When Your Parents Die, Are You Officially Grown Up?
You may recall, I once told you that my parents died when they — and I — were quite young, so I’ve been spared the drama of dealing with aging parents. However, nearly everyone I know still has one or both parents living!
I have several friends, all in their 50s, who have ill parents. In fact, I just got off the phone with a friend whose mother is showing signs of dementia, lives alone at home and is scheduled for cataract surgery. I have another friend who has both parents in ill health and they live 300 miles away. Someone else I know has a father-in-law who had a bad car accident, ended up in the hospital and still insists on driving. It goes on and on.
But my question today is, have you experienced the death of a parent, and if so, do you feel as if you’ve passed over into a new phase of life? They say that one does not grow up until one’s parents die.
January 7th, 2008 at 11:01 am
I don’t think that is necessarily true. We lived quite a distance from our parents while raising a family and I think that makes one grow up quicker.
I think that kids that stay close to home where they see Mom and Dad on a regular basis might not grow up as much. Too easy to get them to babysit, etc.
Losing one’s parents creates a void that will never be filled. They loved you first. Nothing changes that.
January 7th, 2008 at 11:14 am
I agree with goinglikesixty–I think that living a distance from your parents helps in the “growing up” process.
That said, I moved a couple of hundred miles away from mine right at 22, mrried at 24, became a mother at 27, and moved ever further away at age 32. Yet somehow I have always thought of 40 as the age when I really became an adult (as in no longer really cared what other people thought of me as long as I felt I was doing the right thing). Is it only coincidence that my mother died 10 days before that birthday?
January 7th, 2008 at 11:14 am
I was married and living 125 miles away from where my parents lived when they died 17 years apart.
Did I enter a new phase of life? No because as the eldest girl in a large family where both my parents had bad health, I became an adult at the age of ten! When I hear my contemporaries talk of their teenage years and particularly the music, I feel lost as I have no memory of any of it.
January 7th, 2008 at 11:45 am
My dad just died this year and I do feel different. Part of it is because I am trying to navigate the world without him in it and get used to firsts; 2008 will the first full year without my dad. But part of the difference I feel is because I’m only 32 and very few of my contemporaries have experienced a loss like this.
January 7th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
I moved away from home when I was 18, and I just lost my mom at 47 (me, not her) in September of last year. I don’t feel as though her passing has made me grow up; I think I was already there. Instead, our relationship had changed to friends, especially after I got married, and my heart aches in that way.
January 7th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Yep, I definitely grew up, but, I also turned 40 about the same time, too.
January 7th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
My mother died when I was 20. I didn’t have much emotional support during that time so I struggled for several years trying to find my way. My Dad died when I was in my forties and I lived out of town. That didn’t affect me as much.
I envy boomers that still have their parents, issues and all!
January 7th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
My mom died at the age of 59. I was 27 and 6 months pregnant at the time. I had no mother to show me how to be a mother. I read books. The books became my mother. I had to grow up quickly. My dad found another woman one month after my mom died and kicked my sister out of the house. She had to grow up quickly also.
My father lived a very long life. He died at the age of 92. He was able to take care of himself till he was 91! We hired a live-in to take care of him @$600 a week. He still had that girlfriend (he would never marry again) and she dropped in daily to see him, as did my sister. My brother and I would come in once a month. I would call my dad daily and read him excepts from the bible. He loved that!
I miss them both. My life has never been the same without either one of them.
Now with my dad gone, I had to grow up even more (even though I am in my 50’s)
January 7th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
My parents were late bloomers–and my sister and I were born when they were in their forties. As a result, although they lived well into their seventies, they were both dead by the time I was 40.
I felt orphaned.
I’m 58 and I still do.
January 7th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
No for me. I was in my fifties and already retired, so I guess I felt grown up. Heaven help me if I didn’t. Besides, at some point you sort of become the parent and the parent sort of becomes the kid if they live to a ripe old age. I will say that it feels odd, at first, to be orphaned, but I don’t think it has to do with growing up in cases such as mine.
January 7th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
I’m not so sure that it takes your parents dying to grow up. Perhaps it has as much to do with one’s dependence on them as anything – dependence for emotional or financial support – perhaps parental approval.
I miss my mom terribly, but I don’t think there was any great shift in my maturing when she died – life just went on. Of course I may sing a different tune when I lose my dad. Guess time will tell.
January 7th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
I do recall after both of my parents had died I had to look for a way to have things like Thanksgiving dinner. Where would I do it? I used to go ‘home’. I was 27. I found that certain friends can be a lot like family sometimes.
January 7th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
My dad died about 10 days after the birth of my first child when I was 28. It was a confusing year filled in unequal measure with the all-consuming joy of being a first time parent with such deep grief over not being able to share it with my father. In many ways I think I grew up then. Now, if I can grow wise…
January 7th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
well, since i don’t know what i’m going to be when i grow up, and both parents are alive, yeah, i guess that sounds right.
January 7th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
I was the youngest of my siblings and the only girl. I was quite the “Daddy’s Girl” and was devastated when my father died even though he was 83 at the time. When my mother became unable to care for herself and had to go to a nursing home I greived for a long time. Even though she was still alive it was as if the Mom I had always known was gone. When she died I felt like and orphaned child…not really like a “grown up” which I am.
January 7th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
I was 31 for my mother, and l do wish she could have seen our kids grow, but it was seven months after our wedding, so she was part of that. 42 for my dad, but with the family and almost two years in the wheelchair, it hurt but I was growing in other areas…
January 7th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Thanks for visiting my blog: I love this! I am seriously considering contacting AARP to tell them they need a good blogging thing. For me, I finally felt like a grown-up when I had my third child. Maybe that’s because I came from a family of three kids and finally felt like ‘the mom’ or because I ended the reproductive era of my life. I’m not sure. But I definitely look at my children and know: I’m the grown-up. Something shifted in me, through them, rather than the death of my father. Now, my mother is quite a live and well, and perhaps I will feel more of a shift and subtle sense of adulthood when she dies. Good question.
January 7th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Nope. (short answer)…and this is heavy for me right now, since it is close to my late mother’s birthday…
PS: Also dropping a note to let you know I added you to my blog roll, also.
January 7th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
Thank you for visiting me and for leading here! This is great…
As a military wife, I lived away from my parents for years. I was forced to *grow up* back then but it was still all too easy to revert when visiting them or to call Daddy when I had a car/home repair/etc. question. Dad died 6 years ago and I still have my Mom. She is well at 81, albeit slower than in the past, and losing her scares me so grown up or not.
What really made me feel more grown was…more than being a mom or anything other thing…being with my Dad through his final illness. Helping my Mom through it and through the eventual funeral arrangements. As the eldest child, things fell to me but I was honored to do it. I was told by several close friends that it changed me…but in a good way. I did become calmer and started taking things slower. I began reveling in the little things more. I *felt* like I was more of a grown up. Does that count?
Great question. Thanks!
January 7th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
My parents just drove over nine hours to share my birthday weekend. I’m so blessed to have them in good health.
The barrier between myself and my own death is so distant when they are here.
January 7th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
My dad died when I was in my mid 20s. To this day I still have difficulty with his death because we were so much closer than my mom and I. I don’t think it made me grow up faster but it did make me realize the importance of making every moment count with your parents.
My mom is still alive at 85.
January 8th, 2008 at 1:04 am
Mine are divorced parents and both happen to be dying (in separate parts of town) at the same time. I don’t just feel grown up, I feel old and worn out at 54; stretched to my limits. I’d love it if I felt merely grown up again.
January 8th, 2008 at 7:10 am
I did feel a huge change after the death of my second parent. It was that feeling that, suddenly, my brother and I were the “adults” in the family, the oldest ones.
January 8th, 2008 at 8:12 am
I lost my dad when I was 20. It hit hard, but I don’t think it made me grow up any. Mom is still alive and sharp as a knife, but I see her declining. I breaks my heart to see this woman, who was always the rock, becoming frail.
Dunno about growing up though.
I pay my bills, does that count?
January 8th, 2008 at 8:19 am
My dad died when I was a very immature 24 years old, my mom died almost 15 years after that when I was a lot more grown up.
I still miss them both to this day; I think having my own kids was what helped me become much more responsible (and appreciate what my own parents did for me.)
However, there was definitely a note of finality when my mom died.
January 8th, 2008 at 8:43 am
My dad died when I was 27. I have lived away from home since going to college. I’m now 52. My mom died shortly before her 86th and my 50th.
When my dad died it was like I had become a member of a club: the “one parent club”. When my mom died I felt like an orphan. I am single and had a lot of responsibility for my mom in her later years. After she was gone I felt like I was in a free fall. My siblings and I became the elders (I don’t have any grandparents or aunts, uncles, etc. living).
I have a manager who leaves voice mails for everyone when a colleague loses a parent, spouse, etc. He goes on and on about how it is to lose a parent. Both of his are still living… he has no clue. It really annoys me.
My loss is “mine” and the impact on me is personal. All of us experience the loss in a way that is dependent on who we are, who are parents were and what our relationship was with them, both during their lives and after their deaths. What I have learned is that my relationship with my parents is still evolving. Since my mom died I have moments of utter grief and a feeling of complete aloneness. Even though I have lived independently of my parents since I went off the college in my late teens, there was always a feeling of having someone out there in the universe who “had my back” no matter what. My siblings are wonderful but they also have their own families which has expanded to grandchildren for them. I have no children and no partner so I am on my own and have to have my own back…. I’m still trying to figure out how to be an adult. I now have 8 great nieces and nephews (all under the age of 4 1/2). When I’m around them I feel like an adult….actually, I feel OLD. Actually, I think in some ways being an adult is a decision one makes: to BE an adult about things. Having said that: I have a 10 o’clock meeting and it is 8:43 and I haven’t had a shower…. I think the adult thing to do is to step away from the computer and get my ass going.
January 8th, 2008 at 9:27 am
I didn’t read one comment about losing a friend in the passing of a parent. My Mom was my sounding board…..my rock, that I could always rely on. We were extemely close and had been on an adult level relationship probably since I married at 19. She was very young at heart and there just never seemed to be a generation gap. She died at the age of 58, which was much too soon, but I don’t know that I would have ever been ready to say goodbye to her. My Dad was so not a part of my growing up or my adult life, but when he died a few years ago it definately made me feel a void, knowing I had no parents anymore…….anywhere. The realization, that I am the next in line for the departure of this world is quite the eye opener. I find it hard to understand the consept of moving away from your parents to be able to grow up. The relationship with my Mother was one of the most endearing things in my life. I don’t think I want to actually GROW UP…..ever. I am lucky, in that I inherited my Mothers youthful way of thinking. The torch has been given to me and I now share it with my daughter. We enjoy the same closeness that I so loved with my Mom.
January 8th, 2008 at 9:35 am
Sonia: I think your observation that “I am the next in line for the departure from this world” nails it.
I must say I envy everyone here who spoke about a close relationship with their mother.
January 8th, 2008 at 11:53 am
I think it all depends on our relationships with our parents (and that seems to be what lots of people are conveying here) My Mom passed away two years ago and it’s given me much to think about. At the time, I felt rather guilty because I felt as if I was freed from *something*–like my life was my own and I didn’t have to fight someone else or prove anything to someone else or try to live up to someone else’s expectations.
Some parents aren’t all that nurturing. Some parents see their children only as either extensions of themselves or pawns in some sort of play that is *their* lives. My Mom, who had a terrible childhood, wanted her children to realize her dreams–even though we were nothing like her. She wanted us to do things exactly the way she envisioned them–was overbearing, controlling, emotionally abusive. Not because she was an awful person–but because she had been treated so terribly and never able to realize whom she wanted to be…
My Father, who is still alive, is very narcissitic and mostly for the same reasons as my Mom–terrible childhood. He’s pretty detatched from who we are as people. And always had been. We’re like players in some kind of play, there to prop up who he is, make him feel good about who he is. Never grow up–because if we grow up he will lose power over us and our lives. So, he pulls power strings in many different ways…
Parents can emotionally keep their adult children in certain childlike rebellious states. The child can be a highly successful adult, but if the parent never acknowledges what the child does as an adult, even disaprages the child’s adult successes, the parent is essentially saying that he/she does not value the adult the child has become. And this can be a real mindf*ck, keeping the adult always in a childlike state around the parent. I don’t like to say it, but my Mother’s departure from my life was like the closing of an old book and the beginning of my own unique life. I didn’t have to try to have a conversation with a person who didn’t know, nor care about whom or what I had become. And I keep my conversations with my Father to a minimum.
January 8th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
My mother died this past summer, from colon cancer that had spread so far during her time of being in denial that she died five weeks after being diagnosed. I lived far away from her for most of my life, and due to her mental illnesses (she was bi-polar), it was never easy to be close to her. I feel like I had to grow up and almost be HER mother, ever since I was 12 or 13, try to keep her spending within sane levels and make sure the family had balanced meals and the other children did their homework, etc. By the time I got married (at 18) and moved out on my own, I felt like I was about 35 years old. Still…her death has given me much pause. I was with her at the end, and we had some very good, long talks about what we both wanted out of life. One of the things we both wished for was that we could have been close. It was almost like her impending death released her from some of the zaniness of the mental stuff and allowed us to talk as people. I find that’s what I miss when I think of her now, those last few weeks and not the many years before when I had to worry for her safety.
January 9th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Both of my parents have been gone for 2 decades….I was in my early 40’s then. Not having them still prompts a strange feelings in me now….there are times when I want to call them ,ask a question or share something in the news that would have been interesting to them. My cousin and I share one feeling….we are the next ones up.
January 9th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
My remaining parent died in November 2007. And yes, I feel different, but it’s nothing I can really explain just yet… Just that I feel like an orphan.
Hubby’s died a month before mine did. What hit hubby the most was that his siblings told him that he “was now the old man.” That sobered him up real fast!
I think we both are fearing our own mortality at this point…
January 9th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
My Dad dies about 2 yrs. ago (my mom- 35). not too long after he died, my son had his bar mitzvah and i remember looking at the pictures of me and my cousins, thinking: we’re “Them” now, we’re “That “Generation.
and so yes, i think it is true that: “one does not grow up until one’s parents die. “
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:27 pm
my mother died when i was three, my father died last year. i am 30. the answer to your question is yes. my sister and i have no family but each other. it changes your entire world. nothing will ever resemble anything before. you just sit back and wonder if you will out live them.
February 19th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
My father died when I was 28, and my mother died when I was 29. Now I have just turned 30. Yes, it made me grow up. I love my brother, and I know he loves me, but I also feel like my family is gone now, and I am the last surviving inhabitant of a lost world. (I was close to both of my parents).
February 19th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
I just lost my father last month and two and a half years ago, I lost my mom. I am the only one of my friends to have lost both parents – actually, the only one to lose even one……I definitely entered a different stage of life when my mom died and now that my dad is gone, I don’t know what I am in. I grieved heavily for my mother and I don’t seem to be experiencing the same for my dad……I don’t know why. Part of me feels guilty because now I feel ‘free’. I took care of my dad since my mom and for the last 6 months, I was really involved in his care. I am on my own now, but I don’t think it has hit me yet……kind of afraid for when it does…..
February 19th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
People don’t often talk about the feeling of freedom you can experience after your parents are gone. I think it’s common but people feel afraid to admit it.
March 16th, 2009 at 10:09 am
The relief is a big emotion that makes me feel guilty when I experience it. I don’t now have to worry how I will feel or cope when both my Parents are gone, because I now know. I am also relieved not to get that feeling of dread whenever the phone rings anymore….so awful and selfish but true.
I am an only child and I very much feel like am Orphan right now. It’s almost as if the child within me is gone as there is no-one with whom to refer back to past events…..the people who knew you the best are gone.
Time to turn a new page and start a new chapter……..Although I am presently stuck at the end of the last Chapter unable to move on…it all feels very weird and not right at all.
Jan (Dad died 12 years ago when I was 29 and Mum just before Christmas when I was 41)
March 16th, 2009 at 10:18 am
Jan, thanks for writing in about your experience. Being the only child must compound the situation.