(Estimated Reading Time: 4 min)

I was 17.5 when my mom died…Cancer.

That was 18 years ago… more than half my life. I was a very different person back then. I couldn’t vote or drink (legally…), I hadn’t been to university, and the best job I had was working the drive-thru at Wendy’s.

When you have a dead parent, you eventually start to learn who else has a dead parent. At 17, the only other person I knew in that club was my sister.

Nowadays at 35, I know enough people in the dead parent club that we could have a mediocre party (despite the unfortunate circumstance for being on the invite list). Yet still, when I look at my peers, we’re in the minority.

So, what’s it like to be in the dead parent club?

1) It sucks

The sky is blue, and losing a parent sucks. These are facts.

There is no escaping the anguish of first watching a parent suffer physically, mentally and emotionally, and then suddenly facing your own life without them.

Is there any pain heavier than loss and grief?

Everyone reacts to their situation and sense of unfairness differently. All are appropriate reactions, especially in the phase immediately after the death. Anger, depression, pessimism, a black hole of thoughts and emotions, an impossible to imagine future…

Because, it IS unfair.

It’s no wonder that some people lose themselves after such a heavy loss and turn to alcohol, drugs, self-destruction or any other vice or state where the pain can be ignored.

As time passes, and life becomes less about surviving, the pain finds a place to bury itself inside. It pops out to say hello from time to time. Sometimes it’s to be expected – major life milestones or family gatherings. Other times, the pain is triggered, like catching the scent of freshly baked banana bread or the sight of a mom and her son at the beach. And then there are the sudden random memories, dreams, or thoughts that jump into your mind out of nowhere.

The pain is always there, even when you don’t directly feel it. When you think about it, it doesn’t take long to find it. You can call it sadness, or grief, or loss. But it needn’t a name. It’s there and it always will be

2.) It’s bizarre

Some say a “new normal” sets in after a while. While that sentiment is partly true, I’d describe it as a new reality. You come to realize with absolute clarity that life can change on a dime, and nothing can be expected. This feeling is fresh shortly after the loss, but it starts to fade over time as you settle into your next new reality and cover up parts of the past.

I lost sight of this clarity a few years after my mom died and wasn’t reminded of it until my dad died in 2015. All of the old pain came back, layered with new pain and combined with the remedial lesson that everything is impermanent.

It’s still so bizarre to know that I’m a double card-holding member of the dead parent club. Once again, I find myself in a club where my only other peer is my sister.

It doesn’t feel “normal”, and sometimes it doesn’t even feel real. As bizarre as it is, it IS my reality and there’s nothing I can do to change that.

3) It’s never ok

You don’t ever get over the death of a parent.

You move forward. Life continues to happen. You experience joy, love and happiness again. But it’s never ok that you watched your mom or dad suffer and die.

It just is, and so you remember and carry on as best you can because it’s just a matter of time before the next major crisis or challenge hits.

4) (It can be motivating)

This one goes in parenthesis because it can go either way. It doesn’t have to be motivating, but it can be.

When my dad died, it lit a fire under my ass that said I need to be more present and grateful, I need to make the most of whatever time I’ve got. At some point when I’m about to die, I’ll look back and think about what I did, how I lived, and how I feel about that.

How will I assess that? Well, I’ll look back at all the happy moments, all the people I spent time with, and all the contributions I feel like I made. I’ll consider the impact I had on others – from the small interactions to the big projects I dedicated myself to. I’ll assess what others have said about me and to me. I’ll reflect on what I’m leaving behind that will live on.

That all sounds nice, but how can that change what I am doing right now?

Here’s a practice I started shortly after my dad died… Every morning I cross the previous day off my calendar and I think about how I lived it. I consider the conversations I had, the work I did, the effort I made. I remind myself that another day in my life is gone. One less day in what may be a long or a short life.

Life is random, so my time, like yours, could be up in any moment. It almost always happens before we expect it to…

It happened to my parents. My mom was 53 and my dad was 68.

They got ripped off.

It still makes me both sad and angry.

But people die younger than them all the time. Lots of people get ripped off, and not just with death. Some people are born into extreme poverty or with a terrible disease, others are treated inhumanely because of what they look like or who they love. We lose important jobs, natural disasters happen, relationships blow up.

Life is unfair.

Sooner or later, we ALL get ripped off.

And after that, if we’re still alive, we all have a choice of how to respond.

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