Don’t Wait Until Tomorrow to Call Your Parents, Please

If I could change one moment, would be the Easter Eve of 2017

If you are older than a teenager, there is a good chance you had one of those farewells from high-school, university or even from your workmates. You or someone else is moving out, so everyone meest and after a few drinks, comes the classical:

- Now we do a pact! Let’s promise to ourselves that this will not be our last meeting, guys! We will do it at least one time per year! Deal?

And everyone agrees, of course.

Years come and years go, without the meetings happening again, or only sporadically. After some time you start to lose contact with your old friends, including the ones that supported you to take career decisions or listened to your complaints about life. It can be hard to deal with this disconnection, especially when you don’t know others nearby.

Do people still remember you?

Because at some point, looks like everyone simply forgot you.

If you are an expat, like me, you realized that not everyone understands how different time zones or routines work, especially if they never lived far away. Maybe your friends back home do not contact you simply because they think you are not available or interested. Don’t take it personally.

It is normal that, when living far from home, you need to be proactive about getting in touch with the ones that stayed. Get used to the idea that you also can call your former acquaintances, send greetings and ask how things are going, if the local team is doing fine. When that happens, you will realize they are still there and your old relationships are well-kept.

Fortunately, modern technology helps a lot to keep in touch, and there are some simple hints to help with your family and friends.

Instant Messaging helps, but be cautious.

One of my favorites is to make extensive use of group chats in instant communicators like WhatsApp. Right now I am in a group of relatives, another of university friends, another of my former workmates from Qatar, another one from beer buddies in Warsaw, and finally a group of comrades from São Paulo. Just take care to avoid Whatsapp addiction.

With instant messaging, the group interactions are more dynamic and it is easier to organize get-togethers. A few of my friends visited me in Europe thanks to our conversations in WhatsApp.

But what about your parents?

Above I wrote that you should be proactive to get in touch with friends. This statement takes a new dimension when we consider family. Even if they respect your new routine and don’t tell how much they are waiting for your call, parents will be jubilant when the phone rings and it is you.

Your grandparents? The same (or maybe even more).

Not many people that moved far away from family asked what are their parents’ expectations about contact frequency.

Have you asked yourself?

Think about it. If you ask your grandmother or mother how frequently she would like to hear news from you, there is a good chance she will say something like “As much as possible!”.

The problem is, in another country — and drowned by new routines and efforts to adjust to the culture — you make this “as much as possible” much less than what was possible.

By assigning family contacts to a secondary place we are not only depriving them of joyful moments, like when they see again the faces of daughters and grandsons, but also doing a disservice for our own adaptation efforts. As the expatriate specialist Ana McGinley wrote:

Relationships with family members are crucial in the preservation of self-identity in expat adults and children — especially when the culture of the host country is unfamiliar or confronting. Being able to ‘be yourself’ with the people who know you is a wonderful comfort often available in the company of family members.

It is vital to remember time doesn’t stop when we move away, and it is not easy to deal with the beloved ones getting older. Mom and Dad will have some extra wrinkles and gray hair, but their smile when talking to you will always be the same.

If you have kids, they will be growing up too and your parents will be heartbroken if they cannot see how their grandson is trying his first steps or their granddaughter is dressed for a costume party. For the kids, the contact with the rest of the family is an enriching and bonding experience.

As the American writer Alex Haley once wrote: “Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children”.

To deal with distance from family, the best way I found (thanks again to technology) is to make extensive use of videos, be it recorded or through video calls. When I moved abroad for the first time, this kind of resource still was not accessible and I felt guilty I couldn’t see mom and dad so frequently, but things greatly changed. Not saying everyone should do the same, but I try to see them via video calls at least three or four times per week.

I was not always like that.

During my first years, I was neglectful. As the common wisdom says, sometimes you learn about your mistakes in a hard way. When I moved from Qatar to Europe to start my business, I got immersed in the frenzy to have all prepared, solve all the bureaucratic paperwork, hire people and improve my language skills.

One day I called my parents and they told me they visited my grandmother. During the visit, grandma remembered me, asked how I was and said she would be very happy to talk to me. A few days later, I called mom and dad in the morning, and they said that grandma talked about me multiple times, so I arranged to call them in the same afternoon when they would be at her house.

I called, my father answered and I asked him if I could talk with grandma.

He gave the phone to her, and she asked: “Hey, meu fio” (a tender way to refer to sons and grandsons in Portuguese). I tried to answer, but the quality of the call was terrible, so I told I would call a bit later.

It was the day before Easter and I was supposed to travel to the city of my girlfriend to have dinner with her family. There, distracted by all the conversation and the banquet, I forgot to check my phone. Just before sleep, I saw a message sent hours earlier by my dad, saying my grandma was waiting for my call.

Oh no, I forgot to call! I texted back apologizing and told I would call her the next day, since it was too late both in Poland and Brazil.

The next day, Easter morning, I woke up, took my phone and checked WhatsApp. There was a message from my dad there.

- Hey son, I have some hard news. Last night grandma started to feel bad. We rushed her to the hospital, but it was her time. She passed away.

Do not delay the call to your parents (or grandparents) for tomorrow.

By: Levi Borba, best-selling author. You can check his books here.