re: How do you deal with the guilt of living far away from your aging parents?

Nah. Lost everything in a flood. Had cancelled flood insurance two years before without telling me.
Im still pissed about that.

Our realtor neighbor says he gets a lot of people who grew up and moved away. Their parents die and they engage him to sell the house and dispose of the contents. Sometimes they don't even come back.

I hated it when my Dad was put in a nursing home knowing he would die in there. I was working in Dallas and he was in NE Louisiana. He lasted 10 days. I had to be the one to tell him he had to go into the nursing home and he replied back to me "to die". I broke down. I still regret it. My Mom died six weeks later.

Up noted in sympathy not because I "liked" your post

Won’t leave mine. Pros outweigh the cons for me.

It was pretty difficult on my wife when she lost her dad a few years ago. She was going back and forth to Birmingham, trying to manage her job and having a kid in high school. No real good flight options either so 12 hrs of driving each time.

Mine 72/71 year old parents live 5 minutes away. And my 100 year old grandfather 25 minutes. So don’t have that issue yet. But my parents are planing on moving out of state when my grandfather passes. So will eventually have to deal with that.

quote:

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They just entered their 70s and I feel like I’m missing out on their remaining years

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You got decades with them, and there is Facetime, unlike when I got an audio tape once a month from my USN dad on a ship somewhere. If they're like most parents from that era, they get an absurd amount of joy out of watching their kids succeed, and grandkids of course, that you probably undervalue. They live for that shite. One of my sisters adopted a preemie, and my step father looks like a 13 year old boy playing with that kid.

Do you really think they want you to take a pay cut and live in some shitehole in LA to be around them to figuratively wipe their butts? I tried to fly my grandparents down from the midwest (in First, humble brag) multiple times, and they were just, "F it, we're tired."

Like Denis Leary said, your most miserable years are the ones at the end. Send cards, send physical letters. They most probably will take a ton of pride in you doing things for your family that they couldn't. It sounds like they grew up fresh out of the depression/WWII, so worry less about what you think matters to you, and what moves the needle for them. There were dads that didn't meet their kids until they were four or five years old. Don't dramatize the struggle.

Send your mom flowers the third Friday of every month (she will circle that on the calendar for sure). Send your dad a BBQ box (or whatever he's into) every month. Give him a gift certificate for a lawnmower blade sharpening, or send him stuff from Bass Pro that he likes. Order them home delivery food once a month.

You're not worried, currently, about making them happy, you're worrying about your guilt. Guilt is why MBAs in Louisiana work at Chilis for years.

My dad told me at 18, 'don't live your life for me or your mom, live it for you'. It's pretty basic advice, but it was in response to your concern. Basically, he was saying that they raised me and it's my time to make my way in life. It helped hearing those words.

Dealing with this now. Wife (no pics) is in residency 4.5 hours away from home. We love it here and don't want to move back to louisiana but both of our families are there. Tough decision coming in the next year.