Do you ever randomly miss your parent years after they died?

[drivinmecrazy]

I'm having one of those days today.
My lovely dad passed away16 years ago.
Most of the time i can compartmentalise it, but sometimes it just hits me.
It's like I'm reliving that moment all these years later.
I'm sure it's normal but each time it happens it's like a punch in the stomach.

So today I'm resigned to just be sad and wait for it to pass.
I just want to wallow in the sadness for a while.
I know tomorrow it'll be behind me.
I guess it'll always be like this?

I hear you, my mum died 7 years ago and most of the time I’m ok but some days it’s like it was yesterday.

Be kind to yourself, take it easy today, sending love x

Yes definitely. Most days I’m absolutely fine and then sometimes it just hits me out of the blue. I just go with it, cry if I need to.

Acknowledging the feeling rather than trying to stop it definitely helps. Look after yourself today

My DDad died when I was a teen, and yet sometimes I still feel the tears pricking my eyes when it hits me he will never meet my DH and our DC.

I'm sorry for your loss - it is rubbish isn't it. 22 years since I lost Mum and it doesn't get any easier. Allow yourself to be sad if you need to

Only 3 years for me but yes.
Some days I can talk about her and smile, other days it’s going over what happened and missing her so badly it takes away my breath.

Absolutely. Coming up to 8 years that my Mum died. I'm having a few health issues at the moment and it suddenly hit me with a huge wave of grief how much I am missing her right now.

Been a few years since I lost my mum. I do still have moments when it does hit me again, and when I really wish I could talk to her. I do like to think she still pops in sometimes, which is a bit daft , but it brings me some comfort.

Yes indeed.
I often think of my dad, and he died 51 years ago, when I was in the sixth form.

My mum died 29 years ago and I think of her, too.

I'd love them to see me and my children now.

I highly recommend the podcast "Griefcast" with Cariad Lloyd. She talks with other people who have lost family/friends (she lost her dad to cancer as a teenager) about the different ways grief can present itself.

Whilst it can be an emotional listen, it's not depressing and at times is very funny. A good episode to start with is the one with Romesh Ranganathan talking about his father's death.

Bottom line is yes this is "normal" and it can hit you out of the blue for no obvious reason.

It's tough
My mum died when my DC were very young and I've got used to the idea that she isn't around.
But seeing my DD in her prom dress was a wrench knowing that neither of her grandmother's were able to see/comment on it.

Several years after my mum died I had dropped my DS at school and was walking home and saw my neighbour with her mum having a chat as they walked back.(her mum was visiting as she lives overseas) Quite unexpectedly I felt really tearful and a wave of jealousy, I had to slow down my walk so they didn't see me as I knew I was about to burst into tears!

Yes all the time! Five years now since my dad died and especially with all the “firsts” with my kids it hits especially hard. He died before I had any, and he was so great with kids they would have loved each other!

It's 'nice' to have these feelings validated because DH is someone who thinks what's gone before stays in that box, my mums pretty similar.
Her favourite saying is 'the past is another country'.
My kids are far more empathetic but I don't want to put this on them as they were only little when he passed, and for my DD1 she was 7 at the time and it is quite triggering for her all these years later.
So I try and keep it in as much as possible.
But today the house is empty so I have time to 'indulge' myself in the sadness.
I'm not even particularly thinking of my dad, I do that every day. But sometimes like today I just 'feel' the grief and sadness if that makes sense

yes. esp when my daughter (13) makes an observation generally of me that echoes what my mother would have said. It brings a wry smile to my face. My mother died before my daughter was on the scene but they would have been great together (maybe not for me)

Yup. It's the moments that I can't share with them - little things, more than big stuff. After my dad died, I did a lot of family history that he would have found fascinating, but it's the potential gossip I unearthed in between the lines that I'd love to have picked over with my mum. I found a lot of photographs with no names or dates (MARK UP YOUR FAMILY PHOTOS, PEOPLE) that I wish I'd asked them about while I could.

I still talk to them though, out loud when I'm on my own. Sometimes I get an expected wash of pure emotion, completely out of nowhere, and it feels like a sign that they're somehow near me. I go on that Coco principle: while you remember someone and they live in your thoughts, they're not truly gone.

My mum died in 2014. Our relationship was volatile. I sometimes miss her. Sometimes I can feel her presence. She isn't far away. Often I find myself thinking 'I'll go round and see my mum ... oh, nope, she's gone!'

I've even become a believer is white feathers... she's a dab hand with them. 😂
In the early days she'd announce her presence by filling the house with the delicate aroma of Benson & Hedges.

eta: And today, reading the Royal Photos thread, I was in tears missing the late Queen Elizabeth II. I never spent any time with her! She didn't know I existed. Didn't matter, I missed her.

Back in the days of paper bank statements, when I was at uni my mum would forward them onto me in halls. One day my dog ate through the envelope and she wrote a funny message on the back. As usual I filed it away with all my documents. Years later when I was shredding them - because I really dont need the last 20 years of statements, I found the one with her handwriting on and couldn't get rid of it. It still brings me to tears when I come across it. It's bittersweet.

My dad died six years ago this week. My youngest never got to meet him and he would have adored her. My eldest barely remembers him. Sometimes it hits like a ton of bricks. Grief is so personal and there is no wrong way to mourn. We're off to attend a 50th anniversary memorial next month for dh's grandfather. According to my mil it still hits her hard and she mourns all the things he never got to see and do, the rest of her siblings get married, meeting the majority of his grandchildren and so on.

Oh god the handwriting!!
That's really hard to see but so welcome.
When my girls were small my dad bought them leather penguin gift tags and wrote a little note attached.
Even now when my girls are 23 & 18 the Christmas tree is never fully dressed until they hang their penguins still with notes attached on the tree.
So many more memories that still live on in our family.
They do give me comfort.
But days like today I'm still the little girl who misses her daddy.
Mad to say as I was 34 when he died!

Oh yes.
I had a complicated relationship with my Dad who died 7 years ago, but often I find myself using 'his' phrases or thinking 'must tell dad that' and then there is a wrench that he has missed out so much, he never got to see his gandchildren marry or his little great grandson who he would have adored.
But mostly I am pragmatic about it.. people die, and life does move on!

Ha, I was just wondering whether to buy a laminator so I could laminate my Mum's recipes. She had such beautiful neat handwriting.

I think of her every day but every now and then the thought of her and everything she's missed (and I've missed telling her) wipes me off my feet.

Yes, totally.

My mum died over 20yrs ago and i think i have cried and wallowed about it more in the last year than in the previous 5 years added together. Different stages of my life throw up different feelings about the loss.

For example my dads new wife recently had a first grandchild and i feel sick with envy that that child gets a granny and grandad, i know its completely unreasonable but its such a huge loss not only for me but for the whole family.

take care and be kind to yourself x

Yes.
I was clearing out my bedside table this week and I found an uncashed cheque that my Dad wrote me tucked inside an old diary and it had me in floods of tears.
And stupid things, like my Mum loved Turkish Delight so I always bought her a box for Christmas and it gets me upset when I see it in the shops at that time of year now. With my sister, it's Maynard's wine gums. She used to take my Dad a bag every time she visited him in his last months and she can't bear to buy them now.
It's over a decade now and I still occasionally find myself going to pick up the phone to call my Dad if something I know he would have been interested in has happened.
I don't think it ever goes away completely and in a way I am glad it doesn't as I would never want to forget them.

I hope my DDs will think of me in such sweet terms.
I hope I've given them enough of me that my love for them will always be there with them throughout their lives.
I guess that is what love mean's ultimately

Yes, very much so. 21 years without mum and 12 without dad and still bereft at times.

I had one of those moments yesterday. I'm normally racing around all day every day with no time to think, but my ds has been off school poorly and I was lying down with him yesterday, him sleeping and me listening to a radio show I like that plays 70s and 80s songs, and one of the songs just hit me and I felt like I couldn't breathe. My dad and I used to listen to the charts religiously every Sunday and we loved this song (PhD - I Won't Let You Down) and it just had me in tears taking me back to those years. It'll be 23 years next week without him, and it often sneaks back up on me. And although I feel sad, I like his memory to come to me like this.