Apologies in advance for the long story.

Background: I'm 34. My grandmother is 91 and lives in a nursing home in a small city. The area where she lives isn't rural by any means, but it's not exactly accessible either. It's basically an all-day trip to get there (two flights), and when you arrive there's not really much to do given it's a small city. There's no meaningful public transportation, no Uber or Lyft, and what few cabs there are charge a fortune to take you anywhere. I don't know anyone there other than her.

She's actually doing pretty well for being 91, she's not bedridden or anything, but she basically just spends her days watching TV punctuated by going down to their dining room for meals. Her hearing isn't very good and she doesn't like wearing hearing aids, so conversations with her consist of you saying something and her responding to what she thinks you said, which usually doesn't like up with what you actually said. Make for a lot of awkward conversations. I think she's well-taken care of, the nursing home she's staying at actually sounds pretty nice. And other than her loss of hearing I think she's in generally good health.

She lives by herself, my grandfather died 5 years ago. After he died we tried to get her to move closer to family but she refused on the basis that her friends still lived in the city. But all her friends are dead now, so she lives by herself in this small, faraway town. The closest family is my uncle (her son) who is unemployed/on disability and lives 4 hours away. He rarely visits her despite having nothing going on in his life (his disability does not prevent him from traveling to visit her, and he has the means to do so).

I used to visit her every year, but I stopped 3 years ago. It's a long and expensive trip to just go sit around and watch TV for a couple days. The last time I went I had such a miserable time I felt resentment toward her for not taking our advice and moving closer to family when she was able to (she says she's too old to move now which is probably true). I had never felt that toward her before in my life. I decided then to take a break from visiting her, because I didn't want to resent her, and I didn't think she would want me to resent her. That was 3 years ago.

The way I see it, we all have to live with the choices we make in life, and she chose to live in a city that's far away from family, so we can't be expected to visit her that much.

I call her every single week without fail on Sunday evenings before she goes to dinner. Every week she asks me when I'm coming to visit and tells me she misses me and that she's not going to be around forever. Every week I tell her the same thing, which is that I'm definitely planning on it, which is a lie. Sometimes I cry after talking to her because I miss her to and I feel sad about the situation. I'm crying right now just from typing this. 

But at the same time, whenever I think about visiting her, it stresses me out and makes me start feeling resentful toward her again.

Reddit: Am I the asshole for not visiting my grandmother?

