We really never know exactly when our last goodbye will come with anyone.

And when our parents become elderly and frail we may get an alert and have a sense of what’s coming…but we still never know for sure. Before a parent is gone, we understand intellectually that they will die some day. But understanding and anticipating does not prepare us for the grief we feel when as an adult we lose a parent.

When my father died last year there was almost an unspoken expectation that it would not hit me head on because I am an adult — an adult is expected to accept death as a part of life, to handle all sudden losses in an appropriate “adult manner” and not get too stressed out over it all. But really, what does that mean?

Could I be sad but not too sad…and for how long?

Was I expected to be grateful he didn’t die when I was a child—so I didn’t need to mourn him? He’d had a long life so was I supposed to simply celebrate that fact and move on?

Grief is the reflection of the connection that has been lost. And that loss didn’t diminish just because I was an adult or because my father lived a long life.

The loss happens in a moment…but its aftermath lasts a lifetime.

I had lost the man who had been my father for more than 45 years. And although I had my own full life…yes, I still felt emptiness now that this man no longer walked the earth with me.

People around me see me as a mature, capable adult – and I am. That, however, did not decrease the pain of my loss. One day I woke up feeling a strange sensation in my stomach. It was not hunger, but rather, it was emptiness. I realized I felt cut off, as if I was a flower that had been snipped away from its roots—as if I was floating with no ground or foundation…rootless and disconnected.

I was also hit with something I had not thought about before—I am the youngest member of my family of origin and quite likely the last in line to die. Until this moment I had never considered my father was all that stood between me and losing all my family members one day…and being left alone (yes, of course I’d still have my husband and children…and my children’s children, eventually—but that’s not what I’m referring to) without a direct historical connection.

My father was the last in his family to die and I recall the sadness he felt as one member slipped away and then another, until he was the last one left (the death of his last sibling the year before his own death, really hit my father hard).

Now (perhaps because I have a birthday approaching in a few days) I can clearly see the age of my siblings and realize they will slowly start slipping away too. (Of course my siblings and I have lots of time together and it’s not that I’m dwelling on all this…it’s just an observation…something I hadn’t really thought about before.)

After our parents die, we take another look at them…and us.

We realize, perhaps for the first time, all they did for us as children.

For some of us, when we become parents, we appreciate the challenges our own parents must have gone through. We gain a new perspective on their lives. We see their flaws and imperfections.

We see life in a different way.

Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My Friend
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