The Difficulties of Distance

The problem is that, as relations become older the more support they need. A phrase I hate using help us put it in perspective, in the old days the nuclear family would have ensured that support was close at hand. I started to think about this and decided that it might not have been as true as you might think.

This is in the context of Marion’s parents who live three hundred miles away from us and over one hundred from Marion’s brother. They have no near relatives close by. So it is difficult to see them as regularly as we would like to.

Then I start to contrast this with my mother who looked after her elderly parents in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s and lived quite close by. What of course has changed are the things today that shrink distance. At the time my mother did not have access to a car, every journey had to be made by public transport. Then relate that to the fact that very few people had a telephone, so communication was face to face or nothing.

Now we can be in regular contact, telephone calls are relatively cheap; we can even see each other using Skype or Face-time. Long journeys are much easier with comfortable cars and more efficient public transport.

There is still no substitute for face-to-face contact, and being able to make somebody a cup of tea, but the problems of distance are the same as ever. Yesterday’s twenty five miles is today’s hundreds of miles.