To feel really sad about this

[charmofavideonasty]

I had to fill in a form at my new workplace and it asked for who to contact in case of an emergency and I had to write 'no one.'

I know it's daft to get upset about it but it's put me in a really low mood!

Mrs Cumbersnatch got out of the wrong side of bed this morning

OP you are perfectly reasonable to feel sadness at a lack of 'next of kin' and I wouldn't wish to minimise it in any way

Yanbu bless you. If you haven't got family to be next of kin them what can you do, just put a good friend iron neighbour.

I do understand. I lost my mum at 19 and my dad at 29.

For me, the most sad I feel is not about "not having someone" (my friends really are my family, regardless of their own families - love gets bigger to accommodate IMO), it's more that my DC won't get to have that grandparent experience that I had. It can make me feel a bit wistful when friends talk about their own DC going off with their grandparents, etc.

But you can't change it, so you find ways to make up for it. I am fortunate that I have such good friends I guess.

Hope you feel a bit better tomorrow.

I totally understand OP. Both me and dh are from another country and my family moved from Europe to Australia when my D's was born. I frequently struggle to fill second and third contacts on school forms etc. When dh works away I am conscious that I have no one else in the UK apart from my very young ds. It can be unsettling.[

Pounding thanks. I feel sad any future children won't know grandparents although I never knew mine really so I won't know what they will miss - neither will they.

I'm ok really. But sometimes it does hit me that if I died no one would miss me really and that's hard.

I've been the same since my mum died, quite a few times I've found it upsetting too. Now have a lovely DP, but since he lives in a different city I've even had to put a friend on my maternity notes as emergency contact as there would be little point calling DP to collect me if I collapsed - it would take him something like 5 or 6 hours to get here even in an emergency.

Last time the form filling thing happened was when I booked myself and DP into a campsite and they wanted contact details of someone who wasn't either of us, so I couldn't put DP. Luckily he has family and we put them, I had to run out of the office and get someone's number from him.

An extra benefit of having the child I'm expecting now will be becoming properly and officially part of DP's family, so I'll soon have parents in law and other people again who I have a claim to, and who have claims on me. I'm so grateful for that, and I'll never forget the years I've spent without it and how it felt to be alone.

Hope you're ok x

Charm I worked for a lovely man for 12 years. He was married and he and his wife didn't have any kids. Very sadly they both died of illnesses just as they retired with my boss dying three months after his dear wife. His employees including me are totally devastated. I left the job 6 years ago to emigrate and had some contact with him during those years. He was just such an exceptionally kind and humane person. I paused at a framed photo of him that I had made tonight and thought well he didn't have children to mourn him but here I am one of his staff weeping. I know it sounds terribly strange to be so upset about someone who was an employer and not family but I am. I suppose there are people who just draw us in. RIP Eddie - never forgotten.

Charm