<p>This may indeed be a sad thread but think…it would be so, so much sadder if we didn’t miss these people. How lucky we are to have had the wonderful parents, grandparents and siblings that we did. Many are not so lucky. Our lives are so much richer because of those we love.</p>
<p>globalnomad, thank you for the kind words. It’s nice to share things like this.</p>
<p>somemom, I’m sorry that you lost your dad’s voicemail. The suddenness of my father’s death is probably what makes me keep at least one of my mother’s. </p>
<p>lafalum, I, too, enjoy seeing my Ds interact with my mom and stepdad. We had a great family visit this weekend with all my Ds here, sons-in-law, significant others, the grandparents and my granddaughter. What was the most fun was seeing her having such fun with her great-grandparents and their joy at being able to know her. I thought of this thread many times over the weekend and it made me enjoy the time even more.</p>
<p>My dad died just this past summer after a long illness. The last year of his life was really bad. There was a lot of “let’s just try this” from the doctor’s…which did nothing but prolong a miserable existence. </p>
<p>At this point I miss the “old” daddy. When he was not so sick. I am still so relieved that he has passed away. That may sound callous, but watching someone just starve to death is painful. I know many of us have gone through this with aging parents or loved ones. I KNOW he is in a better place.
He is no longer in pain or discomfort and is I am sure playing golf again on heaven’s course!</p>
<p>I am sure I will miss him more later…right now I am still in the state of mind of relief.
And it is a re-birth for my wonderful mother who cared for him with such dedication. I can only hope I remember how she did that so unselfishly when my spouse is in that situation. She has started to live her life again, though mourns him every moment. They met when he was 12 and she was 9. A true love story till the end after 57 years of marriage.</p>
<p>^ Bless your mom…not an easy thing after 57 years of marraige and being part of someones life since childhood.</p>
<p>I miss my Mom terribly. She died suddenly this past Jan. I have avoided this thread without success too. I keep hoping that once I get past the “first” anniversaries things will be easier. My husband said at one point, you just have to move on, but I really don’t know much about how that is done. </p>
<p>I am the daughter who lives closeby and it falls to me to shovel snow, blow leaves, mow grass, fix roofs, bring stuff down from the attic…I’m the one who shopped with Mom, planted her flowers, brought the kids over to swim at the pool. We would vacation together. We live about a half mile away. I’m completely amazed at the ability of my siblings to just put my father out of their mind enough that they don’t come visit him, or help with this work, or even call when it was his first wedding anniversary without her. Somehow, they have moved on, “looking out for #1” I guess.</p>
<p>I feel responsible for keeping my father going, and he’s doing fine actually. He keeps very busy with church maintenance and repair (he’s a trustee for a church that has no money to have professionals fixing things). He’s learned to cook. I’m glad for the time we’ve actually had together to talk more, because in the past he would just hand the phone over to my Mom. I wish I had one of her voice messages to play though. Over the summer, the kids played some home movies of our vacations and I just couldn’t watch.</p>
<p>I was hoping someone would say it gets easier, even if it isn’t true!! That’s what keeps me going!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think it does get easier because it’s normal to lose your parents, especially if they die when they are elderly. At some level, we’re all prepared for this to happen, even if we don’t consciously think about it. So I think we adjust more quickly than we would if the person who died was young (or younger than us).</p>
<p>Does it get easier? Yes, in that it gets different. At first I missed the little things, the everyday stuff. Now, I miss the big things. One of my children is about to have all his dreams come true: work and persona. I would LOVE to have them sit in our den and watch his new show. I can only imagine my parents’ joy at meeting my son’s serious girlfriend. </p>
<p>And, when I got cancer, I swear all I wanted (silently) was my mother. And when there were indications that something was dreadfully wrong (but wasn’t) I wanted to talk to my mother on how to die gracefully. </p>
<p>In short, I put one foot in front of the other and find joy in my family and what remains.</p>
<p>I lost my dad to a car crash as I was making the transition from high school to college, and I am no longer associating with my mother, who is abusive and beyond reason (my father wasn’t much different).</p>
<p>I guess you could say I miss the family I’ve never had, but there’s nothing that can really be done about it. I do have a girlfriend with a huge, loving family… and things have been great on that front. While it’s not my “actual” family, it’s about as close as one can get. My girlfriend’s father had lost his battle with cancer when she was in her early teens, and I know she misses him very much.</p>
<p>Losing parents, as I always used to see it, was always something that people processed on an intellectual level much later in life, but if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that there are no guarantees. While that may sound trite, there’s a difference between understanding it logically versus intuitively grasping it making it your own. </p>
<p>Stephen Colbert also lost his father and two brothers when he was ten. Stephen, funnily enough, said something recently that really resonated with me ([Stephen</a> Colbert Walks Off! - The View - YouTube](<a href=“- YouTube”>- YouTube) during the moment at the end when he steps out of character… 2:44 onward):</p>
<p>“She taught us to still love life and not be bitter, and to realize that everybody suffers, and if you can accept your suffering, then you’ll just understand other people better. And strangely enough you have to be grateful for pain.”</p>
<p>{{{hugs}}} amandakayak. after 10+ years without my mom I can truly say that, at least for me, it does get better - the sadness is less intense and consuming. I’m sure you’ve heard all this before, but everyone grieves differently and at their own pace. make sure you are being kind to yourself - don’t try to “move on” or “get over it” on someone else’s timetable.</p>
<p>It does get easier in some ways, but for me I’m never hit by the wave of sadness when I’m “supposed” to be. I remember so many of my friends calling me towards the end of June the year my dad died with that “how are you doing” tone to their voice. Oh, it’s Father’s Day! That wasn’t a big deal for my dad and I as he wasn’t one to embrace forced sentimentality. However, I did end up close to hysterics during (don’t laugh) the first NFL draft after he passed, especially when the Giants made their first pick. He was a huge sports fan and I spent many hours next to his side watching the Yankees & Giants. So it’s things like that, or new WWII books, that made me miss him all over again.</p>
<p>I lost my dad 11 years ago this month…I remember, at the time, talking to my friend whose dad had died three years before, and thinking she must be “over it”…you never really are, things catch you off-guard. The one thing I do know is that, when I think about him, I cry a lot less and smile a lot more. The worst are the milestones (graduations, weddings)–we actually had my daughter’s bat mitzvah on the 6th anniversary of his death. I checked with my mom first–she said, “We’d be thinking of him no matter what day she has it, we might as well have something happy that day, too.”</p>
<p>Martharap mentioned dreams…Occasionally I’ll still talk to my dad in my dreams. One of the most vivid times was when I couldn’t decide whether or not to get my (then) 4-year old daughter’s adenoids removed. In my dream, my dad (who happens to have been a doctor) came and told me the surgery would be fine.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>There were two things that I gradually realized after my mother died. Nobody would ever be as proud of my accomplishments ever again. I didn’t actually realize until she was gone that I looked forward to telling her all my little triumphs, because she would exclaim over them. I also realized that every time I walked into her house, she would always pamper me in some way: bring me a cup of tea, or a footstool, or just ask me how my day went. Nobody pampers me anymore. Who pampers a grown woman? Only mother.</p>
<p>I lost my mom a year & a half ago. She had a terrible kind of non-Alzheimer’s dementia in which she was still cognizent enough to know that she was slowly going crazy. She was even institutionalized against her will (2 years ago this week). It was awful. She broke her leg & actually died as a result of a bedsore she got while in the hospital … which was not properly cared for & led to a stage IV ulcer, osteomyelitis in her tailbone, and MRSA throughout her body. She died a sad, painful death. Her death was a mixed blessing, in that she was unhappy with how her mind was going, yet it shouldn’t have ended that way. I was fortunate enough to be able to spend her last week with her, but I miss her so much. It really hit me a couple weeks ago when my friend died of breast cancer. All I could think was that I wanted to tell my mom.</p>
<p>Just after New Year this year, my father’s bladder infection morphed into full blown sepsis, which by all accounts, should have taken him outright. The sepsis eventually settled into his most vulnerable organ (his heart), and at 77, he had to undergo a second open heart surgery. It was touch and go for a month and a half, and I spent every day alternately praying desperately for his recovery and preparing myself for his loss. </p>
<p>I thank God he’s still with us—doing quite well, actually. All his doctors have expressed surprise that that’s the case, certainly that he’s still topside, so-to-speak. Now, he wakes up so tickled to be alive, he’s simply a joy to be around. He’s turned into the schmooshiest teddy bear of a man, so openly affectionate with my Mom and the rest of his family. Dad turned 78 in early Sept, and was virtually giddy at the little party we threw for him. My Mom is 75, and still going strong as well. I realize everyday that I’m extremely blessed to still have the both of them. They live only about a mile and a half away, as the crow flies. We have them over for supper frequently, and occasionally, they invite us over to scarf down some of my Mom’s famous crab cakes and potato salad. I’m storing up memories against the day when I’ll have to go on without them. Hugs to all those who are missing their parents.:(</p>
<p>17 years for mom, 21 one for dad. Made easier to remember because someone was pregnant each time.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Once in a while, my mother still makes an appearance in my dreams, 36 years after she died, when I was 20, from injuries received in a car accident we were in. I know I always feel happy in a dream when she shows up, especially when I hear her voice. Because in my waking life, I realized a couple of years after she died that I could no longer consciously recall what her voice sounded like, as familiar as it had always been to me. I guess the memory was just so painful that I somehow blocked it. And all these years later, I still haven’t ever been able to remember her voice, as hard as I’ve tried. Except, now and then, in my dreams.</p>
<p>I had a dream recently where my mother kept appearing in different places and trying to tell me where to go, in a huge, vaguely familiar city.</p>
<p>My Dad’s been gone for over 30 years, and mom for 6. I still miss them both, but not in a painful way. I recently had a series of dreams where my mother, my daughter and I were together, and my mom was somehow trying to help us get through some trying times. In real life, although I had many issues with my mother, she was a person with a great moral compass. I never went wrong listening to her in questions of ethics and morality. We try to channel what she would have thought when we are faced with dilemmas. I rarely have a dream with my Dad in it. Over the last 30 years he has been in maybe 4 or 5 dreams (that I recall). He died suddenly, unexpectedly, and at the time it was a terrible shock to my family. I always regret that there was so much left unsaid.</p>
<p>My mom was an older mom, so even though she was getting elderly when she died, I felt that I was fairly young to have lost both my parents (but not as young as some of you.) I really felt the loss of my Dad over the years, since I was still in school when he died. He wasn’t there for my wedding; he never saw my daughter. </p>
<p>I think this is yet another difficult time in life – losing elderly parents, having the children go off on the own, taking care of sick parents. I sympathize with much of what others have said. Right now my MIL is getting worse in terms of her illness, and we are of course upset to see this happening.</p>
<p>Thanks for sharing folks. It is somewhat comforting to know that other people feel similarly.</p>
<p>For amandkayak, yes, it does get easier. Really. Mostly now when I think of my parents, I think of the funny things they said or did, the music they liked, and the good things, not the bad.</p>
<p>For Max, I am sorry that your parents have not given you what you needed. Unfortunately, there are those types of parents out there, but fortunately, most are not that way. Just remember that it was their job to take care of you, and if they didn’t do it, it was their fault not yours. In life sometimes you will meet fatherly or motherly types at work or even in your house of worship (if you have one.) I met some folks that helped me after I lost my father, and some of their fatherly advice has stayed with me over the years.</p>
<p>It has been a crazy week at school this week (yes, it’s only Wednesday and we were off on Monday). Yesterday morning, we saw a note at the time clock that our Principal lost his step dad who raised him (he had lost his dad earlier this year). His step dad had been sick for a while, and they were just waiting. While I was sad to hear about this, I thought about this being one of the natural progressions of life as his dad was in advanced old age.</p>
<p>This morning my AP called to tell me that we (his related services counselor and I) had to pull one of my students out of the PSAT because his father was at school to tell him that his mother passed this morning. It really took me a moment to get it together, because his mom, who was relatively young was just at school last week. I kept saying to myself, how could this happen because this young man just left his house this morning, with everything being ok, and 2 hours later I would have to watch his life being blown apart. He came down, his dad told him that his mom had passed. I just remember, the kid saying “my mom?” like his dad was talking about someone else and just breaking down. I remember him hugging me and feeling like he was never going to let go. After a while, dad took him home, related services counselor and I were going back to our offices and just broke down in the hallway, and I had to help her get back to her office. I got back to my office, sent an e-mail out to the staff telling them what happened and received a phone call that another staff member had just lost his father in law. I just closed my door and started crying. Just a reminder about the frailty of human life.</p>
<p>The loss of my own parents began to feel so fresh all over again. Although it has been over 30 years since they both passed (one suddenly, the other after a linger illness less than a year later) and my little brother being 14 years old at the time. It is days like this when I miss then so much. But the one thing about working with and servicing kids, is that it does not give you much time to “wallow”, because there is always another kid who needs you, so you have to put things on the shelf and soldier on and get yourself together for them.</p>
<p>Once again, this is why I love my CC people. It has been a great solace to read your stories about the fond memories that you have of your parents who have passed on. No matter what is going on in your life, you always remind me that I am never alone. Hugs to all of you.</p>
<p>sybbie, hugs to you too. That is one beautiful, heartfelt post, and a great reminder to be thankful for each day. Wishing you a less traumatic rest of the week!</p>