood), and without a word, that grief is multiplied by ten.
    Remember Neil Diamond's song in 2000, "Coming to America" or the upbeat theme song from Eddie Murphy's comedy film by that same title? Tain't so.
    Of all the things people carried in their valises, coming to America, at the top that suitcase, and heaviest by far, was the grief of saying goodbye to loved ones, knowing that it as likely you'd never see them again. And that grief was doubled by those left behind. We should never forget that the people who left Europe's, Asia's, even Africa's shores, were life's losers there. They were the detritus, humanity's cast-offs. And they built the greatest country the world has ever known.

    Sitting with Moses Sands in a bar in the mid-90's in Budapest, Moses suddenly asked, "When you get back look up some information for me, when you get a chance. Find out if the Pilgrims or original Jamestown settlers ever got any letters from their families back in England."
    It is funny, isn't it, that while he are taught as young school kids about those original founders, never are we told of the unimaginable pain they must have felt for parents, brothers or sisters left back in Europe, or, vice versa, what those people left behind must have grieved over loved ones they'd never see again, maybe never knowing if they were alive or dead.
    Except for a few entrepreneurs who came to America under land grants or license to ship the King's goods, almost every person who ever came to America, was loaded down with that pain. Almost every person who came to America came because he had to, because there were no jobs, no more room in the house, no food. The Irish were starving, the Jews running away from pogroms in Russia, the Italians because of failed crops, the east Europeans because of the loss of jobs.
    American literature was filled with their stories, for it moved on unabated until the mid 1900s, since, just as the Irish, Swedes and Italians were getting off the boat at Ellis Island, second generation Americans were forging their way West where there was still land, or jobs in the gold, copper, or silver fields. But being illiterate, most folks back home never heard from them again.
   Into the 1940s, American film was filled with this one grief, a thing which everyone shared in those day. Everyone in America empathized with the pain of Mrs Morgan as she had to send her sons off. Remember "Goin My Way", where a young priest (Bing Crosby) had been sent to replace an aging priest (Barry Fitzgerald)? At the very end, they had brought Barry's dear mother over from Ireland, a lady in her 80's who he hadn't seen for nearly 60 years. There wasn't a dry eye in the house.
    I personally know the story of man who came to Ohio from Czechoslovakia in the 1930s, leaving a wife and son back home. He stayed and worked for five or six years, built up a nest egg, then returned to Slovakia to bring his wife back. But his son, by then about 10, had to stay back, as he was the heir to the family lands. It was custom, so he was boarded with uncles. Then came the Nazis and the War. Then the Communists.
    Neither of them ever saw their son again. They came back to Ohio, had four more children, raised them, and except for the youngest, who met his eldest brother while serving in the Army in the 1970's, none ever met their brother.
    Mama M wrote him once a week for nearly fifty years, until he died in the late 1980s. He wrote back maybe once a month, but in the 1950s through 1970s many of the letters had been redacted (censored) as the Communists didn't want anyone telling the outside how miserable things were there.
   I once asked Mama about this, and she only turned her head. She never spoke of the incredible weight she carried with her every day until she died. No one in the family had ever seen those letters, as none of the other sons could read or write Slovak.

    Today, of course, you can go to JFK and watch "refugees" from Russia, east Europe, China, get off the plane and the first thing they do is open their cell phone to say they are here. Even illegals sneaking across the border leave a paper trail up to the jumping off place before they try to cross the river in Texas or run the gauntlet from Sonora to Arizona. Once safely across, everyone back in Chiapas knows it in a very short time.

    America is the greatest country in the world precisely because of that cross of grief our forebearers carried. It is a grief we wish on no one, which is why we would like to see democracy grow elsewhere, just to spare them that one weight.
    But it will always be part of the shoulders we stand on, lest we forget.
Vassar Bushmills