Losing Both Parents

Before both my parents died, I considered their dying one at a time— what would it be like to never see my mom again, or if Bill wasn't just a phone call away.

What hadn't occurred to me was to be "parentless"— for them both to be gone, and to have a profound "orphan" feeling, even though I'm way too old to be traditionally orphaned.

It also made me realize, in retrospect, how both my mother and father made dramatic changes in the lives when their "last" parent died— my mother "shipped me off," never to return, and my dad made significant decisions both in his profession and love life. They both had parents who died decades apart from one another, and I'd never thought of the cumulative effect.

I was fortunate to receive a book in the wake of my parents' deaths— it was about a year and a half apart— that  mesmerized me on this subject.

It's called Always Too Soon: Voices of Support for Those Who Have Lost Both Parents, edited by Alison Gilbert.

It's a series of interviews with people who you've never considered in this light: Barbara Ehrenreich, Geraldine Ferraro, Dennis Franz, Yogi Berra, Ice-T, among many others.

The "celebrity" stories are in a different voice than any of the tabloid muck we read— they're intimate and entirely real. There's also people's stories you're almost too afraid to open, like the teenager who lost her mother to cancer one week, and then the next, on 9/11, her policeman father died at the Twin Towers.

I asked Allison if I could share two stories with you, Ferraro's and Ice-T's.

Ice-T... who knew that his VERY NAME is based on that fact that he lost both his parents at a very young age?

I’ve always felt like an outsider. Every Thanksgiving, every Christmas, it was me, sitting at someone else’s table. It was that vibe like when you’re over at somebody’s house and they’re whispering in the kitchen, “Why is he here?”

I came into life so hard that when I see other adults who say they need or want their parents, it seems corny to me. When there’s nobody to hug you when you cry, eventually you stop crying. I think that’s how I ended up getting called “Ice.”

Continued...

 

Gerry Ferraro... I hadn't thought of her since her heroic, but ill-fated nomination for vice-president. She is an amazing storyteller, and her history tells you more about the roots of the Democratic Party, as well as her poignant relationship with her parents, that anything I've read in years.

One morning, when I was eight years old, I woke up and went into my parents’ bedroom, and was surprised to find my father still in bed. He looked at me, and my mother said, “Gerry, leave the room.”

When my mother came out of the bedroom, she told me, “Daddy’s gone to heaven.” He had died of a heart attack. 
   
I never went back in that room. 

Continued...

 

I told Allison I wish I could buy a truckload of her books and hand one to every single person I know who loses a parent, regardless of whether they had a loving or hateful relationship, close or distant. It's a certainty that whatever you envision about the aftermath of your parents death, you are guaranteed a significant surprise. This book gives you an inkling and a solace for what those revelations really mean. I can't recommend it enough.

Comments

[Mick]

Thank you, Susie. I lost both my parents suddenly and unexpectedly this past February (on opposite coasts. 2 days apart. After not having spoken to each other in a decade). It's been a hard spring.

I'm buying this book. Can't thank you enough for the link.

And can't thank you enough, belatedly, for that little tiny store in the mission I visited more than 25? years ago with the vibrator museum. You were awesome then, and continue to be so.

[Amanda Gannon]

Thank you for this. I'll get my hands on a copy as soon as I can.

I've lost three family members and two friends in the past two years. It's been brutal, absolutely brutal, and at times the only thing that has helped has been hearing other people's stories, and knowing I am not alone.

Thank you.

[C.S. Lewiston]

There are few things in life that will fuse your neurons like looking at a snapshot taken at a family gathering in the 70's or 80's, and realizing that only one of the elderly immediate relatives pictured in it is still living... Like living in a flood zone and realizing those comfortably-distant flood waters are *a lot* closer than before...

Sooner or later, our grandkids, nieces and nephews will point to our pictures, in albums, in shoeboxes or on computer screens, and say "Mommy, who's he?".

Listening to James Brown playing "Cold Sweat", FWIW.

[R. A. Cardona]

Ms. Bright,

Thank you for bringing this book to our attention. I lost both my parents within 11 months of each other. In between their deaths I was diagnosed and treated for prostate cancer. Needless to say I've had to manage a lot of grief in a short amount of time. Being able to discuss our loss and heartbreak is so important. Grief is something that never goes away, but by exposing and discussing our grief we allow it to fade.

[Anarcissie]

On the other hand, you all might be glad that you had something to miss. There are those who are indifferent when their parents go off because their parents never had much to do with them -- or worse.

[Thomas Izaguirre]

My father died almost two weeks ago and although he had a long and influential life, it haunts me. He had been in declining health for some time but kept pushing himself even as his body started to fail him. Active most of his life as an athlete both on the field and as coach, he got bored of retirement fast and got a different job. Like most men of his era, he would stoically put up with the danger signals his body was telling him until it was too late to ignore. He ducked cancer and survived his first stroke with only legal blindness. But he insisted on putting up with gout and the recurrenace of his ulcer. Always the do-it-yourselfer, it was fitting and ironic that the major stroke which finally took him down happened when he was repairing my mother's car. I got the call from work and it had the feeling I had been dreading these past few years. The situation was hopeless and he would be kept on life support long enough for us to say our goodbyes (as stipulated by the living will he left). Being a CMT, my last act of love was to give him as much as possible the bodywork he long denied himself and my last words whispered into his ear were, "There is so much I wish I could have shared with you but I am grateful for what we have had." I choked up and my eyes moistened but I didn't break down the way my Mother, siblings, and our neighbors did at his bedside as he received Last Rites and the plug was pulled. I recalled a line from the series Six Feet Under that shocked and disturbed me because of its truth and the guilt I felt at such truth: You are never truly an adult until your parents are dead, because up until then you always have them to fall back on. As much as I will miss them, in many ways their passing will be a welcome relief as they had that flaw, as most parents do, that they can never fully accept their children as they are and wish them to be mirror copies and are disappointed when this conformity is not met. Things are changing. As I took care of both of them, cancer survivors both, I find more burdens come even as the overwhelming amount of sympathy comforts. I am grateful to share this appropriately here. Thank you!

[Heather]

I'm going to check this book out from the library ... I wonder if it will apply to me or not. I still feel orphaned after the night before my wedding. My mother threw one of her typical temper tantrums because she wasn't the center of attention, and so she didn't come to the rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, wedding, or reception. My father walked me down the aisle at the rehearsal but that was his only chance, as he decided to enable my mother's craziness for some reason I don't think I'll ever understand or forgive. It's been almost five years now and some days, it still hurts like it was just this morning. I often think it would have been easier if my parents had both died in a car accident on their way to my wedding ... but they were driving there with my younger brother (who DID walk me down the aisle ... but from whom I've grown more and more distanced over the years). It was really hard going to my brother's wedding, which was the only time I'd seen my toxic parents since the night before my own wedding, and not only did they not even acknowledge my existence or even my PRESENCE, but I actually overheard them tell other people that their new daughter-in-law was "the daughter they never had and always wanted." I guess some wounds are not meant to heal ...

[Susie Bright]

One of the things I appreciated in this book, and also in the hospice counsel I received, was the recognition that the nature of your relationship with your parents does not mitigate the grief. You can have an absolutely horrible state of affairs with them, and have wished them dead, or been disinherited or scorned or abused... no scenario is too far out... and YOU WILL STILL go thru a sea change when their physical presence is finally extinguished. There is no escaping it, and you really wouldn't want to, because you finally get to some things you couldn't have reached when they were alive, no matter how smart or investigative or therapized you were.

[Jonathan]

Susie, thanks for noting this book. Ice-T's story is quite similar to mine except that my father, from whom I am willingly but hurtfully estranged, is still alive. What really got me was Ice's note about families that are mostly functional--they teach their children love. As I understand it, that teaching comes from a way of being.

That's SUCH a foreign concept and experience in some ways to me. I had to be taught what it was like to love myself in therapy. I had to be told what that feeling was. To be returned to myself like that feels wonderful. It's a way that I assess whom I speaking with, a good barometer.

But it's also difficult in that my growth still to come hampers me now. At least my wife--well, we're not married yet but that's only because someone hasn't said, "OK, you're married now, now git"--came from such a family, and her ability to love is as huge as the sun.

My two younger brothers--one's a younger fraternal twin--are also married and have daughters, and now I'll have a step-daughter. Both of them spend loads of time with their in-laws. They see their family of origin--my father and his wife--maybe once a year, and he never phones either of them.

Our mother died when I was almost 13, our younger brother 6. She had borderline characteristics so we really had to work for approval, which is not love. Our father is more than neglectful--a supposed scientist who has snowed many into giving him jobs with great responsibility, his lack of self-esteem translates into coldness and anger. That's the legacy I inherited, and which I work with every day to overcome.

It's as if he's already dead. But Susie, you are right about how one's parent's death will bring about an experience that I cannot reach when my father is alive: my father's death will bring about a sense of relief, which I cannot feel now.

[Peter Werner]

In my case, I was the child of a single mom – never even so much as met my dad. So when my mom died, all parents were gone in one devastating blow. I suppose this is kind of the downside of single-parenthood, though otherwise, I never thought of myself as having had less parental love for having had only one parent.

Best wishes and good energy to all of you here who have recently lost parents. I hate to say "it gets better", because your lost loved ones will always be missed. On the other hand, the self-identity of being "parentless" is something you grow used to after awhile.

[Ebon Krieg]

10 years ago I lost my mother to cancer (it was really a death wish-broken heart)one year after watching my father slowly lose his battle with a brain tumor. I have not talked in detail about either of these losses to anyone, ever. The emptiness I feel has been internalized and there are times when it is as if they are still alive and I just have to pick up the phone and my mother will answer; dad will be in his chair with a game show on doing a crossword puzzle. I read both of the excerpts you provided and I haven't stopped crying.
I didn't gain strength from their deaths. I attained an emptiness in a part of me I had never thought I had so I should have not missed it, but I do and I have no idea how to fill it again. I have alienated everyone. I can no longer get close to people and have built an impenetrable barrier to my soul. All I have left to me is my intellect and that is never enough otherwise I would have thought my way out of this rut.
Yes, I know there is a something where my nothing is. The absence makes it so. I have tried to be the best person I can be, but the hole in me makes it all superfluous; I still do my job which is in the social field of education. I have taught and counseled "at-risk" high school students for the past 17 years. I feel so selfish and yet I look around and I am crushed by the selfish, yet I still feel selfish. me me me me... damn I'm tired. sorry to rant, I was referred to this site for the humor and the irony has not been lost on me.
Thank You, Suzie, kiss for you.
Ebon