To think a chasm opens between friends when you're the only one who has lost parents?

[Pleasekeepmycoffeehot]

I am in my 30s and have no parents left. The latest bereavement is hitting hard. Apart from one friend who is losing her mum, all my other friends still have both parents.

It makes me feel like we are in different worlds now tbh. It makes me so sad, and it's hard to express that because of course I don't wish this on them! I just wish I still had mine too. It sounds almost resentful, and it's really not that.

It nearly feels like I'm in prison or something now. Just our lives are so, so different now and our futures will be too. I can't look forward to any happy times with my parents, they all do, casually mentioning a lunch with their mum or something like that, as they should do. But it just reminds me of how cut off I am. Everything to do with family stings all the time.

It's awful because I do love my friends but I'm slow to respond to anyone getting in touch with me. It's not because I don't care about them. I do care, I'm just so sad, and also feel like a black cloud of gloom around all their normal lives with their parents and new babies and normal life stuff, like challenging jobs and travel etc. I'm very grateful to people for caring about me and wanting to chat - I mean, there is one friend who has just gone completely radio silent on me and hasn't even acknowledged my loss and that hurts too. Maybe it's just me being a bit of a crap friend, dissatisfied with everything.

Dunno if I'm making sense. Can anyone relate to this?

I don't think this is really about your friends. I think it's about you. It's sad that your parents have died, but your grief seems to be clouding your entire being, which I can promise you is not something your parents would ever have wanted. I think you should consider getting help to work through your mental health and keep your friends - friends are important

OP is this something you felt after the second parent has gone?

When my dad died, I tried not to talk about it because I didn't want to make people feel fearful of it. My DP partner was ill at the time and is gone now. I was very conscious that I didn't want him to waste the time they had, in worrying.

Also, I had one friend who left his parents at 19 and never went back. I think it's hard for him to hear about happy relationships with parents. He was kind to me but I could see that he felt a bit envious that I had the relationship with my dad that I had.

I guess I'm saying you never know what people are going through, it didn't make me feel there was a gulf.
I am sorry things are hard for you

I completely understand. It really hit me in the run up to Christmas last year, when it felt like everyone else was getting ready to go home to families, and I was feeling as if I would never have a Christmas not tinged with sadness again.

@JustDanceAddict I am slightly bitter about it tbh. I mean, amazing it's there but I wish they'd done it earlier. I was told to be strong for my mum, and there was no support at all. I got told it was too much for my teachers to deal with and I couldn't talk to them anymore, had to pick someone else.

Both my parents were dead by the time i was 25 op. I do understand. It's very hard. My friends are lovely but I don't think they have any idea what life is like when your parental support is suddenly not there. Xx

It isn't a given IME. I lost my parents when I was 32 (DM) and 35 (F), and being an only child of an only child and a split generation parent, it has left me with just my DCs for biological family. I'm 39 now, so a few years on from it. A couple of friends have been awesome and still now 'get' how things are/have been despite not living it yet themselves, some were good in the immediate aftermath but just don't get the enduring grief you are left with. The only time I've found it cause friction, discomfort and distance is from people who don't know my life history as well and assume, then get really embarrassed and weird with me when what they've said/asked forces me to disclose they are both dead. I do feel very lonely sometimes because of it, but that is in no way linked to my friends' behaviour, more the lack of people in my life who knew childhood me and I can reminisce with.

It might be because you're still processing very raw grief that you are feeling a gulf between them and you. Hopefully those feelings will fade and you will get closer again with time. Have you had any counselling to help you process what's happened?

Oh and this may sound absolutely horrid but the only plus side is that when all my friends are dealing with very elderly parents and all the issues that brings, I won't have to. It's the world's shittest silver lining but I'm taking it.

No I dint believe it does. They will spend time with their parents too. But why would that come between you ?

I'm the first of my friends to be widowed. So yes, there are so many moments (usually quite mundane) where their lives, or a task for them that needs two people, seem so easy to me, and which bring home that I don't have that any more.

But over the years those moments have developed from being properly heart wrenching to just a mild niggle. So give it time. It's early days.

It can be really hard. I feel like those who haven’t experienced such a staggering bereavement will not realize that you can still be completely overcome by grief for a longtime.

I also (very unreasonably) just can’t summon up much sympathy when someone is heartbroken over the loss of a grandparent who died peacefully in their 90s. I try to mask it; hopefully I am successful as I don’t want to hurt anyone.

Sorry for your loss OP. I know what you mean as I also lost both parents in my thirties and none of my friends had. It’s the finality of it all and the way we are now next on the conveyor belt of doom that’s hard and the feeling of being alone even if we have a partner and/or kids of our own. I think for those who have not lost parents in this way, it’s impossible to understand all the emotions it brings up but like pp said, it’s the same with any big life event, hard to fully understand unless you’ve been through it yourself.

As someone who had lost both parents by my very early 20s, iIt startles me when I hear of an adult who has parents still alive. Like a defining feature of becoming an adult for me was no longer having parents and having to strike out on my own without any backup. It almost feels like adults with parents are still somehow children.

When I lost my parents I became the oldest person in my family. The custodian of all the “stuff” for my younger siblings, the one who keeps the address book with the addresses of people we only know though our parents, the one who keeps the family albums and childhood crafts in the loft, the one who cooks the Christmas dinner, the fallback position, the default setting for emergencies, can I sleep on the sofa, can I borrow some money. The keeper of the family tree and the family stories. There is no one older to ask, no one left. Nobody to ask about when I was a baby, when I was a kid, what happened on that trip, how old was I when I got my first tooth, how old was sister when she took her first steps, what was that funny story about brother. I don’t know. I’ll never know.

I also (very unreasonably) just can’t summon up much sympathy when someone is heartbroken over the loss of a grandparent who died peacefully in their 90s. I try to mask it; hopefully I am successful as I don’t want to hurt anyone.

Same

@Comedycook No I feel kind of similar, in that well they're dead - so at least I don't have to watch that again, and they have gone through it and are at peace. It's not all ahead.

I do worried that my lovely DP will be taken away from me soon though. And it is one factor among other worries that makes me think trying to have a child of my own would be fucking crazy.

This is bad enough and I don't want to risk my child dying or me dying when they are small and leaving them. My parents were young dying, in their 50s and 60s, which probably colours my view on all this.

It almost feels like adults with parents are still somehow children

Yes I totally agree. I find it perplexing when my friends say stuff about their parents helping them...with house stuff, DIY, moving, financial help. Doesn't seem like they're quite proper adults yet

It's the not even trying to explain it to them because how do you put the loss into words? It also makes me very sad and scared knowing what they've got to come and there's nothing I can do to stop it. Losing my dad was the worst most life changing thing that ever happened to me.

I do worried that my lovely DP will be taken away from me soon though

Yes that terrifies me. I've told him that he's banned from dying 😂

I've lost both my parents and really can't relate at all to what you're saying.

I'm much older now than my dad was when he died. I hate 'big' birthdays, I hate being older than he ever experienced. It's a weird, horrible thing to lose a parent when you are very young. Always an empty space, and unconnected generations.

I think when people have parents as adults it gives them an inner security. If their life suddenly imploded, they have somewhere to go and someone to take care of them.

I feel like those who haven’t experienced such a staggering bereavement will not realize that you can still be completely overcome by grief for a longtime.

Yes this too.

I was 25 the first time and it changed the course of my twenties.

I thought there was something wrong with me for a long time. My friends were all doing great in their careers and I was really struggling with, well, everything. Felt so ashamed of being a mess, but all I knew was I was in desperate pain all the time and thought I would die from it at times, it was so overwhelming.

It took a few years to really feel steady again.

I think traumatic loss in general can make you feel the way you do. I don't think it's isolated to just parents. The older a person gets, the more likely they are to lose parents, siblings, children. They all leave an indelible mark. Losing the people around you is awful. Deepest sympathies. x

You were young to lose your parents, so I’m not surprised you’re feeling like the odd one out. But I think grief is making you more sensitive. Your friends won’t be any different with you going forward. And they probably won’t think before mentioning things that might hurt such as lunches with a mum or a break with their parents.

I’ve recently lost both parents, but I’m 51 and have 3 siblings that are much older. So my parents were old (over 90). I had flashes of resentment that my siblings got to be well into their 60s (one almost 70) before their parents died. I now see that was one of the irrational bits of grieving.

I have a friend who is my age and has both parents. They are both ‘only’ 75. When my parents were this age, they were incredibly fit and active (in fact they stayed that way and were still completely independent, mobile, driving, sharp etc until they were at the very last couple of weeks of their lives when illnesses quickly picked them off). My friend’s parents both have dementia and they are both in separate residential care. The road ahead is bleak. So, although I’m the parentless one, I feel extremely lucky that mine didn’t suffer or decline.

Everyone has or will have a cross to bear.

I can completely see how hard that is op. 30s is young to loose parents. You still need them and would like their support of course you do.

My deepest sympathy op xx

Oh, OP, I’m so sorry for your loss. My mum died (she was 62, I was 31) when I was 8 months pregnant and it’s absolutely the worst thing that has ever happened to me. I don’t know what I’d have done if I’d not gone straight into a year of mat leave which allowed me to just focus on me and the baby. I’m getting better at coping but little things upset me, like seeing a baby and grandma out and about, or hearing about other people’s mums.

It’s not that I want people to have to cross the bridge that I have, I’d just like them to exercise a bit more empathy at times.