My mother lives alone and I can't call every day. What can I do?

You don’t have to be the one who calls every day. Betsy, a computer voice, calls her at the hour she picks, talks for ten minutes and remembers every conversation, for $2 a day, billed $60 a month. You call when you can. If she mentions a fall, an illness or someone after her money, you hear the same day.

“I’d think about her in the evening, tell myself I’d call tomorrow”
r/CaregiverSupport, March 2026

Are you letting her down?

No. The same call every single day is more than most weeks allow, and falling short of it isn’t failing anybody. The job was built wrong: one person, one hour, every day, with a shift and a kid’s fever in the way.

In 2025 a teacher of 54 wrote to Dear Abby that every evening she is expected to call her mother of 84, a few states away. Abby told her to make it once or twice a week. That gives the teacher her evenings back. It leaves her mother with five or six days to fill.

Who can take the other days?

	Betsy	Siblings taking turns	A neighbor
Who makes the call	A computer voice that says what it is	Your brother, your sister, you	Whoever lives next door
How often	Every day, at the hour she picks	Until somebody travels	When the week allows
Memory between calls	Every conversation	Each person’s own	What they recall
What you hear	One story on Sunday; same day for a fall, an illness or someone after her money	What your sister remembers to text	What they think to mention
Phone needed	Any phone	Any phone	Or the back fence

Keep the neighbor either way, because somebody should see her now and then. Other services are on the compare page.

What is left for you?

The calls only you can make. Two or three a week, at a time you can keep, with something to say. How often should I call? goes into the number. Betsy hands you the opening line on Sunday: “Ask her about the summer she worked the Dairy Queen window in 1961.” You stop opening with “Are you eating?” and start with the Dairy Queen.

Will she feel handed off?

It is a real worry. We make Betsy, and she answers it on the first call, with your name in it: “Sarah set me up because she wanted somebody to call you every single day.” The number reaches Mom from your own phone, in your own words. She picks the hour, and she has a say: if she says “stop” on any call, it stops. What Betsy is has the whole picture, and is there a service that calls my mom every day? sets her beside the others.

Questions people ask

How do you deal with guilt when you stop calling?

Tell her the new plan, so quiet days don’t read as neglect: which days are yours, and who has the others. Then keep your days. The guilt eases when the days are covered.

My mom lives alone 3 hours away and I worry about her every single day. How do you cope?

Split the worry into jobs. Somebody talks with her every day, somebody sees her each week, and you keep the calls only you can make. Betsy does the first job, for $2 a day, billed $60 a month.

Does Betsy replace calling Mom myself?

No. Betsy is from you, not instead of you. She tells Mom who set her up, and the Sunday text sends you back to Mom with something to ask.