I regret not taking better care of my dad. Here's what I did for my mom.

I don’t normally post stuff like this but I’ve been sitting with it and I need to get it out.

My dad passed away earlier this year. That photo was taken when I went to see him in the hospital. We thought he was going to be okay.

He had a stroke. The doctors said it was from high blood pressure he’d had for years and never managed. He was 71. He never complained, never really went to the doctor. We just assumed he was fine. I assumed he was fine.

I lived 40 minutes away from my parents and barely went. I was always busy with work, my own life, whatever was happening that week. I kept telling myself I’d visit more when things slowed down. They never did.

The last time I talked to him, he asked if I was coming home for Easter. I said I’d try. I never gave him a real answer. I think about that all the time.

My mom is 70 now and living alone in their house. She tells me she’s fine. But I said the same thing about my dad and I was wrong. So I don’t really trust myself on that anymore.

A friend of mine who’s a doctor suggested a smart ring. Said families use them to track a parent’s heart rate, blood oxygen and sleep from their phone. I hadn’t heard of them before that.

So I got one for my mom. It connects to an app on my phone and I can check her heart rate, her sleep, her blood oxygen anytime I want. Even when I haven’t called in a few days. I just open the app and I can see she’s okay.

It doesn’t fix the guilt. Nothing is going to fix the guilt. But it makes me feel a little less terrible about not being by her side every day.

At first I wasn’t sure she’d actually wear it. My mom isn’t really a gadget person. She still writes everything down in a paper diary and the only reason she owns a smartphone is so my kids can FaceTime her. I half expected the ring to end up in a drawer next to the Fitbit my brother got her three Christmases ago.

But she actually likes it. She says she forgets she’s wearing it. She keeps it on in the shower, in the garden, when she sleeps. The battery lasts about a week and the little charging stand sits on her kitchen counter so it’s just part of her routine now.

What I didn’t expect is that having the ring has made her pay more attention to her own health, not less. She texts me things like “the ring says I slept terribly last night” or “I did 7,000 steps today, can you check?” She’s never been someone who cared about that stuff. Now she does.

A couple of months ago her resting heart rate was elevated for three days in a row. I noticed it on my phone before she even thought to mention anything was off. I called her and asked if she was feeling okay. She’d been fighting off a cold and just hadn’t told anyone. We caught it early. She went to the doctor before it turned into anything worse. That alone was worth every cent I paid for the ring.

The other thing I didn’t see coming is that it’s given us a reason to talk more. Health used to be the topic neither of us would bring up. Now it just comes up naturally. She asks me about her numbers. I ask how she’s feeling. We have conversations now that we never had in 38 years.

This morning her heart rate was normal. She’d slept well. She was already up and moving.

I just sat there for a second feeling relieved.

I can’t get my dad back. But I can make sure I don’t lose her the same way.

If you still have your parents, please just take care of them while you can. They’re not going to be here forever — and you don’t realize that until they’re not.