To ask why your parents dying is so catastrophically awful

[NCdoinggriefwrong]

obv talking about parents who die of natural causes and who are elderly…(not those who die with young kids or at age 50 etc - am talking the 75+ cohort)

Have NCed for this as think I might be U.

my DH’s father has Parkinson’s alongside what is increasingly looks like dementia and is dying. He was diagnosed at 81 and is now 86 and obviously declining. My DH has been in an absolute tailspin about this on an ongoing basis, which at some level I understand but I also sort of think he needs to manage a bit better and pull
himself together - he’s had 5 years to get used to the idea his dad has a progressive disease, he knows it’s only going in one direction, and at the end of the day, his dad is 86, how long do people really live?

and it got me thinking (and searching MN threads) about why people are so devastated when their parents die. I have a fabulous relationship with my parents and ofc I will grieve them and miss them when they’re gone (dad in his 80s, mum in her 70s). But I can’t imagine falling apart because my parents do something utterly foreseeable and get old
and die. I’ve been through my parents’ funeral wishes and probate stuff etc with them and we’ve acknowledged they won’t be around forever and are just enjoying the time we do have.

Am I a horrible person and utterly cold fish? I feel like I’m missing something major. FYI I am a compleyely
empathetic person irl so it’s not that I am an emotionless robot in my day to day life. I just don’t understand why a parent dying is anything other than expected and, well, just sad.

What bollocks.

Everyone deals with grief in different ways. I had 9 months notice with my dad, and grieved a fair bit when he was still with us. I didn’t fall apart when he died, he lived a good life, much longer than we ever thought due to bad lungs all his life. He was very matter of fact about dying, which made things easier. I arranged a lovely funeral for him, and wrote and delivered a lovely eulogy. I will always miss him, I think of him a lot, but my brother and I both went back to work the Monday after the funeral on the Friday as we are both people who get on with things. My mum fell apart when her mum died at 80, and I was 14 and it was pretty horrific experience for me. She didn’t care that I was witnessing it, I thought that kind of reaction was normal, but learnt over the years it wasn’t.

Christ I hope you don’t tell your DH to pull himself together.

When a parent dies you can’t make sense of it. This person who has been there your whole life is gone. Just like that. Forever. You looked to them your whole life - now they’re gone.

You’re trying to deal with all the practical stuff (like phoning for an appointment to register the death, on the day he died, because the place was about to shut down for two days …), and your brain is going “This can’t be real. Dad can’t be gone.” And five million competing thoughts.

It’s the culmination of everything. The parent’s life and its impact on yours - it doesn’t get bigger than that!

OK I’m crying now. YABVVVU

I think what Op is trying to say is that at an older age it is not unexpected that someone dies although it is still sad.

We are all different and TBH I’m with you OP, my mum died six weeks ago, I’m not distraught, she had no quality of life in the last year. We weren’t especially close, I could have been a better daughter, she could have been a better mother. As i’ve got older I’ve realised we are all “wired” differently. I live absolutely in the moment, I’ve lost a partner horrifically at 37yo, I’ve watched way too many friends “lose” awful cancer battles in their thirties and forties. My mums death, peaceful in the end, is not the worst thing to happen in my life.

This.

You are so very naive.

I’ve heard my 16 year old nephew with ADHD and ASD talk like this, he couldn’t understand why you would grieve if someone old died. I put it down to a lack of life experience, his ND and he’s never suffered loss.

I know you’re not 16, have you ever suffered loss? This is a very naive way of thinking.

You're not unreasonable and you can't help how you feel but it is a very different feeling when it actually happens. You will be surprised, I was.

It sounds as though you have a good relationship and they are happy with life so just enjoy each other for as long as you can. Try not to think about what will happen in the future.

If this is a goady post, it's a fucking horrible one. The only time I saw my Dad cry was at his mother's funeral. And he was in his sixties.

I have lost my dad - early 70s and a short sharp illness after very late diagnosed cancer.

I sort of get what you mean. I loved my dad, we were close and I saw him a lot. He was a lovely grandpa and my dh loved him.

When he died I was relieved (the end was bloody brutal). I missed him a lot and I still do 4 years later but it's not a crushing grief and never has been. I moved very swiftly into the remembrance phase.

I have lost a sibling as well and that was immeasurably worse and that grief was overwhelming but the circumstance was very very different.

Everyone reacts differently and it doesn't mean I loved my dad less.

I get it OP.. and I can say that because my own Dad died only 4 mths ago... I'm sad and have cried but it was actually a relief when he did eventually die..
He'd been very unwell for years and he truly had had enough and was ready to go...he was 84...
There was a family in the hospice who were with their 27 yr old son/brother..that must have been devastating..I thought how can I be 'devastated' about a man who'd watched all his children/grandchildren grow up, had a fulfilling life and was ready to go..
I actually felt guilty that I wasn't sadder/devastated..but I'm not..
So I hear you...

I was having an enjoyable Sunday eve.. and then I read this thread. I lost my DM back in 2019 and the grief is as real now as it was then. Until a parent dies I don’t think anyone really understands.

You’ll realise when it happens to you.

Trust me, its different to grandparents. I wasn't that close to my mother. It was devastating still.

Parents dying might be inevitable but its still truly awful.

It is fine for you to be pragmatic. I daresay many are. I wonder though how you will actually feel when you know bereavement.

It is not for you to decide how your DH deals with his lot in life. Whether you deem it to be a natural progression, or even a blessing/relief from watching someone slip away from you a little more every day, it isn’t your call.

Pull himself together?

Heartless at best. In reality? Proper cunty.

And aye. Unreasonable.

My Dad had Parkinsons and was in a decline for over a decade. I really could have not have been more prepared for a death than I was for his. But it was still devastating. Not in a «shocked» way, but in the way it hits you like a tonn of bricks. Your parent is gone forever, that unique relationship you had with them is gone forever. I don’t think you can really understand it until you have experienced it.

Losing your parents is terrible whatever age you are. They are the people who know you best. The only people who knew you as a child and the only people who love you unconditionally. They are the first people you have a relationship with or care about.
When they have gone a part of your history has gone and its too late to ask all those questions you never got round to asking.
Losing someone you love is always terrible.

‘Your "view" is healthy.

Your DH is enmeshed in his family dynamics and that is emotionally unhealthy.’

only a sociopath would think this. Your DH sounds emotionally healthy to me, more so than many men. At least he is able to show his emotions.

I don't think you're a horrible person. When our parents get to a certain age we expect them to go, and can't exactly crumble our lives that will still need to carry on once they're gone.

Grief is terrible and you should support him obviously, but I also don't understand why people fall apart in such a huge way.

I think parts of your post are logical but yes, you come across as cold, and also ageist. Just because our parents get old it doesn't mean we love them or value them less.

Logic and emotion are two completely different things.

I held my Mum's hand as she drifted off from pneumonia aged just 77.

16 months later, during the first COVID lockdown and following a call from a concerned neighbour, I found my Dad's 3 days dead body face down on his bedroom floor. He was 79, less than a fortnight off 80.

The combined impact of that little lot damn near broke me. I am only starting to feel vaguely normal again now. I am still sad at all the milestones they didn't live to see with their grandchildren.

Respectfully, OP, you have absolutely no idea.

I think that has to be the worst thread I've ever read on here...

I’m with you, OP. My father died when I was 17; he was only 66 and that wasn’t easy. But my mother is in her 80s, has advanced dementia, had no quality of life and I very much hope she dies sooner rather than later. The person she was is long gone and if she knew the state she is in now, she’d have jumped off a cliff years ago. I am also baffled by people floored by grief when their parents have died after long and awful illnesses, at an advanced age.

Your poor DH. My mum had Parkinson’s and watching her suffer, losing her piece by piece, in the years before she died was very hard. In some ways her death was a relief, knowing that she wasn’t suffering any more. If my DH had your attitude, I would have been so hurt. I really needed his support over those years.

And even if you are prepared, if even you don’t want your mum or dad to be suffering, and you tell yourself they’re at peace now, it still hurts. I felt so unbalanced when she died, like I’d lost a part of me, even though we were not that close when I was younger.