I swapped places with my sister to care for our aging parents during her well-earned vacation. I made a rookie mistake.

The author with her father during their recent reunion. Courtesy of the author My sister is our parents' primary caregiver in the UK, while I live 3,000 miles away in the US. She needed a well-earned, two-week break to visit her adult son in Canada. I crossed the Atlantic to give respite care and learned a lesson from a thoughtless mistake. In 2024, my sister, then 59, quit her job as a mental health nurse to become our parents' full-time carer. She said it was a no-brainer because it was the…