Your parents are getting older while you’re busy. Visit anyway.

The busy years and the years your parents are still well tend to be the same years, which is an awkward overlap nobody designs for. Distance grows with no decision behind it, just terms and shifts and perfectly reasonable reasons. Meanwhile the number of ordinary visits available is quietly finite.

Put one in the diary now rather than waiting for a free stretch, because a free stretch is not coming. It does not need to be a long trip or an occasion. Sitting in the same room doing very little is most of what a visit is.