To feel a bit disconnected to people because I lost my parents

[showmethephotos]

My mum died when I was a teenager, and so I had to grow up fast. I felt very different to my school friends and when I went away to university I still felt a bit different. My dad then died a few years later.

I am getting to the age now where parents of my friends are edging into their late 70s/80s (depending on how old they were when they had them) and I know in the next ten years my friends will be going through the heartbreaking loss of their parents. And I can’t really relate because mine are so long gone.

I am not really expecting anything from this post other than to wonder if a) anyone can identify with this and b) if anyone understands what I mean.

I lost my Dad when he was fit and well and in his early 60s. I was 29. I was completely devastated. It really changed my life. But my mother I lost when she was 83, I was caring for her, she lived with us. I had 2 children of my own. Although it was sad, it just wasn't the same tearing apart of my life. My relationship with my mother was a bit reversed at that stage, as another poster mentioned.

I'd say it's a completely different kind of grief when you lose an elderly parent and when you're not young yourself.

OP I understand you as I lost my parents in my early 20s. I have friends and acquaintances who lost their parents before or around the same age. (Parents were all different ages.)

In a couple of cases it was weird as they had one or more grandparents who died more than a decade later. They weren't upset when their grandparents died as they were elderly and died quickly.

In the last 10 years or so due to having older friends and acquaintances in their late 40s+ some have been losing their parents. If care has been needed they haven't been carers as their other parent/parent's partner is.

However as my DP is actually a carer of an elderly friend who isn't well and has been deteriorating for years. Anyone who mentions caring responsibilities I defer to him.

I also have friend and an acquaintance in their who lost their partners when they were in their late 40s. That is more heart breaking as it isn't expected you lose a life partner so early.

I think I know what you mean OP. My mum and dad both died when I was a teenager. I do think this has 'hardened' me in a way to the feelings of others. Maybe in the way of 'if a child can cope with this, so can you'. That doesn't mean I don't feel empathy for my friends, I do, and I will always try to support them in any way I can. It's hard to explain!!

My mum died in my mid-thirties, she'd had cancer since my mid-twenties and the sort that likely comes back, so I guess I'd always known it wasn't likely she was going to be around that long. I feel sad she never met my niece, her only grandchild, and that she only had a couple of years of retirement (early ill health retirement) so didn't get to spend much time enjoying that with my dad. I agree with the finding it strange that people much older than me still have both parents around - someone I work with retired last year and she still has her mum and dad, both well into their eighties! Also a friend the same age as me still has a grandparent, which is wild to me.

But I also work with someone who lost her mum when she was 18 years old and I know that must have been a very different and difficult loss to face when she was only just hitting adulthood. It's created a very strained relationship with her father, and a stepmother, as well.

Exactly. And those sorts of comments are an example of why we find it so hard to relate.

Losing a parent as a child or young adult is completely different. I was totally alone. My dad never got to see me as an adult. My mum was absent. I had no parental figure to turn to. No security whatsoever. When he died I had people telling me how hard it was when they lost their grandparents. I wanted to tell them to fuck off.

I kind of get it, my Mum died when I was in my 20s, my dad is still alive but we have a very distant relationship. Sometimes when I hear someone upset because their 84 yr old mother is in hospital or terminally ill there is a horrible part of me that thinks oh boo hoo she is old, you have no idea how lucky you are. Then I remind myself that their loss is huge, i remember how upset i was when my grandparents died, they outlived my Mum by many years. While their deaths were predictable, they were 40 years in my life, that's a long time to have a constant that is suddenly gone. I always try to be really sympathetic and supportive but it's wierd for me. On one level I'm grateful I've been spared of caring duties, poor MIL is in a bad way these days.

@Overtheatlantic That’s how I feel after losing my Mum in my 20’s. I accept that death is a part of life and would say that I’m less fearful of it. I’m glad that I still have my Dad (86), I’ll be sad but pragmatic when I lose him, IYSWIM.

I lost both my parents by 30- it's very hard. Some of my friends have lost their dads but none have lost their mum.

It's difficult, I feel a lot of loss for the relationship my children could have had with them. I miss the closeness and ease of my relationship with my mum and I feel a bit jealous sometimes that other people have that.
You will be able to relate with your friends though when it happens- it's a different kind of grief but it's still grief and everyone is changed by it.

I'm sorry you lost your mum so young.

I do think some comments are assuming I’m unsympathetic or at least not sad for my friends as their parents are or will be elderly when they die.

That isn’t what I’m about here.

What I’m saying is that I’m not at the same life stage as them.

I was the first of my friends to lose a parent. I was 32 and my dad was 62. It happened completely unexpectedly. It was an incredibly traumatic experience at the time. It'll be 8 years in September.

It does occasionally make me a bit sad to see my friends parents still around and doing well.

I think until it happens to you, people just don't understand what it's like.

I feel a total disconnect. I feel heartless, but my friends/family would have no idea I feel that way. If a loved one of theirs passes I say what I need to say, but I don't relate at all and feel so cold and heartless. Losing mine has taken that emotion from me.

I get you completely @showmethephotos . I had lost both my parents by the time I was 21 and have been fully independent since then. I've had to rely on only myself and despite being happily married I still feel like a bit of an outsider when people talk about their families.

It's been several decades since my parents' deaths and the whole elderly parent thing kind of passes me by. I'll never have those worries, which generally are a normal stage of life for most.

I am glad others still have their parents, I'd have given anything to be in their shoes, but my life path was very different. I am sad that my parents never saw me marry, never held their grandchildren etc and I just feel very detached when I hear friends and colleagues conversations about their mums and dads, it's a life I feel I have never known sometimes.

I have felt on my own such a long time. My DH would be horrified if he heard me say that as he and the kids are my family and I love them so much, but losing both parents when you are young does change you forever...

God, sorry, that all sounds so doom and gloom, it's really not, I have had a happy life, just perhaps very different to how it could have been.

The difference is a sense of injustice and related anger. When I had a newborn and saw women my age hanging out with their Mums it gave me the rage, I know many people have Mums who aren't hands on GPs but dm would have been amazing. I'm angry at what she missed, what I missed and the fact that my DC know her as a photograph. I also was furious a few years back when I got diagnosed with exactly the same condition. Nothing serious but tricky to treat as it exists in many forms. I really really needed to talk to her about it and hated her for not being there in the moment.

I know what you mean. I have never had parents in my adult life. It definitely makes me feel different to my friends in their 50s who still have parents and sometimes grandparents around

I was 12 amd my Dad was 32 when he died. I've found it difficult when adult friends/colleagues have lost parents. I currently have a friend who's 42 and her Mum is dying.

Everyone keeps talking about what a tragedy and how young she is. Also a couple have people have mentioned that this is the first parent in our friendship group we're losing. Because they didn't notice when my life was ripped apart 30 years ago.

I'm hugely sympathetic and supportive but inside I'm thinking 'shes not young, she's had a great life, spent time with grandchildren, had 10 years of retirement'

@Laszlomydarling I’m the very bolshy type so if someone started on the “it’s the first of the friendship group” I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to help myself from making a quiet comment. Something along the lines of “err, actually …”. Particularly if these friends had been to the funeral.

I think what I am trying to say thst you needn’t feel the need to apologise for gently setting the record straight.

Can you tell I am a little miffed on your behalf? And, of course, @showmethephotos , too.

I lost my mum when I was 6. I have 0 memories/feelings from pretty much all my childhood. I think this was my body's way of coping.

Tbh, it sounds to me as though this is showing you that you haven’t “moved on” as much as you thought. Your friends’ situations are reminding you that you did not get to experience your parents getting old or needing your care in the way your friends are experiencing. Having someone wrenched away from you too soon is nothing like experiencing someone slowly and naturally decline into infirmity. Your life experience really is disconnected from theirs. So no wonder you sometimes want to shout out that your mum and dad died too - the only oddity is that you think that it is stupid to be thinking that. It isn’t. You lost your mum and dad, too.

I think it was a lonely thing to live through...peers in their teens and twenties and even thirties 'don't know what to say ' so don't acknowledge your loss.
Maybe I feel a bit like that . I can't imagine being 60 and an elderly parent dying.
My dil is expecting a baby...I can't imagine being a granny because my mum wasn't there to show me how it's done! (I have a mil but she only cares about her daughters and their kids).

I lost my parents young, although not as young as you OP, and I totally understand what you mean. I think @BooToYouHalloween nails the feeling perfectly.
I lost my mum in my 20s, and then my dad a few years later- I had lost both my parents before the vast majority of my friends had lost a grandparent, let alone a parent. As the first in my friendship group to go through it I found the grief very lonely, as no one could empathise, and didn’t have the emotional maturity to try, so most people just avoided the subject altogether. People who lose parents older generally seem to have more support I feel, because the people around them are far more likely to understand, being far more likely to have experienced it themselves. It you lose a parent young you’re pretty much navigating it on your own. What’s more the grief stretches into the future, as you grieve all the life stages you didn’t get to do together, and you have to navigate so much life without their advice or support, or even just them cheering you on from the sidelines. I still get a pang when I see daughters out with their mums in their 30s or 40s, 20 years after I lost my mum, I feel like we were both were robbed of so much, and I’ll never get to ask her the questions that only occur to me as I reach certain milestones- when did I start to sleep through the night as a baby? Did she start getting hot flushes in her 40s too?

But the flip side of the ‘being on your own’ that @BooToYouHalloween expresses so eloquently is a freedom of sorts, the very worst thing has already happened, and we survived, which definitely makes us stronger. And we don’t have the caring responsibilities for elderly parents that so many of our contemporaries have.
You’re right, it is hard to express, I worry it makes me seem heartless too, but we’re just on very different paths to our contemporaries. Please know you’re not the only one to feel like this ❤️

Just to continue my earlier thought, many of your friends are or will be travelling a different road from you just as you have from them. A quick look at the elderly parents board will tell you of stubbornness, money, ill health, hospitals, telephone calls etc.

This all brings its own stresses. Just be aware that, although you have your own pain, you will not have the stresses many of your friends will have in front of them.

My thought here is not to negate your desperate pain in your circumstances but I am minded of an aquaintence who had the traumatic early childbirth experience at about 32 weeks. She spent a few years envying those with full term pregnancies. For pregnancy two, she went full term with a toddler, spd, a god enormous baby and an abiding thought of “be careful what you wish for”.

I think I am trying to say that life is what life is. The pain you lived with early means you are saved the path that others will walk. Both paths have their flowers and both have their compost.

My mother died in her early sixties after six years arguing with the idea. Df is ninety but Too busy around the town to die. And he is 150 miles away. I see a clash of wills ahead as, well, I don’t know how it will play out.

I lost one parent in my 20s, the other in my 30s. I had friends who still had grandparents around.

We're now in our 50s, and quite a few have lost one parent now. Others are having to deal with parents needing care, and while I will talk it over and so on, some of me wants to scream, "at least you've still got them!" I am also very glad I didn't have to deal with that from my mother, because she would have been a complete nightmare.

I've mostly been single, and I've felt very alone at times. Just having to deal with everything. To be honest, my mother wasn't the loving type, so even if she were still alive, I'd have still had to deal with everything- and probably extra stuff from her. But when my last boyfriend broke up with me, I was almost as upset that I lost his parents as well as him, because I had been starting to feel accepted as part of their family.

I just don't belong anywhere any more.

Whilst I understand your good intentions in this post (genuinely), I guess what you perhaps miss is that those of us who lost parents young would have given anything to have those stresses and worries... Along with all the happy memories that were made before old age got the better of them.

Perspective is everything.

@TheSandgroper you mean well I know. But this is the whole point isn’t it? It’s like when people try to reassure those suffering from infertility that kids can be a source of stress and can stop you living your life as you wish. It’s true. But you still want children.

@Ambergrain I understand you completely and I didn’t know whether to write what I did, but, over on Elderly Parents, some of those women have completely lost their lives.

I was clumsy, perhaps, but perspective goes each way.

I want to say more but I am sure I will get it wrong.