Do you ever get the feeling that you don’t make enough effort to see your parents? It’s a question that I have been asking a lot lately.
There are times when I visit my parents where I just cannot wait to getaway, those times where it feels like though you have grown up and moved on nothing really has changed at home. Then there are the times where it feels like you have not seen them for an eternity.
I’m caught somewhere in the middle of this scenario. Since I moved to London in 2001 I have visited my family at least six times each year and made the conscious effort to go down every Christmas. Yet in the last two years I have only made three visits and though I briefly saw my father in April for a few hours it has been too long.
Sometimes my parents will call me asking me how things are or when I will be visiting next but the conversations are always too brief and if I’m honest rather pointless. We don’t email and seem to spend most of our times communicating by text. I’m not alone in this; most of my friends admit the same.
As I’ve grown into my thirties life has become far more busy and the opportunities to see my parents seem to grow less and less. Yet deep down within my own heart I know that this is just an excuse, a poor excuse of just being lazy.
It’s easier for people like my sister who only live two streets away from my parents. Yet I live 120 miles away and soon will be over the other side of an ocean, so why as adults do we ignore our parents so much? Is it stubbornness? Laziness? Or can we just not be bothered?
As I look at people I have on Facebook whose parents have passed away or are in their last days it does bring a lump to ones throat. We will all experience this one day, so why do I not go down that much? Is it the fact that the more I do the less I have to look forward to?
Answers to these questions I do not have but I promise myself now I will make a trip to see them within the next few weeks.
