Does anyone still miss their parents?

Still miss my parents and my grandparents. Still am influenced by things that especially my father advised and told me. My mother had dementia for the last few years and were a time of great stress. When she died I felt a mixture of great sorrow and relief. I mourned the lovely mum I had been fortunate to have before the brain damage caused by strokes. I mourned my dad who had been so devoted to her until the very end and who died just a few years later of bowel cancer. My mother was eighty and my father 85. I remember going home on a train not long after he had died and being unable to stop the tears running down my face. I was conscious of people looking at me but could do nothing.

I still miss my parents, especially my Mum, even though they've both been gone a very long time. There are things I wish I'd asked them about their childhoods and experiences during the war, and so much I long to tell them.

A young couple nextdoor go off to visit their parents every Saturday and I wish it could be me visiting mine.

I have poor health and spend a lot of time on my own so probably I dwell on things too much.

Definitely. I am on the same page as you. Not a day goes by when I won't say 'Oh, mum/dad used to say....' There are still so many questions I would love to ask them about the old days during the 20s, 30s and 40s. I now actively pursue hobbies they had i.e. baking and art and it is sort of comforting to know I walk in their foot steps. Gone but never ever forgotten.

Hang on to the memories. These good parents are part of you and always will be. Sadly I do not have good memories to treasure. But that's life.

Yes, I miss them terribly and the world they inhabited.

Yes, every single day of my life.

Sometimes the loss and grief can be as raw as it was on Day 1 - but at least on Day 1 you don't really take in or believe what has happened to you.

I do think grief can be a bit more difficult to manage if you live alone - more time to dwell and reflect. I often think there must be something wrong with me for still feeling the pain and loss so acutely.

No, not really. My dad died when I was 19, so I've had a long time to get used to him not being here - and my mum died several years ago after a long battle with dementia, so it felt like I'd lost her a good few years before that. I didn't have a great relationship with my mum in any case.

Of course. I would think most would . In time it becomes easier, of course. I still feel like crying when people tell me what a lovely man my Dad was and he died several years ago now.

MissInterpreted

No, not really. My dad died when I was 19, so I've had a long time to get used to him not being here - and my mum died several years ago after a long battle with dementia, so it felt like I'd lost her a good few years before that. I didn't have a great relationship with my mum in any case.

It can be a very complicated loss to deal with.

My DF died in Jan 2016 and my DM in July 2022, I still miss them both enormously and think about them every day.

I’m an only child and my last grandparent died when I was 15, so very thankful I have four children and an amazing step-daughter and a few very close long standing friendships.

ferry23

Yes, every single day of my life.

Sometimes the loss and grief can be as raw as it was on Day 1 - but at least on Day 1 you don't really take in or believe what has happened to you.

I do think grief can be a bit more difficult to manage if you live alone - more time to dwell and reflect. I often think there must be something wrong with me for still feeling the pain and loss so acutely.

Absolutely nothing wrong with you at all!

Yes I miss my parents and often think how happy they would be to have lived long enough to see their 4 great grandchildren. They had a close relationship with my 2 children from birth into their adult lives. Mum sadly died a few months before my daughter’s wedding day. Then a few years later Dad died a month before my son’s wife gave birth to their first child. He wanted so much to make it to that day and said he would die happy if he could just hold on till the baby was born. Sadly it wasn’t to be.

They were very much loved parents and grandparents and we speak about them often. My 4 grandchildren didn’t know them but enjoy hearing about them from their parents .

My parents, at times, perhaps not with the intensity many mention, but my younger sister died suddenly 33 years ago, and I think about her often.

I have a second sister but she is quite a bit my junior, so, so many of my childhood memories involve my deceased sister, who was very close to me in age. We did so much together and so many things trigger memories - like this thread.

I was a much wanted only child and loved, I know, unconditionally but I have always felt something missing. My Mum died after years of ill health at 87. Dad followed on four years later at 84. He adored her and everything revolved round her. I was relieved when she died. I had time with Dad after he was widowed and we were close until he died. Perhaps it was a generational thing but now, with hindsight, I realise I didn’t ‘know’ them. As I age, I now feel an incredible guilt that I didn’t do as much as I could to ‘find’ them, but life, family and work got in the way. They were from the stiff upper lip, buttoned up era. I feel very sad that it’s too late and, yes, I miss them.

No. I wish my mother had had a better life as her life was awful. She died at 58 when I was 23. My father was a monster.

Yes I miss both parents. I am through the crying and choked up stage and mainly feel relief that they both had long lives and are buried together. I go regularly to tend the grave and just have really happy memories.

Dad died in 2007 aged 86 and Mum died during Covid a few weeks before Christmas in 2020. She was nearly 97.

I looked after Mum after Dad died and looking back I don’t know how I did it. I seemed to have no time to myself during my 60s and they just went in a flash. That decade just vanished but I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

I have a little Peruvian doll (about 1.5” tall) and she sits by my bed and if I go away, she comes in my suitcase, so I still take Mum on holiday!

My dad died in 1995. My mum in 2008. I still miss them very much!

Yes, every day.. Every time the House phone rings, I instinctively think it's my Mum, she's been only been gone 3 years.
Certain Songs on the Radio, still have me in tears reminding me of my Dad he's been gone 10 years.

I was very lucky my parents were both amazing, my sister and I had a loving, happy childhood and our children had brilliant Grandparents.

Oh thank you for sharing with me 🙏 I’m sad for those of you who don’t have good memories. I suppose it just seems strange that it’s taken 9 months to grieve for mum but grief is rarely linear.
Thinking of you all.

Thank you for acknowledging those of us who are widows OP. I found that much harder than losing my parents. I lost my mum when she was aged 87 in 2006 and my dad in 1978 when he was 63. I don't have siblings so now that I am on my own I have started to miss my mum much more than before. It would be lovely to talk about shared history and memories with someone. My dad died so long ago that, although I think of him, I don't miss him in the same way. I've spent all my adult life without him.

My Mum died quite young when I was in my 20s. At the time I just carried on but often look back now and think of all the young adult experiences that I missed, particularly my children missing having a grandmother. I've hosted Christmas for 45 years - it would have been nice to share that!

I am so pleased for those of you who have such memories, cherish them and realise your grief is grieving the very happy lives you lived together.
My Father died when I was 11, it was 1949, he was also 49, an older father who I barely knew as was the way in those far off days.
I was an only child and my Mother used me as an emotional crutch until she died aged 101.
Not many fond memories only a sense of freedom for the first time .
You still grieving really are the lucky ones.

I miss them both very much. My mother died in 1997, a few days before her 90th birthday. My father died in 2001, just before the twin towers disaster. He was 94. In their lifetimes I talked to them on the phone every day (we didn’t live close) and their conversation was interesting and lively up to the day they died, although my mother’s stroke made her rather muddled sometimes.

It upsets me that they never knew my grandchildren. They would have loved them so much, and been thrilled to have a great-granddaughter in our boy-dominated family..

No. They both went within 12 months of each other very messily from cancer and that was 40 years ago so I've had plenty of time for any memories to get fuzzy around the edges.