Last Sunday, I drove away from my mother’s place with that familiar knot in my stomach. You know the one. It starts forming about an hour before you leave, tightens when you hug goodbye, and sits there for the entire drive home.
I’d stayed for three hours, helped with some groceries, fixed a wobbly shelf, and had tea. By any measure, it was a good visit. So why did I feel like I’d failed her somehow?
The truth hit me somewhere around mile marker 47: The guilt wasn’t about the length of the visit. It was about the math I couldn’t stop doing in my head.
How many more Sunday afternoons do we have? How many more times will I fix that same shelf that keeps coming loose? How many more cups of tea?
The mathematics of mortality
Here’s what nobody tells you about having aging parents: You become an unwilling mathematician. Every visit, every phone call, every holiday gathering gets filtered through this terrible arithmetic.
If Mom is 82 and I see her twice a month, and if she lives to 90 (please, let it be longer), that’s roughly 192 more visits. One hundred and ninety-two. It sounds like a lot until you start counting them down.
I never used to think this way. When my kids were young and my parents were in their sixties, visits were just visits. Sometimes they were obligations, honestly. Birthday parties, holiday dinners, the occasional weekend barbecue.
There was always next time, always another chance to make up for a rushed goodbye or a cancelled plan.
But something shifts when you watch your parents age. When your mother needs a moment to remember your neighbor’s name. When your father takes a little longer to get up from his chair. Suddenly, time becomes finite, countable, precious.
Why the guilt runs deeper than time
The guilt we feel isn’t really about whether we stayed two hours or four. It’s about confronting our own limitations in the face of their mortality.
We want to be better children than we are. We want to give them more than we can. We want to stop time, but we can’t even stop ourselves from checking our phones during lunch.
I’ve been on both sides of this equation now. Watching my own adult children visit, seeing that same look in their eyes when they leave. They’re doing the math too, even if they don’t realize it yet. They’re wondering if they’re doing enough, being enough, loving enough.
What compounds this guilt is the reversal of roles that happens so gradually you don’t notice until you’re in the middle of it. One day you’re the child being cared for, the next you’re discussing medication schedules and doctor’s appointments.
Helping my mother navigate her insurance forms, I remember her teaching me to tie my shoes. The role reversal feels wrong somehow, like the world has flipped upside down.
The weight of unfinished conversations
Part of what makes each visit feel insufficient is all the things we don’t say. The important conversations we keep putting off because today isn’t the right day, because everyone’s in a good mood, because why ruin a pleasant afternoon?
But which afternoon will be the right one? When is the perfect time to ask about their wishes, their fears, their regrets? When do you tell them what they’ve meant to you, really tell them, without the buffer of birthday cards and holiday toasts?
I learned this lesson the hard way with my father. There were things I wanted to say, questions I wanted to ask, stories I wanted to hear. I kept waiting for the perfect moment. The moment never came, or rather, it came and went while I was still preparing my words.
With my mother, I’m trying to be braver. Sometimes that means having difficult conversations about care preferences and living arrangements. Sometimes it means simply saying “I love you” without needing a special occasion.
The conversations aren’t perfect, but they’re happening.
Finding grace in the imperfect visits
If you’re a regular reader, you might remember I wrote about the importance of being present. This takes on new meaning with aging parents. Being truly present means accepting the visit for what it is, not what you wish it could be.
Sometimes Mom and I just sit together watching her shows. Is it quality time? Who’s to say? She’s happy I’m there, and maybe that’s enough. Not every visit needs to be profound. Not every conversation needs to resolve decades of family dynamics.
I’m learning to find grace in small moments. The way she still insists on making my coffee exactly how I liked it as a kid (too much sugar, not enough milk).
The familiar rhythm of her stories, even the ones I’ve heard dozens of times. The comfortable silence when we run out of things to say but neither of us is ready for me to leave yet.
What really matters when the clock is ticking
Here’s what I’ve figured out after years of wrestling with this guilt: Our parents don’t need us to be perfect. They don’t need grand gestures or lengthy visits that check every box. They need us to show up, imperfectly but consistently.
They need to know we think about them between visits. A quick call to ask about their doctor’s appointment. A photo of the grandkids at the park. A text saying we saw their favorite actor in a commercial and it made us smile.
My mother lights up when I mention something from a previous conversation, proof that I was listening, that I remembered, that she matters. These small acknowledgments might mean more than any amount of time we could spend sitting in their living room.
The calculation we can’t turn off? Maybe it’s not meant to be turned off. Maybe it’s there to remind us that time is precious, that every visit counts, that love is measured not in hours but in attention, in care, in showing up even when it’s imperfect.
Closing thoughts
I still feel that knot in my stomach when I leave my mother’s place. I probably always will. But I’m starting to understand that the guilt isn’t a sign of failure—it’s a sign of love. We feel guilty because we care. We do the terrible math because these people matter to us.
So here’s my question for you: What if we stopped trying to make the guilt go away and started seeing it as a reminder? A reminder to make the call, send the text, plan the visit.
A reminder that loving someone in their final chapters is both a privilege and a burden, and that’s exactly how it should be.
The visits will never feel like enough because love always wants more time. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe the ache we feel driving away is just love, doing what love does—wanting one more minute, one more story, one more cup of tea.
