Thank you for the link to Kilkelly. I heard it once or twice a long time ago, and it burned itself into my brain, but I had no idea of the title or where to look for it.
Literally just yesterday, my mother told me about a story she'd found of an old woman in Eastern Europe, more than a century ago, I guess, who scraped up enough money to send her grandchildren one by one to America, so she died alone.