This must be more common than I would have imagined. When my husband's 85 year old mother died 14 months ago (8 months before he was diagnosed with cancer) my husband flew from Florida to California to stay with her for several weeks post-surgery (brain cancer) and then we both returned a few months later when the caregivers told us she was dying so we could be with her and his father. His younger brother who lives 2 hours away way drove over every weekend and made all the arrangements for a live-in caregiver and handled all the emergency situations and doctors visits when my husband wasn't there. His older brother and wife (also 2 hours away) managed to visit once during her illness for about 2 hours. Their 2 20-22 year old children never visited. We were with her when she died and it was after we called everyone that the older brother managed to show up. The younger brother and family came and stayed at his parent's home with us through the funeral services. The older brother and family showed up for the service. When my husband's father died in June, we had a repeat performance except this time was husband was going through cancer treatment himself and we couldn't travel back to CA. Again, the younger brother handled everything, moved his father to a nursing home in his town and saw him every day and stayed with him at the very end. The older brother showed up about 3 times for 30 minutes the whole year he was in the nursing home. When my husband was diagnosed with cancer, the younger brother called constantly to see how he was doing. The older brother waited about 2 months after we told him the news to make a call. The really odd thing to me was that before the parent's got sick, the older brother and his family appeared to be fairly close to his parents. So, you never know how people are going to react - but you sure learn a lot about people when you're going through something like this.