It’s tough living so far from my mother.
It’s not so much that I’m just a straight up mama’s boy, which I am in fact.
But it’s more that she’s in a stage of her life where she just needs way more help. My sister lives about 20 minutes away and she checks in quite frequently. Still, I worry about things like the heating and cooling, her car and making her house safe. Mom doesn’t move around the way she once did. However, she doesn’t want to acknowledge any of this as that just isn’t the way she’s built. Dad died when we were young children. He died completely unexpectedly and my mom had to carry on without him. She had us to raise and that was her first order of business. It had to have been tough to just pay the air conditioning bills on what she made as a substitute teacher. So now that I’m making a very nice living, I really have been committed to making her life a bit easier where I can. To that end, I travel up there for a couple of weeks like 3 times a year. My job allows me to work remotely when I need to which makes these trips possible. This last trip, my sister and I did a lot of things for mom. The main thing on my agenda was upgrading the HVAC equipment. Normally, my mom wouldn’t allow such a thing as she didn’t want to be a burden. But this time, she was simply thankful to get the central air conditioning updated. The new residential HVAC is really something and she even has a smart thermostat. I love the fact that she now has an app on her smart phone so she can adjust her air conditioning without having to get up.