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I still have both parents. It's terrifying to think of losing them, even though Im not that close with them.

How have you delt with the loss of your parents?

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I was 34/35 when I lost my parents. My dad had liver failure. My mom had dementia. It messed me up for a long time. I had nobody, just my son. And it was right around 2020 when my mom passed. So I couldn't even get hugs. I definitely lost a piece of my sanity/security. I've had to learn to do everything alone, so I'm extra weird to people who don't understand.

Not good. But it's the cycle of life.

dancingtongue · 80-89, M

I had an amazing wife. Didn't intend it to be that way, but it was the nature of our careers. She had far greater flexibility. My mother actually was still able to handle most things when my father had his heart attack, but my wife went to help. I was tied up in one of those 7-day a week, 12-16 hour days crisis stretches, although I did squeeze in one visit before my brother arrived from Tokyo to help with the funeral. When my mother began to show signs she should no longer live along, I was more of a help in the move but my wife did all the research in locating an appropriate senior complex to move her into near us.

Bexsy

Yes. I handled the loss of my dad ok. We were not close. The loss of my mother was a devastating blow. Lost pretty much all my family
My kids and two sisters is what i have. Both my sisters have experienced major issues in Last few years. One going through major things now

JustNik · 51-55, F

Lost Mom last year. We had watched disease chip away at her for 20 years so by the time she went, she couldn’t speak, walk, or do much of anything for herself, and I thought I wouldn’t have much grief left by the end, but I was wrong. It’s hard and bizarre and leaves a hole. We just passed five months and there are pictures on my phone that seem too recent for her to not be here anymore. I’m getting to where I can concentrate a little better again, but there are still days when the tears don’t take much to fall. You just keep going is all. Time marches on. I carry her with me just the same as I always have.

swirlie · 31-35, F

@JustNik
This was very well stated. What you describe is exactly the definition of grief.

FlutteringWordsX · 41-45, F

I was 15 when my father passed away. We were really close, so needless to say it was one of the most difficult things I had to deal with at such a young age. I didn't have the luxury of really mourning him though. All I can say is that time has a way of gently making the loss a bit more bearable but you will always miss them especially at the special moments.

AngelUnforgiven · 51-55, F

It was hard at first but as time went by things got better. Lost my dad when I was in my 30s. The hardest part was losing my mom at 18 I'd just went off to college. Girls need their moms when they are becoming young women so that was a critical time in my life. She wasn't there for my wedding or the births of my children, every milestone felt lonely but I've learned to accept it and live my life in a way that they'd both be proud

exexec · 70-79, C

Yes, my father died suddenly 800 miles away. We cared for my mother the last few years of her life, and she died near us at age 98. It still wasn't easy, but it was time. Lynn's father died three months after we married, and that was tough. Her mother died 800 miles away, and it was a shock, too.

Tumbleweed · F

My farher died about 11 years ago. A year later almost to the day, my step father died.
My brother almost killed himself dealing with our father's death and my mother still grieves for my step father.
So I've had to be the strong one for them and it hasn't been easy. At all.

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Tumbleweed · F

@swirlie Both losses cut me pretty deep. And honestly, I used to sit in my vehicle, by myself, turn up the music and just cry. I pretty much healed alone.

swirlie · 31-35, F

@Tumbleweed
Okay, I get that but I'm sure that you would agree that if someone came along to console you in that time of terrible loss, that there really wouldn't be a lot that someone could have said or could have done for you that would have relieved you from that burden of grief that you felt at the time. Would you agree?

Tumbleweed · F

@swirlie Yes, I definitely agree.
Yet what do you do when your brother and your mother are both falling apart?

Guardian

My Dad passed away in 2014 after a horrible dementia. I am sole caregiver to my ill 90yo Mom, who has lived with me for 8 years. She is in remission with 3 cancers, heart trouble and arthritis. I dread when her time comes!

bijouxbroussard · F

At age 65 I still have my father. He’ll turn 93 in May. I lost my mother in 2023 at age 89, and that’s been difficult. Intellectually I knew that losing them was inevitable, but I’ve been close to them so watching my mother slip away from dementia was very heartbreaking. My father is having memory issues, but not on the level that my mother did, and physically he’s still very healthy, so I hope to have him for a little while longer.

whowasthatmaskedman · 70-79, M

All four. My father went first. Then father in law. In turns we took in both my mother in law, until she passed. Then my mother. Who stayed until some dementia made her impoosible to handle. She was in a home after that. But all gone now..😷

swirlie · 31-35, F

@whowasthatmaskedman
For what it's worth, I had a friendly admirer who was 92 years old when I first met him and 98 years old when he couldn't keep up with me anymore.

When he was 50 years old, he and his wife started a long term care facility in their small town and then ran it for the next 40 years. Eventually, he and his wife ended up living in that same LTC facility, mainly because as you say, dementia made his wife impossible for him to handle on his own in their home.

So, they both moved in together at their LTC facility and shared a double room together until she passed. Then, being the cheap basturd that he said he was, he moved himself into a 4-bed ward-room down the hall because he no longer needed all the space that 340 square feet could offer him.

For those 40 years, he and his wife and a small nursing staff looked after the elderly in town who had vascular dementia or Alzheimers and never thought anything of it until his own wife was diagnosed with vascular dementia.

Despite his 40 years of hands-on training in dealing with this disease, everything he had learned was suddenly useless to him because his wife got to the point he said, where she was impossible to deal with in their home. She was driving him out of his mind and he couldn't stand it anymore.

So, he made the phone call and two men wearing white coats came across the street to their house and escorted his wife over to the business that she herself had created with my friend 40 years earlier and assigned her to a room. She didn't even recognize where she was at the end of the hall, despite designing the very room herself that they had assigned to her that day.

A few days before he passed at the age of 98, my friendly admirer called me to come and visit him and when I got there I found that his mind was still very sharp and his body was still pretty good too, though he walked with a walker in his last year on earth.

He told me during that visit that if he had known 45 years earlier that he'd be living in that god forsaken place, he would have made the ceilings higher and the hallways wider because the facility was simply way too close for comfort with so darn many "old people hanging around all the time and never leaving!" he said.

Speaking of leaving, he told me that he himself would be leaving in just 3 days from then and wanted me to be the first one to know before the nurses found him lying on his bed with his tongue hanging out of his mouth, though there was nothing physically wrong with him.

I told him he was full of shittt, that he was not leaving and he agreed with me for once ..and then ask me what my point was?

Three days later when I showed up for a surprise visit, mainly just to prove him wrong, he had already passed away earlier that same morning, about 45 minutes before I arrived there.

To do what you and your wife did in your home with your own relatives was very noble of you and your wife as well and was certainly the right thing to do at the time, though undoubtedly was hard on the family life. But always know in the back of your mind if ever you were second-guessing yourself about any of it, that you could not have made that whole experience any better in any way, shape or form, even if you somehow were given another opportunity to do it all over again, perhaps the right way this time ..or perhaps a much better way this time.

That's what I learned from a guy who knew more about this sort of thing than anyone else could have ever possibly learned in a lifetime of trying to care-give someone with dementia, while attempting to do it the right way the first time.

whowasthatmaskedman · 70-79, M

@swirlie I am getting to the point where I am going to talk more about my experiences. Another month or so when things are a little less hectic. But thanks for sharing, Till then..😷

swirlie · 31-35, F

@whowasthatmaskedman
Sure! Looking forward to it! 🙂

Poppies · 61-69, F

My husband and I have both lost our parents. We support each other and we love our grown children and our grandchild. We aren't going to last forever, either, any more than our parents did.

RedBaron · M

It’s been easier than I thought it might be, partly because my father was 87 and my mother was 88 and both went suddenly without any long illness or mental decline requiring expensive long-term care.

A very unanticipated aspect is that I find it comforting that since it’s now in the past, I never have to go through it again.

Raelove3094 · 31-35, F

My bio father passed away last night 13 hours ago…. I never really imagined or thought about losing parents because I have a lot wrong medically so my parents and family were told to prepare for the worse which would have been me passing away after birth. I don’t know if I’m handling the grieving process well. I’ve only cried a little bit. Kind of feel empty inside but I’m not expressing my true feelings. Instead I’m bottling it up

ImNotHungry · 36-40, M

@Raelove3094 I'm so sorry

swirlie · 31-35, F

@Raelove3094
You are feeling that way right now because you are still in a state of mild shock. What you're experiencing is quite normal under the circumstances.

being · 36-40, F

I'm getting into the house and see my mum is still here. And I'm telling myself how I'm in this timeline when mum is home and I'm thinking of another timeline when mum isn't.
I can only imagine, it's really that bad. But as with everything else in this life, whatever goes frees up space at the same time...
Sometimes this is very sad, the empty chair, the empty air. The unbroken silence.

And then, the rain, the boiler, the water dripping, the birds, the cake, the coffee, the flowers ... And then and later on...a new life is being born again ! ...

zonavar68 · 56-60, M

I lost my dad around 2011 and mum in 2020.

I was very estranged from both. They got divorced in 1980 when I was 12.

It feels wierd having had so little connection to both of them for at least 30 yrs after their breakup.

Jenny1234 · 56-60, F

I lost them both three years apart when I was in my forties. It’s very sad but you get through it

NYCChick · 31-35, F

I lost most of the people i was close with in my life been doing it on my own since when i moved out at 17. Death is scary saw way to many people pass.

Frostcloud · F

grief is an arrow but love is the archer. my mom is gone but she is everywhere still

Ducky · 31-35, F

Mine are still around too, thankfully. In good health, even. But I dread to think of the day when their health starts failing and when they're eventually gone. Hopefully not for a long time yet. I'll just keep counting my blessings until then.