I really want to go home. I really really want to go home.

[JacknDiane]

But my home isn't there. The council have got someone else there. My parents lived there 50 odd years, then mum moved to sheltered housing. But the family home with the nice garden is what I miss. And mum pottering in the garden. Dad is dead so long I struggle to remember what he did. But mum comes back easier, shes dead nearly 15 years. I was a late baby, my siblings are so distant from me, I was always really an only child.
My kids now are grown and moved away. Not near me at all now. Im happy for them,they are leading a young 20 somethings life. As it should be. They were here today for 2 days but both gone back now. I haven't got any family apart from them and dh. Dh is good but he doesn't understand how I feel. His siblings are in this city, although he doesn't see them much, they are still here.
When my dcs leave I dont know when I'll see them again, they both have lots going on. Im glad for them. But I feel so bereft when they go. Ive had a lump in my throat all day. I mostly stayed home when they were small or worked around them. That's unpopular on here but it was what we all wanted. Ive got friends, a job, I keep busy. Im not sat here waiting for someone to knock on my door, I plan things and keep occupied.

But when the dcs have been here then they go, I just want to go home, to the house I grew up, with my mum and dad there. Them just pottering, watching telly, going a walk. Nothing exciting, just the foundation of my childhood and young adulthood. I just want mum to say its ok, you'll miss them but you'll see them soon. Just reassure me all is well. I know it is, but I haven't been reassured by my parents in at least 20 years. I looked after mum after dad died. I became her mum. Its just what happened.

I just want to go home and sit with them. And drink tea. Then come back here and get on with my life.

But I can't and its overwhelming sometimes.

I’m lucky in that my parents are both still alive but as I’ve got older I’ve really started to obsess slightly over my childhood. Just seems so distant now and obviously some family members, such as grandparents, are gone. I don’t have any siblings. I don’t live in the part of the country I grew up in and almost certainly never will again. Maybe it’s just part of ageing I don’t know.

I completely understand, OP ❤I have felt like this for decades but don't talk about it. I have dreams where I am walking down the road towards my childhood home, but just as I get closer, I realise I can't go inside as someone else lives there now.

Or sometimes it's different and it's a case of I may be able to go in or I may not, as it depends on a time slip opening.

Sometimes it has changed into a hotel and I have to pay a lot of money to stay in my old bedroom. I wake up very upset after these dreams.

I used to get so jealous of people who, as adults, casually talked about staying at their old bedroom in their parents' house. To me, that would be the equivalent of winning the lottery.

I sometimes look at the children growing up now around me in the extended family. As is natural, they are longing to grow into adults and get out in the world. But I look at them and think 'one day, you'll long for these times.'

I grew up in a council house and used to dream of the 'big posh house' I would have one day which would be so much better. Now it seems to me there is nothing better and never will be. No place will ever feel like home that place did.

And it's not even as if I had an idyllic childhood - far from it, in fact. But the longing to return 'home' is still there and I've accepted it will never go away.

I so miss that feeling of walking into a room and feeling that IT remembers YOU.

The garden was always lovely but for decades now it's been a weed-riven, neglected mess. It makes me sad. But it does help to know I'm not the only one feeling this way 💐

"We're a long way from home tonight. But you know, home isn't always a place. Home is a person. Looking back at my childhood home was my mother. And her light went out too soon.

There isn't a grave deep enough, there isn't a grave dark enough to keep her light out of my life."

This thread made me think of what Brandon Flowers said about his mother, dedicating a song to her memory. I’ve always found it comforting.

Completely understand this. I lost my mum just over three years ago. My dad is still in my childhood home, although it’s now set up differently but everytime I go there I try to savour the memories because he has cancer and I don’t know how long things will remain as they are. The house is a council property so it will be a quick turn around when he does die.

My own children are now mostly grown so the dynamic is changing rapidly now and mixed with me being single and perimenopause I feel half excited for the future and half bereft for the life I’ve already had which is no longer the same. No grandparents at Christmas, aunts and uncles gone, cousins moved on with their own lives, a missing parent, grown children. It is all too easy to miss those days that have passed and times that you enjoyed.

OP, don't cry because it's over smile because it happened.
And then move on. Male some new friends, find a new hobby and have another chapter in life instead of yearning for a past chapter.

You are incredibly lucky you can look back on fond memories. Not everyone can do that. I'd love to look back on a nice childhood with lovely parents and a lovely house. Instead look back and I see sadness, abuse, neglect and constantly feeling like an outsider.

I couldn't wait for my mum to sell that house and leave it to another family to make good memories because it had nothing but bad ones for me. Years of them.

I'd love to look back fondly on memories of my dad, who passed away two years ago, but mingled with the grief there's unanswered questions, of why he let things happen, why he stayed so distant, why everyone thought he was such a loving father when really he was so uninvolved. I wish I could just miss him and that was that.

You are lucky OP. So so lucky. We all lose our parents. We dont all get happy, uncomplicated memories to enjoy.
Try to enjoy them.

Oh OP, I know what you mean. I miss my DF who died 5 years ago this Friday. I’m close to my DM but I almost have anticipatory grief for when she goes. My childhood seems so carefree compared to being an adult and I’m nostalgic for it, and just in general for an earlier time when it seemed everything was fine and all my life was ahead of me. We don’t have children and I worth about being lonely if my DH goes before me (but equally I would hate to think of him being lonely without me). I do know that aging is a privilege but it’s certainly not without sadness.

It's complex. It's also about losing and missing those younger versions of you that can never return.

Very true!

This thread has reminded me of the film ‘All of us Strangers’ where the main character (Andrew Scott) visits his childhood home & finds his parents there, just as they were in the 1980s (even though they both died many years prior). It’s about processing childhood memories and reconnecting with loved ones - beautiful and very poignant film.

The truth is that in ten or twenty years time we will all look back on these days wishing we could relive just one day. Even those of us who have already lost parents. We have loved ones around us now, human and animal, who will no longer be with us and no amount of wishing will bring them back. We need to fully embrace the here and now, tell our loved ones we love them and treasure every day with them!

Take the time now to really get to know them, their lives before you were born and all about them. There are many questions that I would love to ask my parents but it's sadly too late now.

If I could go back in time and live one day again.....I wouldn't choose my wedding day or birth of children days.... I'd choose a day from when I was a child about 8 years old with my Mum, Dad and my sisters. Next time your DC come home plan a cream tea put with a friend for afternoon after they leave.

Wow super helpful you should write a book…

I feel like this a lot. But not really for my childhood-for my children’s childhood and in the house I bought and we lived in after my divorce. We loved that house so much and we were a little team. I will never have that again and it makes me so sad.

So sorry 😔 what would you ask them? What should I ask mine before it’s too late?

The doctor is in.
5 cents please.

I asked my grandparents all sorts of things. First job, most embarrassing moment, what happened if you were naughty as a child and your parents found out, did you do anything they didn’t find out, and so on and so forth. I find social history really interesting so I wanted to know all this stuff.

I’m reading a book atm by a woman who grew up in the 1920s. So far she’s talked about Christmas (in great detail), pets, bedtime, extended family and what they talked about, home decor… all the little bits and pieces that make up a life.

So sorry op. I know thisbfeeling, but only for my grandparents home. Can't imagine what it's like for you. Take care.