If you lost your parents young (before you turned 40, say) did you ever feel like this?

[followtheswallow]

I already know I’m going to explain this badly. Both my parents are dead. My mum died when I was still at school then my dad died when I was in my late 20s. I’m now 45, almost 46, so quite a while ago now.

My friends parents (and PIL) are probably going to start passing away in the next ten years and while of course I’m sorry for their losses there is part of me that feels resentful. FIL is currently undergoing tests - there’s nothing been established as ‘wrong’ yet.

I definitely don’t mean I want them to die! I suppose I just feel sad my own loss and grief has long been forgotten.

Yes, I know what you mean. I lost my parents in my twenties. They never got to see our first owned home, watch us get married, meet our child - all of which my older brother and sister did get so I feel resentful of that.
On top of that, my husband’s grandfather died about a month after my fathers very sudden and unexpected death. He was old, very unwell and his family had time to say goodbye to him. My MIL did at that time, and still often now gets quite dramatic about him and I know it sounds horrible but I really feel angry towards her. She had into her 60’s with her Dad around and she seems to be oblivious to the fact that a few weeks before he died, I had the worst experience of my life that has changed me forever. But it’s all just still about her grief.
I try to make myself see it in a less selfish way and have never expressed my thoughts out loud to anyone, but yeah, my parents are forgotten is how it feels.

Sometimes I feel jealous, sometimes I feel relieved that mine didn’t suffer old age. They made it to their 60s but didn’t enjoy their grandchildren beyond being babies (or indeed see all their grandchildren). So I feel sad for them, for me and for my children.

Very mixed emotions.

Not me but my my DH. He lost his dad when he was 20 and then his mum when he was in his 30s and we had two very young children. When his dad died he had to help pay for the majority of the funeral and we had to do the same for his mum but we were in a better financial position. He often does joke when people loose a loved one who is very elderly and then get an inheritance. He is a very kind person and would never be deliberately nasty about anyone but he does roll his eyes sometimes and says he got a bill never a will. Now he isn’t materialistic at all but god love him he had to find the money for his dads funeral at 20 instead of getting a car or going on holidays.

I lost my dad in early 20s and even now at 42 Im still angry about it. Lost all faith! I do still have my mum who has a lovely partner. He's 10 years older than her. So thankful I still have them and my MIL

Yeah it’s tough and I’m sorry you lost them both so young, much more difficult than my circumstances.

I was late 30’s and pregnant when my dad died, it was and still is hard to think he never met my son. My mum is alive but has dementia and so she hasn’t really met him either as it’s so advanced she’s no longer verbal.
I feel terribly sad and sometimes angry that they and I have missed out on the relationships I hoped they would have with their grandparents.

I can relate to this - my mum died last year when I was 42. She wasn’t that young (79, was an older mum for her generation) but she’d been ill for a long time with a horrible neurological condition so had never really been able to get to know my DCs who are still very young. Someone at work a similar age to me had their grandma die recently, which is obviously very sad, but I don’t think comparable in the way people seemed to think it was. I’d lost all my grandparents by the age of 16 - the curse of long generations I guess.

Not quite what we’re discussing but I also feel sad that I couldn’t spend as much time with mum as I wanted when she was ill, as I was so much in the baby and toddler trenches. I felt so jealous of people who could go off and do things with their mums and get help with the children, while I never had that. My dad felt I didn’t show enough grief when she died but I feel like was just wrung out by life at that point.

I 'get' this OP. I was 34 when my Dad died at 60 and 48 when my Mum died at 70, both too soon in my opinion but no where near as early as some posters.
Friends are now losing parents who are in their 90's. As I have changed so much in the last 20/30 years, I do feel a bit jealous of others who have their parents for longer. As my Grandparents lived until their late 80's/90's, I somehow expected my parents to do the same.

My husband died aged 50 my children 17&19. He missed so much. I really feel for them. My dad is 94 and I will be sad when he goes but he's seen be have a successful career, 2 great marriages and seen his grandchildren to 31&33 so far. He may even get to see great grandchildren...we had hoped he would get twin grandchildren in September but sadly my daughter miscarried.
My mum lived until 86. I have been very lucky. My heart goes out to all you who list your parents young.

My DH and I had lost all 4 parents by the time we were very early 30s (25, 26, 32, 34). They never met our kids and that makes me sad. I'm an only child and he has a difficult relationship with his sister, so our family network is tiny.
It really sets us out in another place from our friends, who now in early 40s still mostly have all of theirs alive.
It has certainly darkened our senses of humour- we've made up a whole set of rules and realitues for membership of The Orphan Club.We do still get snide when yet another couple are off for a weekend away while kids are at granny's again. We don't ever really have any help and we've planned our jobs and luves around being the sole carers for the kids.
But we've built a "family" for our kids- "grandparents", "aunties", "uncles" and "cousins", none of whom we are related to. I tell my kids we still have the same amount of love to give, we're just really lucky we get to choose who we give it to. Sometimes I almost believe it!
It's a bit shit but you have to look for the positives.

My Mum died of cancer when I was 29 and my Dad followed 10 years later when I was 39. Both deaths hit me hard. I was a single parent and both of them were very supportive and helped out where they could. I am now retired and find I often dwell on the fact that I am older than both of them when they died...

Lost both parents before 40 (probably because my parents were significantly older when they had me): Mum when I was 39, Dad a few days after I turned 19.

I’m currently in the thick of grieving Mum, but the weeks and months after Dad died were also pretty unbearable. I never had a significant death in my immediate family before, so didn’t know about how to get support at uni for things like essays and exams that took place weeks after his funeral. It was also having to deal with my Mum’s own moods too, where I had to live in enforced mourning at home and this clashed with being a student who wanted to go out with friends.

I completely understand this feeling. I lost my dad when I was 18 and some of my friends now in our mid 40s still have both parents and are only just losing their last grand parent. It is sometimes really hard to hear someone talking about how hard it is they have lost their 95 year old grandma. I never say anything because everyone’s own situation is hard for them but inside I just struggle to feel any compassion. I keep it all inside but I just think well at least they reached the age of 90, and lived a WHOLE life. But I nod and sympathise because they know no different.

It also really annoys me when people say “ at least he missed out on old age”. I’m pretty sure anyone would take old age if that means living until 80/90 over dying at barely 40! I think some deaths are tragic and some deaths are sad but expected / more acceptable. And if you have experienced a tragic death then you just feel it’s so unfair your loved one didn’t live to a good age which makes it hard to hear people grieving over someone who did.

Oof, this thread hits hard, OP. I lost one of my DP young and I have similar thoughts about the in-laws getting older and moaning. It’s very sad, but also natural. I also had to deal with the death alongside very small DC and it was HARD! If PIL were to go tomorrow, it would be so much easier to sort things as we’re much better placed financially and now have time on our hands. I don’t think DH will ever really get what it was like, sitting in the dark breastfeeding, knackered and full of grief, planning a funeral. I’ll also never forget the walk from the crem to the wake, looking around for someone to take the lead and then realizing that that person was me. Devastating.

It also really annoys me when people say “ at least he missed out on old age”. I’m pretty sure anyone would take old age if that means living until 80/90 over dying at barely 40! I think some deaths are tragic and some deaths are sad but expected / more acceptable I really hate this. I have no idea why people think it is a comfort - we all struggle to know what to say I guess but still.

By the time I was 28 I had lost both parents. I was really close to Mum and it hit me hard. I spent many years feeling like a tent flapping around in the wind without tent pegs (if that makes sense), like I’d come untethered. Only those who have experienced it, truly understand I suspect

I don’t think your grief will have been forgotten by the people that love you? My husband lost his dad when he was early 20s and I lost mine when I was late 30s. I do feel like he lost out more than I did. My dad got to see me get married and met both my kids. Dh’s dad had already passed when I met my dh. I know he would give anything for his dad to have met me and our children. Not that it’s a competition and we all grieve in our own way but I don’t think the fact that it was longer ago for you makes it any easier/less important.

At the risk of having a tiny violin, who loves me?

My DH never met my parents, not even close. My mum had been dead over twenty years when I met DH; my dad over seven. They were ghosts by then.

Friends - teenage girls aren’t notorious for spending a lot of thought on a friends’ suffering! My experience is that people very quickly move on; it’s life, I do understand that. But as someone else said, you end up holding their hands through their grief while yours is a long ago forgotten story.

Im a late baby and lost my parents way before any of my pals. My kids had no grandparents from the end of primary school. When I hear of pein their 30s with grandparents im very jealous. I think its ok op.

Im a late baby and lost my parents way before any of my pals. My kids had no grandparents from the end of primary school. When I hear of pein their 30s with grandparents im very jealous. I think its ok op.

Im a late baby and lost my parents way before any of my pals. My kids had no grandparents from the end of primary school. When I hear of pein their 30s with grandparents im very jealous. I think its ok op.

Im a late baby and lost my parents way before any of my pals. My kids had no grandparents from the end of primary school. When I hear of pein their 30s with grandparents im very jealous. I think its ok op.

Im a late baby and lost my parents way before any of my pals. My kids had no grandparents from the end of primary school. When I hear of pein their 30s with grandparents im very jealous. I think its ok op.

Im a late baby and lost my parents way before any of my pals. My kids had no grandparents from the end of primary school. When I hear of pein their 30s with grandparents im very jealous. I think its ok op.

Im a late baby and lost my parents way before any of my pals. My kids had no grandparents from the end of primary school. When I hear of pein their 30s with grandparents im very jealous. I think its ok op.

My father died 25 years ago; he never got to meet my children. In fact, they only ever knew one grandparent (my mother) and she died when they were 12 and 10 years old.
Most of my friends still have both their parents and they’re getting really old now - lots of 90th birthdays going on etc.
It’ll be funerals next, of course, and they will have every right to feel sad, but secretly I know I will be thinking that it’s not as sad as what I went through.
Nobody will know how I feel, it won’t occur to them, because they all forgot about my parents years ago.
Yeah, I’m bitter and jealous. It’s not good. I hide it from people.