My Father has passed away - how did you deal with the loss of your parents?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Don’t put a timetable on your grief.

My mom died of cancer at 59. Even though that’s sickeningly young, she had been so sick and had so many procedures over the prior 6-7 years that it was almost a relief. I had a one-year-old kid and was struggling with depression (although I didn’t realize it at the time), and in the days and weeks and months after she died I never felt more than a dull pang when I thought about her.

Fast forward a couple of years. My wife and I had just bought a nice house with a gorgeous yard, and after some unpacking I pulled a lawn chair into the backyard and cracked a beer. Gosh, my mom would have loved this place, I thought, and just like that … floodgates.

22

Sorry to hear this.

The post above is very similar to my situation. My mother died at 56 after fighting cancer for 8 years. First it was uterine cancer, then lymphoma. While being treated for the lymphoma a large mass was found on one of her kidneys. She suffered greatly her last 6 months. My siblings got angry at me for suggesting that if she died it would be a blessing, she wouldn’t be in pain anymore. The really sad part she was in the hospital the day one of her grand daughters was born, she was 2 floor above the birthing center. My mother passed early the next morning. I had to make a lot of changes in my life at that point, I had been living with her, mostly just to keep the house livable, she had let things go for way to long. Finding a new place to live, dealing with a strike with my employer and starting a new relationship kept me busy so I really didn’t have a lot of time to think about her death. It’s now been over 33 years and I still miss her dearly. I still visit her grave 3 or 4 times a year and bring flowers. What really pisses me off none of my siblings have been there in years.

My father is still alive at 92 and in poor health. I have talked to him once since my mother died, this was 3 years ago, all he did was rant about how us kids were always taking advantage of him. He had zero interest in my current family. I also let him know about his daughter that was born 2 months after me because he was screwing around behind my mother’s back. The last thing I told him was to have his wife let me know when his time is up so I can take a few minutes to mourn, that would be more time than he spent thinking about me over the years.

23

I lost my mom when I was 34, she was 62. Dad passed away when I was 37, he was 63. How’d I deal? Cried a lot, was dysfunctional for 5 or 6 days, leaned heavily on friends. It was very tough. One friend who’d also lost his mother relatively young (in his late 20’s) told me it’d hurt like hell and there was little help for it, but that it lessened with time, and I’d be able to look back and cherish the memories and even laugh about times past. He was right.

I must admit I still do get unreasonably jealous of people who have their parents live into their 70’s, 80’s and beyond. But I know their grief is just as strong mine was when they finally do experience the loss.

My condolences.

24

I’m glad for all of those who were close to their parents while they were alive, even though it means grief and loss when they die. I suspect there are a fair number of us who were not particularly close to our parents and who did not experience much in the way of grief or loss when they died. There may not be many of us posting in threads like this.

My parents were not bad people (far from it) and were not even bad parents. But we never clicked, and when I grew up and moved out on my own, we became somewhat reserved and distant with each other. I don’t blame them, they both had difficult issues remaining from their own childhoods; I don’t blame myself either. I was in town for each of their final illnesses (short, in both cases) but not in the room when they died. My mother was in a hospital room and my sister and her husband were keeping vigil while my father and I went to have dinner. The next day after her death, I went with my father to the mortuary to make arrangements for cremation, and I helped him put the funeral notices in the papers. Since I had been called at the last minute just as I was about to leave on a trip to Japan with my husband, a couple of days later my father sent me on my trip with his blessing.

Less than 7 years later, my father, who had been living independently the whole time, became ill and it looked serious, so I came up and saw him in the hospital, conscious but obviously very weak, on the day before he died. That evening he was moved to a hospice facility, and he died there in his sleep in the middle of the night. I spent the next two weeks making arrangements and closing out his apartment and taking over his estate for disposal.

I didn’t feel very much on either of these occasions, I am sorry to say. This may be partly my nature, and partly the relationship, it’s hard to tell. I am aware that I was fortunate in many ways with my parents, compared to how they might have been; I sometimes wonder if I would trade those benefits for the ones I didn’t get and sorely missed.

The advice I have on getting through grief is not based on much personal experience except for two years of therapy I went through, and that is: don’t be afraid to feel the worst feelings that come. The more openly you embrace those feelings, the sooner their impact will fade, leaving you with the positive impact of their lives for the rest of your life. Good luck, and all the best to you.

25

I lost both my parents last April. They were 87 and had been married for 68 years. I pretty much knew it could happen at any time, especially since they were both pretty feeble. One weird thing was the first time I thought, “I need to tell Mom and Dad about that…shit.” I suspect I would have had a harder time if I didn’t have a wife and kids of my own, but I can’t say that for sure. One thing near the end I will always remember. Mom called us together at the hospital soon after Dad’s funeral. Our daughter is transgender, and my devoutly religious parents accepted that unconditionally. Daughter kept her first name, but added a middle name that my Mom really liked. She called her granddaughter over using both names.

26

My siblings were born 6-8 years before I was, and I’m somewhat envious (in a very benign way) that they had that much more time with our parents than I did. As you say though, we all suffered the same loss in the end.

27

My story is quite a bit different than yours but there are similarities. My dad was also 88 when he got diagnosed with COVID a little over 2 years ago. This was before the vaccine was available. He was also diabetic and had heart trouble. He was admitted to a small hospital and then transferred to a large one. At the same time, my mom developed COVID. They were living in an assisted living facility at the time. Dad still had most of his mental abilities although he had slipped some. Mom had dementia. She knew who we were but couldn’t really carry on a meaningful conversation. Her case of COVID was deemed to not be serious enough to require hospitalization. Her O2 would drop and so they put her on oxygen.

A few days later, I got a call from the facility that my mother had passed away. I’m not sure what happened but I’d guess that the oxygen mask was bothering her and in the night she took it off and didn’t know to put it back on. Three days later, my Dad passed away in the hospital room having never been told about my Mom. My brother was at his bedside while I stood outside the door and watched through the glass. His passing appeared peaceful.

I dealt with it by keeping busy making arrangements. Since this was peak COVID, we couldn’t have funerals but there was still plenty to do. I did find out the importance of planning and having a good funeral home to work with. Both of my parents had cremation policies taken out a couple of years before and when I called the funeral home, they just took care of everything. I was left to deal what was left of their estate, a Medicare trust and stuff like that.

It’s hard but honestly it wasn’t as hard as I expected it to be. The worst part was telling my other brother, who is mentally disabled and I’m his guardian, that his parents had died. I’ve come to terms with their passing. Like everyone, I have some regrets and there were things I wish I had talked to them about. My best advice would be to get as close to your mother as you can. Talk about everything. Do your best to keep their story alive.

May peace be upon you all.

28

My parents are both 89, and last week, Dad had a needle biopsy for a lung nodule, which are almost always benign, but earlier today I spoke to him and he said that the office called and said they wanted to talk to him at the office. I realize he’s still here, but this really hits home because I don’t think doctors generally do that unless the news is very bad.

Both of my mom’s brothers have died within the past few months - the first one in December, a few days before his 92nd birthday, and the other one earlier this month at age 90. Both were in relatively good health until shortly before they declined steeply.

I hope nobody considers this a threadjack; it’s real to me.

29

OP here. I want to thank all of you for your stories and kind words. I will probably be
reading them again and again over the next several days. To those of you who have
lost a parent you have my sympathies.

Spent the day with my mom to make sure she was doing OK. Both of us would get
a bit weepy as we talked about dad but I think we will be fine in the long run. Things
are just a bit hard right now.

30

So very sorry for your loss. My mom died on my 30th birthday. That was 35 years ago and I still think of her often.

I read somewhere that grief is like glitter. It makes a big mess, gets on everything, and you clean it up the best you can. But weeks, months, even years later you may still come across a piece of that glitter. You probably didn’t expect it, but there it is. You acknowledge it and manage it with the knowledge that it is never going to go completely away.

mmm

31

I am so very sorry for your loss, @X.L.Lent. My father passed away 8 years ago. He and I weren’t very close, and he wasn’t very close with any of my four other siblings. He was a complicated man. I celebrate his memory from time to time when I think of him and give thanks for what he did for me and for the family. He shared with us his love for: travel, exploration, intelligence, education, humor, family, relocating his family to the US (from the Philippines), then later relocating his family to California (from the northeast), faith and religion, and in other things. When these situations pop up I think of him and give thanks.

32

I very sorry, it is very tough. I just went through this with my Mom and lost my dad about 3 years ago. She fade away with Parkinson’s also. My Dad went fast.

33

My dad died of a heart attack when he was 57. He was away on a fishing trip, and a doctor called us from a hospital to tell us that he had collapsed when getting off the boat and arrived at the hospital dead. I think my mom half-expected this would happen: he was a smoker with very high blood pressure and he had been warned by doctors.

I grieved, but wasn’t heavily touched, as my dad was a disapproving, scornful man and things were a lot more cheerful when he was gone. My mom went through grieving hell, but I think she enjoyed getting out and seeing and doing things afterwards with more lighthearted companions.

Mom died from complications from Alzheimers in 2007 when she was 87 years old. She had been lost to us for years before that, so I had already been grieving for her before the event. I got the news that she had died at about 4:30 a.m. and was still stunned. I remember I went to work that day, hoping to distract myself with routine mindless tasks, but I fell apart a couple of hours in and had to go home.

I too had a floodgate of tears a year or two later, completely unexpectedly. I went to a farmers market and there was a band there playing a joyful Zulu tune, and it was a gorgeous spring day. While listening to the music I suddenly started crying uncontrollably and had to run to my car to get out of the public eye. I cried a lot more that day than on the day my mom died.

34

Be there for the other survivors,.
They need you.

You are not to blame.
Forgive your Father, and yourself, for both of you are Human.

35

That’s the oddest part of this whole grief journey; what’ll set me off, and when. For example, I’ll be driving and thinking about something totally unrelated to my dad, then veer into something that reminds me of him, and then <boom> waterworks. Completely unexpected and I’m usually unprepared for it.

36

My father died a couple of weeks before his 80th birthday in 2017. He was a workaholic unkind asshole and I have only a very few good memories of him. I won’t sully this touching thread with examples of his behavior.

When he died it was a bit eerie feeling for a bit but I’ve never really missed him. I was sad for my sisters who were very sad but that’s about it.

I hope this isn’t out of place but those of you who grieved are blessed to have had someone to grieve and I hope you find peace.

37

I’m very sorry for your loss.

We had a family vacation at the end of the summer. A couple weeks later, my parents called and asked if we were free to have dinner with them that evening. We said “yes”, and put the defrosted streaks we had planned to cook back in the fridge, and went to my dad’s favorite Italian place.

We enjoyed perfectly okay food and my parents’ company. My father planned to play tennis the next day, and my mother thought he should cancel because his doctor thought he had mild pneumonia. I supported my dad.

The next morning we packed into the car to visit my husband’s uncle, a 4 hour drive. Halfway there, my mom called to say my dad had died. We continued the trip (Uncle had no phone, and we didn’t want him to worry about us), made our apologies, and turned around to go home. My father had made it as far as the tennis court, but when he arrived he was in bad shape and his friends called 911 while he sat down. He was unresponsive before the ambulance arrived. It turned out to be a pulmonary embolism, not pneumonia, and i guess it lodged in a more critical spot and killed him.

I am so grateful for that final supper with my dad. The forgotten steaks eventually went bad and we threw them away.

It was sudden and unexpected. I took about a week off work, and couldn’t function. After that, i thought it would be good for me to have distractions, and i returned to work and other activities. But i became depressed enough to seek medical help. I ended up both in couples therapy and on Prozac for a while, both of which were really helpful.

I still miss my dad. We were very close, and yes, I’m grateful for that. I miss his advice. But in retrospect I’m glad that he had a quick and relatively painless death. He had had some major medical issues prior to that, and was terrified of living crippled, in pain, or senile. He had been a staunch advocate for the right to die since his mother died painfully and over-treated (lung cancer) and had personally chased away EMTs trying to revive dying people who were in home hospice and had signed DNR orders.

My mom died more gradually, losing a lot to a series of micro strokes that collectively destroyed a large fraction of her brain. She was also painfully weak and frail in her final year. Ultimately, covid killed her over two weeks, two weeks that she was terrified and in pain and unable to speak or move. I screamed in anguish when i learned that she’d died, but it was also a relief. (Although the hospice nurses had been able to ease her distress with morphine about a day before the end.) We couldn’t do any of the usual mourning rituals (like gathering with friends and family) because we had all been exposed to covid, and had to isolate.

That was only a year ago, and I’m still dealing with the practical matters, working on settling the estate. I still miss her every day.

But time makes everything less painful. I, too, occasionally run into something that triggers an outburst of grief, but mostly I’m okay.

Hug your friends. Give yourself space. You don’t need to be responsible just now. Cry, or watch junky movies, or whatever helps you get through this.

May his memory be a blessing to you.

38

This is very true.

The rabbi said at my father’s funeral ‘There are three ways to grieve: you can weep, you can shout, you can laugh.’

There are at least those three ways, I think there are more. And many people do more than one of them. Grieve however you need to grieve. Some people need to work, others need not to. Some need to see the body, others need not to. And so on.

– you may find yourself unexpectedly emotional at odd moments; and/or you may find yourself affected in apparently unrelated ways – inability to or difficulty in doing things you usually do automatically and/or easily, difficulty in concentrating or in thinking things through, and so on. This is among the possible normal reactions.

I flinched every time the phone rang during my mother’s last couple of years.

When she died, I was afraid that I’d feel only relief. I actually felt more as if I’d been kicked in the stomach. But relief is a normal reaction too; nothing to feel guilty about. I think my mother may have been relieved.

I still find myself sometimes wanting to tell her about something; or my father. She’s been gone for nearly 20 years and he’s been gone for 40.

I don’t go to their graves. I think about them here; and other places that they were when they were alive. Again, different people need different things. You need to go to the graves. Your siblings may need not to.

39

Yes, please accept my condolences as it is tough to lose people. Like a few posters upthread, however, I too don’t miss either of my parents. In both cases it was disruptive for me, as something obviously profound and important had happened in both cases.

Do make sure to take and give yourself the time you need to whatever extent is possible.

40

I don’t need to, I want to. My siblings claim they don’t have the time or some other lame excuses. They all live within 15 miles of the cemetery, I live an hour away.