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’m very fortunate to still have my parents so hope I’m not going to offend by posting this, but when we lost my DGM I distinctly remember a friend of my DM’s sympathising with being ‘orphaned’ and how that feels no matter what age it happens.

I dare say you could say that about a lot of things....life changes, one person has 2 kids at barely 20, another is battling infertility at 38. One has a husband, one is single and one is going through a divorce. One tell you she thinks she gay and the other hasn't told you she's got cancer.
What ever is happening to us feels like the most significant thing ever. That's not to say it's anything but significant, and I'm sure it registers everytime someone mentions Xmas, mothers day, Nana, grandad, nnaggy MILs , being a Daddy's Girls, babysitting etc etc. 30 is very young to be without both parents.
Wen my dad died my relationship with my mum got closer and as she's aged I've become closer to my sister so I have gained something....I would of course trade it all in to have my dad back. ....but a mum as well. That must be hard.

I find this interesting because I think it must be harder as you will have had even longer forming bonds with them.

@mistermagpie I disagree that it’s grief the OP is feeling rather than absence. Yes, I grieved my mum’s loss but I particularly felt her absence when I had my little boy, and saw all my NCT friends were going on shopping trips and having afternoon tea together with their mums and babies, and having them babysit etc. I still miss my brother ten years after he died - it’s not grief now, it’s the hole having no sibling any more has left in my life, especially following the death of my dad - when in the natural order of things I and my brother would have been handling the death admin together.

Yes, OP will be close to friends again when the immediate grief has died down a bit. But until her friends lose parents too, there will always be a bit of a disconnection, a lack of understanding.

For no doubt good reasons you’ve gone no contact with yours but it’s different to losing a beloved parent.

I'm reading Grief Works by Julia Samuel.

It's written by a grief psychotherapist, who has spent 25 years+ 'working with the bereaved & understanding the full repercussions of loss.'

This is a wise and compassionate book.

Might be worth a look when you're ready OP, even if you just dip in and out of it.

Everything you are feeling is perfectly natural and valid.

Focus on small everyday comforts to soothe yourself and feel safe. Sending you a big virtual hug. ❤️

Both my parents are dead - my mother when I was in my late teens, my father when I was in my very early thirties. All of my friends still have their parents. There is just a level of them not being able to understand what I have gone through and am still struggling to cope with.

Grief isn't linear. Sometimes it's fine, other times, it's still raw.Birthdays, Christmases, Mother's Day is hard. Time isn't necessarily the great healer that some claim it to be. As my parents have been dead for quite a while now, my mother has been dead longer than she was ever alive, some of my friends have this idea that I should be over it all by now, that is should be easier. Only someone who has never lost a parent will think any of this. It's only now I am in late 40s that I am starting to understand just how much my mother dying when she did has impacted my life. So yes, I do think there is a chasm, or at least an invisible divide between those whom have lost parents and those whom have not.

Life is really unfair. I was chatting a while ago to a grandmother at my dcs school picking up her grandkids. She was in her seventies and she told me that at the weekend she was going to visit her parents. I was amazed she still had both parents alive. On the other hand, a mum at my dcs school died, her youngest hadn't even turned one year old 😥

Is this something you've experienced or are guessing at? Because research into childhood bereavement isn't quite as simple as using your adult emotions. For example, just one piece of advice from child bereavement UK:

Sometimes, if a child was not given the opportunity to express their grief or talk about the person who has died, in adulthood they can be left with difficult feelings that are complicated and unresolved.

I'm sorry for your loss
I lost my dad when I was 29 and my mum when I was 32, but it didn't open a chasm between me and my friends who still had parents living.

It is a cliche, but it is also very true that time makes a huge difference to how you feel. Grief gives way to sadness which then gives way to nostalgia. My parents dies over 30 years ago, and I don't feel sad any more.

I had moved away from home several years earlier so I was used to only seeing my parents every few weeks, so they weren't the constant physical presence in my life that other people's parents were.

One thing to consider in the future - a lot of my friends are now dealing with aged parents and all the issues that brings, mainly dementia. This is something I don't have to face, and you won't have to face either.

Please take care of yourself and allow yourself to grieve.

I get it, OP.

I lost my Mum at 29 and my Dad at 41, so not massively young, but certainly before everyone else I know, and at 50 this year, most of my friends still have both parents still alive.

My Mum died before I got together with DH and before I had DC and I feel that she was robbed of all that, and so was I. I would have loved nothing more than to be able to have turned to her for advice and support, and just to bond over the shared experience of motherhood. Especially as I am not close with MIL.

Sometimes it brings out uncharitable thoughts in me. When people older than me lose a parent, my default is to shrug and think they had a good innings, rather than to be sad at their passing. My friend’s older DH lost his mother earlier this year, and he’s older than my Mum was when she died. I’m thinking (to myself), ‘well yes it’s sad, but come on, you’re all getting on, it was going to happen’ - which is completely unfair of me.

I’m really sorry for your loss. I hope as the immediate grief subsides, you will come to terms with things.

I agree @WolfFoxHare about feeling the absence rather than the grief. In all honesty, I don't miss my mum as a person, but I miss having a mum if that makes sense

I'm sorry, op, for the grief you are experiencing.
I've lost both my parents. Until it's happened to you, you can't know what it feels like. My husband still has both his. Most of my friends still have both.
I hate knowing what's coming their way

God. THIS.

There are so many things you want to share with them. I think this is what makes it feel as though things will never be ok again.

The thing most important to my parents was that I (and all their loved ones) have as good a life as possible even though we're without them.

So, I'm here, trying to not get totally sucked under by grief so am trying to think of my future in general as well as planning things to do that I will enjoy.

I find myself getting genuinely distracted and excited by planning something - say a concert - and then I remember that I can't even tell my mum about it. Even though she'd be interested in that music and would have loved to either go herself, or just hear about it if she couldn't go as we lived in different places.

And then the shine goes off the fun thing. Everything is sad now, even happy fun things.

Also if I could go back in time, I wish I'd chosen a partner with lovely parents. DH is a great man but his father was never around and his mother is disinterested and a very cold woman. If anyone deserved nice in laws, it was me!

OP, I lost mine within 2 years of one another when I was in my late 30s with preschool aged children. I’m 51 now and my children are teenagers now. 13 years on and still most of my friends have one or both parents alive. It does get easier but I found it hard for many years. What I have found most difficult is the lack of reassurance. My children have of course gone through all the normal stages of growing up. An example; when my son went to a music festival for the first time, I was excited for him but also anxious. I knew that if my parents were around they would have reassured me that my son is sensible and will be fine. And I’d have felt better about it.

I have always been extremely independent but I loved my mum and dad, enjoyed their company and the reassuring presence they had in my life.

It does get easier over time and as a PP wrote, many of my friends now have parents they need to dedicate a lot of time to caring for. I have freedom from that, though I would choose it over them being gone.

I understand completely. I lost one of my parents coming up two years ago and, unconsciously or otherwise, now only appear to socialise with people who have lost one or both parents or a sibling. It's not that we sit around talking about our lost loved ones all the time; it's just that they are the only ones that will understand how my life and feelings about life changed forever the day my parent died.
I do feel a bit bad for cutting off one of my oldest friends who wouldn't respect my wish for space in the aftermath and persisted in trying to get in touch when I said I would when I was ready- but not bad enough to re establish contact 😂

@Pleasekeepmycoffeehot ah damn... 💐 OP. I completely get where you're coming from. My mum died when I was a bairn and I'm estranged from my dad. I've always felt different from my peers because of it. It hits hard when I see others of my age, or hear friends talk about there parents. I'm always shocked at the level of support they get. I have never experienced this. It makes me feel incredibly sad. I don't.want to offer advice. I often get attempts such as... But you have your own family now... Yeah, this does not help. I get they're trying to help. But, yeah, being the orphan feels crap ❤️

I had this too - felt like a bit of a leper at the time. No support whatsoever for young kids in the 1980s who lost their parents. My mum got grief counselling, Cruse and all sorts, but I was left to get on with it. Not ideal, but it was a long time ago. It hasn't made the slightest difference to my adult friendships, though I got a hint of the leper thing when my (older) mum developed dementia and had to move into care. I had a 1 year old baby at the time!

It will get easier - but as you know it will come and go in waves no matter how old you get.

My Mum and I had similar reading tastes so every now and then when I've discovered a new author or read a really good book it hits me because for the 30 odd years she would have been the first person I called or texted about that.

She found the 'Outlander' books before me and every time the author releases the latest book in the series I think of my Mum and that she isn't here to discuss it with.

I've found the 'grief as a ball in a box' analogy true for me. It helps years down the line - it's ten years since I lost my Mum - that every now and then when the ball hits the grief button, it's still as painful but I know it's not as often.

psychcentral.com/blog/coping-with-grief-ball-and-box-analogy#grief-as-a-shrinking-ball

For me the chasm impacts everything. No one has ever been there for me. So as a mother now... I'm on my own. No family at all. No emotional support. No understanding or knowledge from my own bloodline. No adoration for my kids. Birthdays and Christmases etc are especially hard. No financial help. If I fuck up, i have no fall back. It feels very lonely and stressful at the same time. I know so many of my friends who had so much help, financial, emotional, childcare... I don't have this. I know that this loss contributes to the deep seating feeling of just wanting to go away. There's a lake near me and I often daydream about just jumping in. My kids stop me. The idea that this decision would haunt them for the rest of there life is enough to counter the constant ‘fuck it’ in my head.

Re the difference when you have gone no contact - this is in no way to say one is worse than the other. But you made a positive choice to go no contact - it’s a decision you have made, a sections you’re in control of, a decision that has probably improved your life. When a parent dies, it is completely out of your control and in the cases of sudden death, completely blindsided you. There’s no aspect of it that is an improvement to your life.

I do understand that having toxic parents who make your life a misery must be very traumatic too.

Did you post about this a few weeks ago op?

I agree it feels different when you have lost a parent. I lost my dad over a decade ago and have had several life threatening crisis with my mum and act as a carer for her and I sadly don't think she will be around much longer. I'm still in my thirties.

It's not destroyed my life though - that sounds very much like raw grief speaking.

I'm often shocked at how much support people get from their parents e.g. cleaning/ ironing/ childcare. I've not had that support as an adult so it feels like something very teenage to me.

Like pps have said, you don't understand it until You've been through it. In the same way I will never truly understand infertility or miscarriage etc. I've just not experienced it and I'm sort of oblivious to it.

I will say as well, it can be very hard supporting someone grieving, particularly if you've never been through it before. I'm my experience there are some very difficult conversations which many people aren't comfortable with and a lot of times where the person doesn't respond to texts/ calls. I recognise my own missed messages and slow responses and keep contacting making it clear i dont expect a reply, but I'm here.

I don't feel there's a chasm as such but I sure as heck envy those who have their mums around and are close to them. My 2 close friends however are not close to their mums and are upset by that frequently so I realise that it's not always sunshine and rainbows, so to speak

Estrangement doesn't just occur as a choice a such. In my case, even if I kept pining for my dads attention he still wouldn't give a shit. Having a parent who doesn't give a fuck about you is deeply damaging. My mum died when a was 2. I now have no contact with my dad after year's of abuse. Both are traumatic and certainly in my case there is no hierarchy. Each hurt like fuck.

@Sparklybutold I’m certainly not going to argue that’s easier that losing a beloved parent. Hard in a different way.

I was much less close to my dad and while losing him was a shock, this time the worst bit is the feeling of now being completely alone and orphaned, rather than the utter devastation I felt when my mum and my brother died. I don’t miss my dad, the person, as much as I still miss both of them. I feel a lot of guilt that our relationship wasn’t better though.