How Many Visits Are Left?

I heard about an app on our phones we can use to determine how many visits we have left with our parents. We enter our age, frequency of visits, their age, distance away, and their health. It estimates for us how many visits remain.  I never went to look for the app. I couldn’t bear to see the answer. It would probably say “Two if you are lucky”. It may also add “She is 92 years old, you cold heartless bitch for even asking. Get your butt on an airplane and visit her this weekend”. I don’t need an app to tell me that.

 I was lucky that my Mom and Dad were healthy and active well into their 80’s.  We golfed together, ate out together, laughed, shopped, and went to movies together in their 80’s.  In their 70’s, we went to the beach, they took the kids swimming in their hotel pools, we shopped for furniture together, even skied together. My Dad and I cross-country skied at night in the woods together. We got lost snowmobiling together. We played pond hockey as a family and I got upset with him for checking his 10-year old grandson too forcefully. In their late 50’s, they bought a house on a beautiful island in Florida and golfed obsessively for almost 40 years.  They had the financial ability to do that, and to share it with their kids and grandkids.

 Now in her 90’s, Mom is alone, fearful, anxious, repetitive, forgetful, controlling, and quick to anger.  It isn’t as much fun. I still visit, but I don’t enjoy it.

 How many visits did we get together before Dad got sick? How many dinners did we eat from Mom’s beautiful china dishes? How many Christmases did we enjoy her delicious home made gravy at the big table, open our mutual presents together? I don’t know. We found out Dad was sort of sick about a year before he passed. We cancelled our Christmas gathering due to covid, tried Zoom calls but technology issues made it unbearable for them. All of a sudden he only had three months.

 There are a lot of questions and concerns when we consider how many visits we have left with parents who live far away.  Questions we could ask ourselves are:

“Will it feel comforting to me to visit?”

“Will it feel comforting to them if I visit?”

“Do they need me to visit for their physical safety check? For their mental health check in?”

And the biggest question is “After they have passed, will I feel like I visited as much as was reasonable to take the best care of them that I needed to?

“Can I afford to visit?”

Some “kids” have their parents move in with them, some move in with their parents, some move their parents nearby, some stay away, some hire live-in help. And others just do the best they can, on the fly. I don’t know what is best, even for me and for my parents.