You didn't fail us and don't feel badly yourself! Don't do this just to be doing it. It's hard visiting people in hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living! The whole experience with that person and one's life seems to want to come along at the same time.

My stepmother was hospitalized in the same hospital, the same wing, the same dates as my mother who had died there 50 years earlier. It was heck making myself walk through those hallways and try to ignore the ghosts of my past lives thick around me.

Talk it out with a T or good friend first for a bit? I was so relieved when I went to visit my stepmother (with pictures to show her and "props" so there would be something to talk about) that my nephew's wife and children were there. My mother wasn't very lucid but my nephew's wife and I could "share" the discomfort of that.