How has losing a parent before your 30s affected your life?
April 7, 2026
How has losing a parent before your 30s affected your life?
26 comments
My mom only just died in January and I turn 26 next month.
Honestly? I feel mostly relieved. Her mental health was really going down hill and she wasn’t happy or healthy anymore. She wasn’t the mom I knew.
Terribly … pretty sure it’s why I have unresolved trauma and depression and anxiety.
You learn real grief before a lot of your peers and it’s oddly isolating. There’s almost a relief when your friends start joining the dead parent club as you all age because they can finally relate to you on that level. It’s very very shitty.
You go through a level of stress that is unmatched to anything else. You feel in your core it is unnatural to lose a parent so young and the grief hits so hard because you’ve got no idea how to handle it. I completely lost myself when I didn’t even know who I was yet and what I wanted in my life. It broke me completely. You mature so quickly in a way that only people who had this experience will understand.
It was awful and not an experience I wish on anybody else.
Dad died when I was 14…helped me out with college money (scholarships for children of military). They had been divorced since I was six or seven so not really a huge day-to-day impact. Sounds cold, I know.
I’ll probably always carry this guilt and sense of failure with me for a variety of reasons.
I lost her when I was 18, but she was sick for a long time before that, so even when I was starting to feel grown, I didn’t really get to know her as the woman she actually was. My memories are mostly those rose-colored childhood memories. It never really occurred to me, as a child, to ask her what her childhood was like, or how she felt as a teenager, or anything like that. Now that I’m an adult, there are so many things I wish I knew about her, but I’ll just never know. Everything that I’ve learned about my mom as an adult has been secondhand, and therefore it’s been filtered through other people’s thoughts and experiences.
I know the stories that her brothers have told about her childhood/young adulthood, but I don’t remember ever seeing that side of her when I knew her. It’s like there are so many different (and so incomplete) versions of her. I just want the real one.
Because she was so sick for so long, I don’t like to yearn to have her back here. I also feel like I’m not allowed to want to see her spirit or anything like that, because her adult life was awful. On the rare occasion that I let myself think about her in some kind of heaven, she’s always a kid or a high schooler with little to no thoughts about being a mother, and that’s really lonely.
Having these kinds of mommy issues, though, has made me incredibly driven by this need to impress women with authority, which is good for my job in education, I suppose.
I turn 30 this year and lost my dad last year. Honestly, I feel relief. Of course, the grief comes and goes. I find myself crying whenever I hear something he would’ve laughed at. And he loved birding, so that is one way I continue to feel close to him
His health was so deteriorated and he seemed like a shell of his former self, I think he was okay with going when he did. Plus, as a veteran, he got to miss a lot of the current military turmoil that I know would’ve been heavy for him to carry mentally. Especially with him being unable to fully communicate.
My dad also passed in his sleep, which gave *me* some solace in knowing he went peacefully.
No one can truly prepare for the death of a loved one, but you’re never alone. 🫂💜
My dad died unexpectedly when I was 16. My mom died when I was 31 because she couldn’t afford her cancer treatment in the US. I’m 36 now. I do cry about it sometimes. Like full on hysterically cry. I don’t think my husband truly understands because he has both of his parents. He can lean on them for support and money. I cannot go to my parents for advice and they left me no inheritance or assets. I’ve accepted it. Made my peace, but in the back somewhere it still hurts. I think I have some type of separation anxiety because of it, but never seeked therapy.
I’m 45 and I lost my mom at 28 and my dad at 32. I think mostly it’s made me more empathetic to the people I have known who’ve gone through it after me. It hurts to not have them around for certain milestones, and I do get a little bitter when people my age still rely so heavily on their own parents (though I hadn’t relied on my own for much of anything since I was like 15). I guess I don’t know what about me and my life is because they’re dead and what is just because of whatever else. I’ve got good jokes and I also have some good insight that maybe I wouldn’t have if it weren’t for the grief.
My father died when I was 4 and it impacted every part of my life.
I often wonder who I would have been if he hadn’t died. There’s an inmate sadness that infects you when it happens.
Edit: also no one will talk to you about it, which is sad. People hear it and just back off, but I want to be asked about my dad. I want to speak him into existence. You always know when you’ve met someone else whose parents died when they were young, because they will immediately start asking you questions about your experience once they know about it.
My mom was my only blood family I kept in contact with so her dying kinda makes me feel like a little alien alone in human society. Its whatever.
My mom died when I was 18. It happened within 1-2 months from ovarian cancer. We didn’t know she had it until it was too late. While it taught me a lot of things and gave me a sort of more empathetic perspective it also deeply damaged me. And the longer time goes the more things come up.
I can’t see my high school friends anymore because it happened around graduation and it brings up so many bad memories. I ghosted everyone from that time period.
When I began to have my own kids I also dealt with a lot of anger and trauma. I cried a lot when I had my first, particularly, when I realized I couldn’t tell her all the things I was supposed to tell her.
I spent 2-3 years of extreme health hypochondria and still have a lot of hang ups regarding my own health. I generally feel like my innocence and understand of mortality got warped at a young age. There are many more examples. It’s infinite really. There’s a lot of things I am traumatized about and sometimes it comes up *very* unexpectedly.
I lost my dad when I was 26, almost 2 years ago. After he passed, I realized that all of my happiest moments for the rest of my life would have a dark cloud over them now. Like graduating from nursing school, getting married, having a baby. All these joyous moments that we experience in life that are supposed to be full of joy now also have grief intermingled in them. For instance, I met my boyfriend a year after my dad passed and falling in love with him was the best thing to ever happen to me, and almost every day I think about how much I wish he could meet my dad, and how much I wish my dad could have met him. I think all the time about how my dad won’t be there to walk me down the aisle or hold my first baby. Sometimes it hurts so bad it makes me not want to get married, but I know my dad would be livid if I gave up on those things just because he isn’t here. But yeah, when you lose a parent young, it affects all of your adult milestones.
I also experience this deep rage and jealousy towards my friends who still have both of their parents and the way they take it so completely and utterly for granted. I never express that feeling outwardly because they simply don’t know and won’t know unless they lose a parent one day, but I wish I could tell everyone to cherish every second they get while their parents are still here.
That said, my dad was my best friend in the whole world, and even if I had spent every second of eternity with him it still would not have been enough.
I lost my dad a week before I turned 21, and nothing really prepares you for what comes after.
It’s not just the loss, but all the things that comes with it … it’s the anxiety, the constant undercurrent of grief that shows up in moments you don’t expect. And i have to say even now now, there’s this quiet anticipatory grief, especially with my mom … wondering how you’ll face more life without the people you love most.
Losing a parent that young changes you in ways I can’t fully explain. You’re still growing, still becoming, still hitting milestones, and somehow learning to do it all without them. It’s strange and disorienting, like life keeps moving but a part of you is standing still.
Therapy has helped, I think… in its own way. But a lot of it is figuring things out as you go, at the age of 33 I’m still learning how to carry the loss while still building a life.
I don’t think the grief ever really leaves. You just learn how to live alongside it, the best way you can.
I lost both of my parents before 28. I was fine with losing my dad at 19. He was selfish and cheap. He never supported my sister or myself. When my mom passed at 27, I legit lost my mind until I turned 30. She was the best mom in the whole wide world. I had an emotionally and physically abusive boyfriend. I was broke despite having a good job and master’s degree and resources (homes and money) from both parents. I really found myself in my 30s and became the person my mom wanted me to be. I still have moments of anger that my mom isn’t here. I get frustrated that my friends have shitty alive parents and my fantastic mother is gone. I don’t like to be around my friend’s parents (except for one).
I was 22 when my dad died from oesophageal cancer. It’s 44 years now, I’ve never really got over it.
My dad committed suicide. I feel like it’s my destiny now. I don’t feel like I have any hope. I’ve broken off my long term relationship and found new homes for my pets and I don’t leave his old house even though it’s partially hoarded and in serious disrepair.
I’m scared if I get close to anyone, I’m going to disappoint and hurt them. Like I’ll cause them to make the same choice, or hurt them if I make that choice.
He died without ever having grandkids. But how could I possibly have kids now? I’m a wreck.
As others said, you learn real grief.
I feel a lot of guilt for wasting time, now that I’ve seen it be taken away from someone who was supposed to be permanent.
I also have developed a lot of anxiety related to health, possibly hypochondria.
The good is that In some ways I think I gained a lot of introspection and emotional maturity or at least the desire to seek self-betterment.
I appreciate happy moments a lot more. I try to live in the moment and acknowledge to myself how much I love/enjoy the people i’m with.
I try not to cry at night, worrying or spiraling about those I love dying.
I lost my mom at 13, I’m 31 now. It’s just a normal part of my story now. I honestly don’t think about her too much. It made a lot of people uncomfortable when I was a kid and some people are still shocked even now to find out.
It’s just part of my story now. I will say what’s weird losing a parent young is you only know/remember a small part of them. Learning who they were through friends and family as you grow older can really change the lens in which you view them.
It’s the 5th year anniversary of me losing my parents. My mom passed away exactly 5 years ago today and my dad passed away 3 days before her. I’m 33 now. I lost them to COVID and it was all so sudden. One day I was having a laugh with my father and the next morning I get a call from hospital and they ask me to come quickly. We had to hide the news from my mother as they both were in different rooms. I’m not sure if we were successful.
It felt like I had never known grief before this. Everything else that I had cried over till then felt so fucking insignificant. I was working, married , taking care of myself on my own for years but it felt like I grew up all of a sudden. I became the eldest. I was responsible for my sister (not that she needed my help except to sign the loan for her masters)
I have a lot of holes in my memory from that time. I don’t remember what I did to grieve, how long I was on leave from office, how we got everything sorted afterwards. I just know somehow I did. I’m lucky in a way because my mother used to talk a lot about death and the memory of them gave me strength to keep going.
It felt like everything was suddenly taken away from me. Literally everything. I don’t wish to have kids anymore.
I don’t know what else to say or how to end this. But this is probably it. I’m still not over it. I still cry abruptly. I mourn for days. Sometimes I forget they are gone. I get the strong urge to call them only to realise I can’t.. and then it’s crying time. I live in a different country now and my sister lives in a totally different country. So I don’t even feel like going back to my country.
My life changed completely. Literally flipped. I became someone I always wanted to be (some almost immediately, some of it slowly) I do so much now that I would want them to see. But I can’t. I don’t know why I still do it. I don’t know, I just do it. It makes me feel stronger and I know they would want me to be strong. Maybe that’s why.
I lost my dad at 20 and i felt like it really rocked my sense of safety/protection/foundation of my life. I developed a lot of health anxiety as he passed from cancer and I still deal with that now at 28. I think it really forced me to look to myself to take care of me, no one or anything else. Growing up I think you live in this incubator of family life and for most kids at 18 they leave that incubator and try/fail/fly but they have that incubator to fall back on. And I felt like my safety net was ripped from under me and I didn’t have anyone who could relate. It was a truly formative experience in my life and I know I wouldn’t be who or where I am had I not lost him so young. Really forced me to grow up fast.
This is going to be very long so bear with me lol
My dad died when I was 12. It affected my life a lot. He was only 49. I had lost 2 uncles already, who were both relatively young as well. One was 60. It made me feel like everyone was going to die very soon. It didn’t help that my friend who was 13 died the following April. Everyone around me was dying and I was terrified all the time. My mom made me write out a list of pros and cons for who to live with if she died the week my dad died. Since him, I’ve lost the 2 grandparents I had left (the others died before I was born/ when I was 1, also young), and around 6 aunts and uncles and some more friends and I am only 25.
All this to say, I think losing my dad so young made me more anxious than I already was and exacerbated my anorexia to the point of multiple hospitalizations. He was my best friend in the entire world & he was taken from me out of nowhere. I learned who my friends were & who his friends were. I was so blessed to have a humongous support system & for there to be over 200 people at his funeral. I saw how loved my dad was by everyone else and it inspired me to be like him. I also saw who didn’t show up for us & that they were fake which is a tough lesson to learn at 12.
I learned how to grieve and cope with hard things a lot younger than my peers and I can be there for them now when their family members die. I’ve felt a lot more emotionally mature than them since then. But It was a weird dynamic because my friends at that age were like siblings. We all were in and out of each others houses and our parents kind of raised us together, so we were comforting each other bc even though it was my dad, it felt like an uncle or second father for them, too.
I also never got along with my mom since probably age 7 & it got a lot worse when he died and stayed that way until last year honestly. He was always the mediator and when we lost that, it was volatile.
Mainly I tell everyone I love them all the time, check in on people constantly, and just try to be a good person. You never know when it’s someone’s last day. I still grieve him every day and I talk to him every night and wear his wedding ring as a necklace since the day he died.
The hardest thing for me now is getting ready to be engaged and married and not having the traditions of my dad walking me down the aisle and doing a daddy daughter dance and having him give a speech. I was always sad at sweet 16 daddy daughter dances and at my dance studio for recital, but this is different. He’s missed almost every milestone but not having him at my wedding is the hardest thing for me rn besides how horrible my mother is and how kind & generous he would’ve been in certain situations.
You learn very, very quickly that life is short and if you really love someone, be prepared beforehand for that loss to someday destroy you in ways that you never thought was possible. And that, to recover from it, time is the only thing that probably helps you to grow around that grief in a manageable way. And the worst part, there is literally no one who can relate to you because you entered that club pretty early on compared to your peers.
You’ll realize that your family will never be complete again and Christmas will never be the same again. I lost my dad when i was 26yo.
Birthdays are no longer enjoyable without your mother, in my experience. Having lost both parents I feel like an orphan. I’m literally googling everything from how to get blood out of your blouse to what are the early signs of a quarter life crisis….
Losing my mom was tough. It doesn’t get easier. It actually gets more heartbreaking as time goes on and you’re unable to remember all the fine details of memories you could before.
26 comments
My mom only just died in January and I turn 26 next month.
Honestly? I feel mostly relieved. Her mental health was really going down hill and she wasn’t happy or healthy anymore. She wasn’t the mom I knew.
Terribly … pretty sure it’s why I have unresolved trauma and depression and anxiety.
You learn real grief before a lot of your peers and it’s oddly isolating. There’s almost a relief when your friends start joining the dead parent club as you all age because they can finally relate to you on that level. It’s very very shitty.
You go through a level of stress that is unmatched to anything else. You feel in your core it is unnatural to lose a parent so young and the grief hits so hard because you’ve got no idea how to handle it. I completely lost myself when I didn’t even know who I was yet and what I wanted in my life. It broke me completely. You mature so quickly in a way that only people who had this experience will understand.
It was awful and not an experience I wish on anybody else.
Dad died when I was 14…helped me out with college money (scholarships for children of military). They had been divorced since I was six or seven so not really a huge day-to-day impact. Sounds cold, I know.
I’ll probably always carry this guilt and sense of failure with me for a variety of reasons.
I lost her when I was 18, but she was sick for a long time before that, so even when I was starting to feel grown, I didn’t really get to know her as the woman she actually was. My memories are mostly those rose-colored childhood memories. It never really occurred to me, as a child, to ask her what her childhood was like, or how she felt as a teenager, or anything like that. Now that I’m an adult, there are so many things I wish I knew about her, but I’ll just never know. Everything that I’ve learned about my mom as an adult has been secondhand, and therefore it’s been filtered through other people’s thoughts and experiences.
I know the stories that her brothers have told about her childhood/young adulthood, but I don’t remember ever seeing that side of her when I knew her. It’s like there are so many different (and so incomplete) versions of her. I just want the real one.
Because she was so sick for so long, I don’t like to yearn to have her back here. I also feel like I’m not allowed to want to see her spirit or anything like that, because her adult life was awful. On the rare occasion that I let myself think about her in some kind of heaven, she’s always a kid or a high schooler with little to no thoughts about being a mother, and that’s really lonely.
Having these kinds of mommy issues, though, has made me incredibly driven by this need to impress women with authority, which is good for my job in education, I suppose.
I turn 30 this year and lost my dad last year. Honestly, I feel relief. Of course, the grief comes and goes. I find myself crying whenever I hear something he would’ve laughed at. And he loved birding, so that is one way I continue to feel close to him
His health was so deteriorated and he seemed like a shell of his former self, I think he was okay with going when he did. Plus, as a veteran, he got to miss a lot of the current military turmoil that I know would’ve been heavy for him to carry mentally. Especially with him being unable to fully communicate.
My dad also passed in his sleep, which gave *me* some solace in knowing he went peacefully.
No one can truly prepare for the death of a loved one, but you’re never alone. 🫂💜
My dad died unexpectedly when I was 16. My mom died when I was 31 because she couldn’t afford her cancer treatment in the US. I’m 36 now. I do cry about it sometimes. Like full on hysterically cry. I don’t think my husband truly understands because he has both of his parents. He can lean on them for support and money. I cannot go to my parents for advice and they left me no inheritance or assets. I’ve accepted it. Made my peace, but in the back somewhere it still hurts. I think I have some type of separation anxiety because of it, but never seeked therapy.
I’m 45 and I lost my mom at 28 and my dad at 32. I think mostly it’s made me more empathetic to the people I have known who’ve gone through it after me. It hurts to not have them around for certain milestones, and I do get a little bitter when people my age still rely so heavily on their own parents (though I hadn’t relied on my own for much of anything since I was like 15). I guess I don’t know what about me and my life is because they’re dead and what is just because of whatever else. I’ve got good jokes and I also have some good insight that maybe I wouldn’t have if it weren’t for the grief.
My father died when I was 4 and it impacted every part of my life.
I often wonder who I would have been if he hadn’t died. There’s an inmate sadness that infects you when it happens.
Edit: also no one will talk to you about it, which is sad. People hear it and just back off, but I want to be asked about my dad. I want to speak him into existence. You always know when you’ve met someone else whose parents died when they were young, because they will immediately start asking you questions about your experience once they know about it.
My mom was my only blood family I kept in contact with so her dying kinda makes me feel like a little alien alone in human society. Its whatever.
My mom died when I was 18. It happened within 1-2 months from ovarian cancer. We didn’t know she had it until it was too late. While it taught me a lot of things and gave me a sort of more empathetic perspective it also deeply damaged me. And the longer time goes the more things come up.
I can’t see my high school friends anymore because it happened around graduation and it brings up so many bad memories. I ghosted everyone from that time period.
When I began to have my own kids I also dealt with a lot of anger and trauma. I cried a lot when I had my first, particularly, when I realized I couldn’t tell her all the things I was supposed to tell her.
I spent 2-3 years of extreme health hypochondria and still have a lot of hang ups regarding my own health. I generally feel like my innocence and understand of mortality got warped at a young age. There are many more examples. It’s infinite really. There’s a lot of things I am traumatized about and sometimes it comes up *very* unexpectedly.
I lost my dad when I was 26, almost 2 years ago. After he passed, I realized that all of my happiest moments for the rest of my life would have a dark cloud over them now. Like graduating from nursing school, getting married, having a baby. All these joyous moments that we experience in life that are supposed to be full of joy now also have grief intermingled in them. For instance, I met my boyfriend a year after my dad passed and falling in love with him was the best thing to ever happen to me, and almost every day I think about how much I wish he could meet my dad, and how much I wish my dad could have met him. I think all the time about how my dad won’t be there to walk me down the aisle or hold my first baby. Sometimes it hurts so bad it makes me not want to get married, but I know my dad would be livid if I gave up on those things just because he isn’t here. But yeah, when you lose a parent young, it affects all of your adult milestones.
I also experience this deep rage and jealousy towards my friends who still have both of their parents and the way they take it so completely and utterly for granted. I never express that feeling outwardly because they simply don’t know and won’t know unless they lose a parent one day, but I wish I could tell everyone to cherish every second they get while their parents are still here.
That said, my dad was my best friend in the whole world, and even if I had spent every second of eternity with him it still would not have been enough.
I lost my dad a week before I turned 21, and nothing really prepares you for what comes after.
It’s not just the loss, but all the things that comes with it … it’s the anxiety, the constant undercurrent of grief that shows up in moments you don’t expect. And i have to say even now now, there’s this quiet anticipatory grief, especially with my mom … wondering how you’ll face more life without the people you love most.
Losing a parent that young changes you in ways I can’t fully explain. You’re still growing, still becoming, still hitting milestones, and somehow learning to do it all without them. It’s strange and disorienting, like life keeps moving but a part of you is standing still.
Therapy has helped, I think… in its own way. But a lot of it is figuring things out as you go, at the age of 33 I’m still learning how to carry the loss while still building a life.
I don’t think the grief ever really leaves. You just learn how to live alongside it, the best way you can.
I lost both of my parents before 28. I was fine with losing my dad at 19. He was selfish and cheap. He never supported my sister or myself. When my mom passed at 27, I legit lost my mind until I turned 30. She was the best mom in the whole wide world. I had an emotionally and physically abusive boyfriend. I was broke despite having a good job and master’s degree and resources (homes and money) from both parents. I really found myself in my 30s and became the person my mom wanted me to be. I still have moments of anger that my mom isn’t here. I get frustrated that my friends have shitty alive parents and my fantastic mother is gone. I don’t like to be around my friend’s parents (except for one).
I was 22 when my dad died from oesophageal cancer. It’s 44 years now, I’ve never really got over it.
My dad committed suicide. I feel like it’s my destiny now. I don’t feel like I have any hope. I’ve broken off my long term relationship and found new homes for my pets and I don’t leave his old house even though it’s partially hoarded and in serious disrepair.
I’m scared if I get close to anyone, I’m going to disappoint and hurt them. Like I’ll cause them to make the same choice, or hurt them if I make that choice.
He died without ever having grandkids. But how could I possibly have kids now? I’m a wreck.
As others said, you learn real grief.
I feel a lot of guilt for wasting time, now that I’ve seen it be taken away from someone who was supposed to be permanent.
I also have developed a lot of anxiety related to health, possibly hypochondria.
The good is that In some ways I think I gained a lot of introspection and emotional maturity or at least the desire to seek self-betterment.
I appreciate happy moments a lot more. I try to live in the moment and acknowledge to myself how much I love/enjoy the people i’m with.
I try not to cry at night, worrying or spiraling about those I love dying.
I lost my mom at 13, I’m 31 now. It’s just a normal part of my story now. I honestly don’t think about her too much. It made a lot of people uncomfortable when I was a kid and some people are still shocked even now to find out.
It’s just part of my story now. I will say what’s weird losing a parent young is you only know/remember a small part of them. Learning who they were through friends and family as you grow older can really change the lens in which you view them.
It’s the 5th year anniversary of me losing my parents. My mom passed away exactly 5 years ago today and my dad passed away 3 days before her. I’m 33 now. I lost them to COVID and it was all so sudden. One day I was having a laugh with my father and the next morning I get a call from hospital and they ask me to come quickly. We had to hide the news from my mother as they both were in different rooms. I’m not sure if we were successful.
It felt like I had never known grief before this. Everything else that I had cried over till then felt so fucking insignificant. I was working, married , taking care of myself on my own for years but it felt like I grew up all of a sudden. I became the eldest. I was responsible for my sister (not that she needed my help except to sign the loan for her masters)
I have a lot of holes in my memory from that time. I don’t remember what I did to grieve, how long I was on leave from office, how we got everything sorted afterwards. I just know somehow I did. I’m lucky in a way because my mother used to talk a lot about death and the memory of them gave me strength to keep going.
It felt like everything was suddenly taken away from me. Literally everything. I don’t wish to have kids anymore.
I don’t know what else to say or how to end this. But this is probably it. I’m still not over it. I still cry abruptly. I mourn for days. Sometimes I forget they are gone. I get the strong urge to call them only to realise I can’t.. and then it’s crying time. I live in a different country now and my sister lives in a totally different country. So I don’t even feel like going back to my country.
My life changed completely. Literally flipped. I became someone I always wanted to be (some almost immediately, some of it slowly) I do so much now that I would want them to see. But I can’t. I don’t know why I still do it. I don’t know, I just do it. It makes me feel stronger and I know they would want me to be strong. Maybe that’s why.
I lost my dad at 20 and i felt like it really rocked my sense of safety/protection/foundation of my life. I developed a lot of health anxiety as he passed from cancer and I still deal with that now at 28. I think it really forced me to look to myself to take care of me, no one or anything else. Growing up I think you live in this incubator of family life and for most kids at 18 they leave that incubator and try/fail/fly but they have that incubator to fall back on. And I felt like my safety net was ripped from under me and I didn’t have anyone who could relate. It was a truly formative experience in my life and I know I wouldn’t be who or where I am had I not lost him so young. Really forced me to grow up fast.
This is going to be very long so bear with me lol
My dad died when I was 12. It affected my life a lot. He was only 49. I had lost 2 uncles already, who were both relatively young as well. One was 60. It made me feel like everyone was going to die very soon. It didn’t help that my friend who was 13 died the following April. Everyone around me was dying and I was terrified all the time. My mom made me write out a list of pros and cons for who to live with if she died the week my dad died. Since him, I’ve lost the 2 grandparents I had left (the others died before I was born/ when I was 1, also young), and around 6 aunts and uncles and some more friends and I am only 25.
All this to say, I think losing my dad so young made me more anxious than I already was and exacerbated my anorexia to the point of multiple hospitalizations. He was my best friend in the entire world & he was taken from me out of nowhere. I learned who my friends were & who his friends were. I was so blessed to have a humongous support system & for there to be over 200 people at his funeral. I saw how loved my dad was by everyone else and it inspired me to be like him. I also saw who didn’t show up for us & that they were fake which is a tough lesson to learn at 12.
I learned how to grieve and cope with hard things a lot younger than my peers and I can be there for them now when their family members die. I’ve felt a lot more emotionally mature than them since then. But It was a weird dynamic because my friends at that age were like siblings. We all were in and out of each others houses and our parents kind of raised us together, so we were comforting each other bc even though it was my dad, it felt like an uncle or second father for them, too.
I also never got along with my mom since probably age 7 & it got a lot worse when he died and stayed that way until last year honestly. He was always the mediator and when we lost that, it was volatile.
Mainly I tell everyone I love them all the time, check in on people constantly, and just try to be a good person. You never know when it’s someone’s last day. I still grieve him every day and I talk to him every night and wear his wedding ring as a necklace since the day he died.
The hardest thing for me now is getting ready to be engaged and married and not having the traditions of my dad walking me down the aisle and doing a daddy daughter dance and having him give a speech. I was always sad at sweet 16 daddy daughter dances and at my dance studio for recital, but this is different. He’s missed almost every milestone but not having him at my wedding is the hardest thing for me rn besides how horrible my mother is and how kind & generous he would’ve been in certain situations.
You learn very, very quickly that life is short and if you really love someone, be prepared beforehand for that loss to someday destroy you in ways that you never thought was possible. And that, to recover from it, time is the only thing that probably helps you to grow around that grief in a manageable way. And the worst part, there is literally no one who can relate to you because you entered that club pretty early on compared to your peers.
You’ll realize that your family will never be complete again and Christmas will never be the same again. I lost my dad when i was 26yo.
Birthdays are no longer enjoyable without your mother, in my experience. Having lost both parents I feel like an orphan. I’m literally googling everything from how to get blood out of your blouse to what are the early signs of a quarter life crisis….
Losing my mom was tough. It doesn’t get easier. It actually gets more heartbreaking as time goes on and you’re unable to remember all the fine details of memories you could before.