I used to make time to see my mother at least once a month, even though it was hard to fit it in. It was an hour's drive away. She was perfectly capable of driving that drive to see me, but never did, so you can imagine how hurt I was when I discovered that she had been coming up to my town almost every week to hear opera, but had never once told me that she was in the same town and could have popped in to see me before a show.
She wouldn't speak to DBH for two years when he took a job further away, rather than the one closer to her. Yet she was the one who moved further away in the first place.
However, the biggest drawback is, all my sisters and brothers-and-sister-in-laws agree, is lack of space to stay in. When you live four hours and more from your DPs/aged rellies and they have nowhere for you to sleep it becomes too expensive to visit them. It's even worse when they live somewhere that is both horrific to drive to, or has no public transport system to speak of.
I have tried to bring this up time and again on this board. Why do parents move so far away from their families, then complain that no-one visits them? MiL and FiL moved up to north of Newcastle last year, yet we all live in the south. They have no room to put us up yet are already complaining that no-one seems to want to visit them! A six hour drive doesn't seem to have factored into their thought processes. Heaven knows I tried to put them off, but they ignored me. We have no wish to spend all of DBH's precious holiday time either in Eastbourne or Newcastle, yet we know that that is what will have to happen, and in my mother's case, is already happening, since she broke her back. It's really hard to get to spend that week every summer with her, to try to rent a cottage nearby, but it's not enough and we know it. However we can't afford to do it for longer, it's so expensive in the school holiday times but we are tied to them, as DBH is a teacher.