Dear Carolyn:

I was summoned to my mother’s “deathbed” multiple times over a decade, until I finally said five goodbyes were four more than anyone could expect, and I would no longer undertake the coast-to-coast trip I couldn’t afford.

I went back on that word and went out when my dad, with whom I am close, let me know it was real this time and he needed some help with what had become nightly torrents of abuse. So I went to help. Both my parents adamantly rejected the idea of moving to the coast where I have a mortgage, a career and school-age kids. That was fine, their choice.

My point is, I have always proved willing if the need is real.

Now here we are five years later and he’s having real health problems. He’s still refusing to move. I just got back from my second “deathbed” trip in two months, and both times, he was indeed ill and scared, but nothing close to dying.

Now he’s asking me to come out again. I love him, but I cannot do more unscheduled trips unless it’s the big one. My employer is amazing and offers unlimited compassionate leave if a parent or child is dying, but I don’t want to ask for the time again unless it’s imminent, and I can’t keep riding the emotional roller coaster either. It’s to the point that his actual death will be anticlimactic.

How do I explain nicely that he cannot cry wolf anymore, when he doesn’t think he is doing that?

— You’re Not Dying

Dear You’re Not Dying: Handy reminder, we’re all dying.

This is not just a sign that my week has gone sideways. It’s also a flag worth planting upfront, before you get into the details of any formal, long-range, be-atthe-bedside planning.

You want to be there, that’s good stuff. Some progressions toward death allow you to be there, which is mixed stuff at best; chances to say goodbye are nice, but days or weeks on one’s deathbed are not.

And thus concludes the part you control on deathbed planning.

Being subject to the whims of death 24/7 means some of us get to say goodbye, some get advance-purchase airfares, a rare few will get both and most of us get neither.

That’s why it makes more sense to plan for something you can actually plan for.

Where you’re trying now to be there for the specific moment, you can instead adjust your level of general, scheduled presence in response to the decline in your dad’s health.

I’m talking a new regimen of planned visits. Decide now what you can manage physically, emotionally, financially and child-schedually (if you’ve been there, you know that’s a word). Then increase it just to the point of discomfort, because: There is no ideal set of death circumstances, all options are draining and there is no comfort besides the knowledge of having done your best.

You just made two trips across two months, so maybe that’s the bar you set. Or bump it to three in that span. Or whatever.

You can also make any emergency travel/don’t travel decisions with the guidance of his doctors or caregivers, to the extent they cooperate. They’re not seers, but they have seen a lot, which gives them a more informed sense of his proximity to the end.

And if the worst happens between your planned visits, then not only is it likely that you couldn’t have pinpoint-timed it anyway — but you will also have the knowledge, always, that in his last months, he could count on you to be there.