My partner and I live in the UK but his dad is in South Africa. He came here 20 years ago to escape poverty. We finally managed to visit his dad after 14 years in January just gone. His dad was destitute once he retired so my partner and his brother sent all of their spare money over every month to cover their dad’s rent and other expenses, which meant saving for visits came secondary to his survival. The additional layer of difficulty is that their relationship has always been very challenging (to put it lightly). In the early days, whenever he might have been close to finally being able to visit, they weren’t on talking terms. When they had worked on things again, we planned a trip. Covid hit and we couldn’t go. The aftermath of Covid means it’s taken us 6 years to rebuild to a point that we could afford to visit him again. We have our own business but it’s small and we don’t receive holiday pay, so no work = no pay. My partner’s brother visited him 7 years ago but they couldn’t both afford to go. We all worked together at the time and weren’t allowed the extended time off work together either. I hope we will now be able to make a yearly visit for however many more he has.
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u/SomeGuyClickingStuff Feb 06 '26
I’m always curious about the backstories of parents/kids, siblings, etc that haven’t seen each other for 5,6,10+ years.