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 think that you are on the other side (or in the middle) of an experience that they haven't gone through yet. Actually in some ways it's similar to becoming a parent, in that it is something that you can't really fully imagine (however hard you try) until you've been through it. I lost my dad in my early twenties, none of my friends could relate - but they tried, and I love them for that.

However:
It's like my life is so destroyed so far beyond the normal life problems like housing, with no chance of ever being ok again. Because obviously it can't be. Do you really mean that your life has been totally destroyed because your parents have passed away? Most people lose their parents at some point in their lives. Your life will be ok again.

That's not reality though is it? My parents are alive and I didn't have anyone to take care of me when I was a child nevermind an adult and I'm far from the only one.

Lots of people have their own 'thing' that others can't understand. Maybe because I've dealt with my 'thing' since I was a child I see it differently but I've never felt the fact that friends might have a loving family leaves a 'chasm' between us, I don't really think about it at all really. I think the OP is feeling grief which is understandable in her circumstances but the image some people have painted of everyone else going off having lovely family time just isn't lots of people's reality even when they have living parents/family.

No i dont agree at all. Losing a parent as a child or teen must be awful but as an adult capable of adult emotions i don't think this should be a chasm between people whose parents haven't passed yet.

My dad died when I was very young, at school, and I have really struggled to care about people losing their parents at an older age.

Same, although I wouldn't tell anyone that in real life.

I can recall at around age 9 a girl in my class asking me about my dad and I said he was dead. The absolute look of horror on her face as she backed away slowly, like she was realising for the first time that parents can die and wanting to escape me in case it was contagious! I learned to keep it a secret as the weird reactions made me feel like a freak, which I think is fairly common for young children with dead parents.

It's grief you are feeling, not the absence of parents, and I think it might be more helpful for you to frame it in that context, instead of that you are now permanently living a different kind of life to your friends?

I am NC with my parents. Properly NC, I haven't seen or spoken to them in a decade, they don't know where I live, haven't ever met my children etc. It's permanent.

So I do know what it's like not to have parents, but I don't even notice when friends say that they are meeting their mum or it's Father's Day or that kind of thing. I don't consider myself as 'other' to them or that we can't relate to each other, we just have a different family structure.

I guess what I'm saying is that on paper, I have no parents and neither do you, but you feel the way you feel about it because of the grief that you are (quite rightly) experiencing. I'm probably not expressing this very well but I think what's setting you apart is your sadness, not the literal reality of not having a mum to go for lunch with or whatever.

So my advice to you would be to consider this part of the grieving process, rather than that you will never be able to connect with other people who have parents again. You will obviously grieve forever on some level, but it's not always going to feel like such a huge part of who you are. Then I think these feelings will diminish a bit. I would do some bereavement counselling long term but don't think that you will always feel the way you do now, it's all so raw but it will get more manageable.

OP thank you for writing this post. I lost my mum a couple of years ago and I feel like I'm in some exclusive club that none of my friends are members of (and I don't want to be a member of). They just don't get it. I don't mean that unkindly or ungratefully but just as a statement of fact. I don't have the words to explain the depth of loss I still feel and I suspect to a certain extent they wouldn't want to hear it as they don't want to have to think about dealing with it themselves.

I'm a bit older than you but still find myself in this position a good 20 years before I would reasonably have expected to. I have grown much closer to a couple of people though who sadly have lost parents earlier as well.

I think this just illustrates how selfish people can be. You soon learn who your real friends are when death or serious illness comes calling. People surprise you too - the ones you wouldn’t expect do the most and vice versa.

I felt like this after losing my Mum - it's almost like time is split into a before and after.

She was sick for a while so I knew it was coming but even so I couldn't intellectually get what it was going to be like.

I had older parents so have many friends who still have most of their grandparents, as well as their parents.

I don't resent them for it, if I think about it, it just makes me sad for what's to come for them too.

But I definitely feel different than before.

Yes I completely relate I lost a parent at 22 ( I'm now 40's) all my friends had a set of parents and could not relate at all to what I was going through. I have endured 20 + years of them all having parents who became grandparents. I have watched them be walked down the aisle, have grandparents who helped with children, parents who gave advice over finances, DIY help etc etc.
It has been hard. A few are now beginning to lose parents but I feel a bit resentful when they want support from me but don't seem to see how different it was for me. One was telling me how sad they were that their father wouldn't see their Child go to uni??? My father didn't even meet my husband, walk me down the aisle, see any grand children or even know how I did in my degree. I obviously have grief issues but my god please think who you are talking to! At the time of my bereavement I was treated as a leper and never asked how I was ( I wasn't coping).

I’m a bit older than you - early 40s - but recently lost my dad after losing my mum and brother in my early 30s and I do feel like that a bit. Several of my friends have lost at least one parent (mostly their mum, usually breast cancer) but no one else has lost both, and only one other friend has lost a sibling (and she has both parents). After my dad died, I felt very lost for a while. It’s ebbed a bit recently, possibly because I’ve got quite a big health issue that’s just cropped up and so my mind is fully occupied with that.

My friends were all very sympathetic when it happened but it’s slid off most of their radars now, 4 months later. Two in particular I’m very disappointed with as they basically have almost disappeared. I just tell myself that while to me it’s a MASSIVE deal, to them it’s something that happened to someone else months ago and because they haven’t lost parents, they have no point of reference for the dislocation and loneliness I’m feeling.

You totally have my sympathy, op. I lost my parents relatively young as well and neither of my closest friends came to the funerals, a fact which really upset me at the time although I understood it would have been difficult for them. They also (jointly) decided I was better off with my dh supporting so they backed off from being in touch for a long time. Now we are all older, they have lost or are losing their parents and tell me how hard it is. 'I know,' I say, 'I know.' I've been to all their parents' funerals and they tell me how much it has meant to them and I'm pleased. I am now at least in a position to be empathetic to them and I give them my sympathy and my time as they need it. I feel I do it in memory of my DM who was a generous soul.

Do you really mean that your life has been totally destroyed because your parents have passed away? Most people lose their parents at some point in their lives. Your life will be ok again.

It's grief. I know cognitively, that my life will (most likely, I mean who really knows really, anything could happen) be ok again, because I've done this before and quite honestly felt I could never be ok, but it somehow did become ok and my life did become peaceful with times of deep joy again, one day much later on.

I don't feel like it possibly can be ok now, no, not truly. I realise this is a feeling.

Feelings aren't facts but they are damn good at convincing you.

Maybe as time passes, even if your friends still have their parents, you won’t feel this way and it will get easier.

Amongst my friends, there’s a mix of those who have 2 great parents, those who have lost one or both parents and those who have no contact with their parents.

I really don’t feel it affects our friendships how you describe. We’re all adults and have lives completely independent of parents. Of course in the early days of losing a parent, some have struggled, but that’s where the rest of us have stepped up and supported them.

For me one of the things I didn't expect is I feel more sad that my Mum is gone during happy times than sad.

I expected to feel her loss when I was sad or struggling and couldn't go to her for comfort but I wasn't expecting how sharply the grief comes back during the most joyous of times - DD learning to swim, getting a new job, DSD wedding etc - not being able to share the joys of life with her hurts a lot.

What a weird and mean spirited comment

Yes I totally agree with you. People with parents still alive will never understand. I had to distance myself from friends with close families as I couldn't bear to hear about their family Christmases, lunch with their mums, babysitting on tap, mothers and Father's Day etc etc. I don't begrudge anyone who has this but it makes the loss feel worse. There is literally nobody who cares about me or my children. My parents never met them.

I hear you. Please take it easy on yourself, it is hard and I agree that people can't 100% understand unless they've been there.

It will be ok, but differently.

I think that’s unfair. I have no contact with my parents due to abuse. I can still have empathy for those that have lovely parents and lose them.

I'm so sorry to hear about the loss of both your parents OP.

I lost my dad suddenly in my mid 20s and I don't think anyone prepares you for how much it hurts to lose parents as an adult. Everyone assumes because it happens one day that it'll be okay but it is agony.

I do still have my mum so appreciate it's not the same but I know what you mean. I am very lucky with my friends and particularly my best friend is incredible but there are times when people mentioning their dad makes me feel very sad and I cannot imagine how I'd feeling losing my mum too.

I hope in time this chasm because less for you but I'm sending you lots of well wishes.

We’re all adults and have lives completely independent of parents

I just don't relate to this. I'm in my forties as our my friends. Their parents still play a massive supporting role in their lives. If they moved house, their parents would help. If they renovated their parents would help or give them money. They seem like older adolescents than independent adults in many ways.

Can relate to this and yes, it’s lonely.

A lot of the replies here are a bit predictable, because a lot of people either don’t understand or haven’t reached the stage that I think the OP has recognised.

My mum died when I was 17, a few weeks before I was about to sit my mock A levels. My dad died when I was 33, a grown woman, but ‘young’ to have lost both parents. My wedding only had my brother there from my family, they’ve never met my husband, child, don’t know I’m having another child. All that is sad.

But where I feel this difference between myself and friends is because this huge milestone that is coming to them has already happened to me but I can’t identify because I was at a different stage when it hit me. I know in the next ten years (probably) and certainly the next twenty I’ll be expected to support my DH and my friends through their grief and it stings a bit because no one will acknowledge my very old grief because it was so very long ago and doesn’t matter. Except it does.

Probably the best way I can explain it is when you’re out of sync with your friends. If you have your first baby at 25 when your friends aren’t even dating, or to flip that, you only start dating at 35 when your friends have completed their families some seven years prior. You’re out of sync and that always makes you isolated.

I suppose it just depends on circumstances. My parents have never been supportive so I was always used to being without them. But even my friends who have lovely parents, they would help them move house etc, but day to day, we all look to our partners and friends more so than parents if we need support.