My dad has Parkinson's and a brain tumor. A few years ago when I went to visit, he didn't recognize me. My sisters say he asks after me but when they hold the phone up to let me talk to him, he doesn't really respond anymore. I guess he has good days, according to family and friends, but they don't call so we can talk on those days, so I haven't heard his voice in years.

My mom has been mentally ill all my life. She was physically abusive when I was a child and my parents split and I didn't see her for years. I never blamed her for any of it and she has apologized profusely over the years. We used to talk on the phone all the time since I moved out on my own, even while my sisters mocked her illnesses at home behind her back and talked about how much they dreaded seeing her. A few years ago one of her meds sent her to the hospital from toxicity that built over time, I guess, and since she was hospitalized and had to learn to talk and walk again she quit smoking and the new medicine they put her on made her practically a normal person again. My sisters celebrated how it was like having the mom they remembered as children back and began visiting all the time. She stopped talking to me on the phone for more than a minute at a time once every few months. Then she got moved and my sisters haven't given me her new number or address, and I haven't heard from her since April.

I miss them all the time. I just feel like my family isn't interested in my being a part of it. I try not to dwell on it because it gets me really depressed.