My father is dead so I don't think I can reach him through XMPP - at least not yet. My 85 yo mother is still alive and yes, she is using Conversations on her Samsung A25 which connects to prosody on my server through which she communicates with all of us. I live in Sweden, she lives in the Netherlands, one of my daughters now studies in the Netherlands as well. We have a 'family list' (i.e. a 'multi-user chat' using the muc extension) where we share photos and anecdotes, sometimes we 'talk' one on one. Everything encrypted through OMEMO so Feind hört NICHT mitt.
I have tried Matrix/Element (self-hosted, of course, like everything else I use) and found it lacking compared to XMPP. It just seems to add needless complexity and does not offer anything worthwhile to compensate for it. I tried some Matrix bridges as well but found these lacking for my purposes.
So the answer to your question is 'I ended up with XMPP'.
I have tried Matrix/Element (self-hosted, of course, like everything else I use) and found it lacking compared to XMPP. It just seems to add needless complexity and does not offer anything worthwhile to compensate for it. I tried some Matrix bridges as well but found these lacking for my purposes.
So the answer to your question is 'I ended up with XMPP'.