When A Parent Dies
Three weeks after my mother died I found her glasses on top of the fridge. No clue how they ended up there. She probably put them down while reaching for something. Typical. I just stood there in the kitchen holding those glasses that nobody would ever wear again, and I completely broke down.
What’s strange is that I barely cried at the funeral. Just felt numb. But those glasses – her actual glasses, with the scratched left lens she never fixed – completely undid me.
Grief is apparently like that. It doesn’t follow any logic. You can be fine for days and then some tiny random thing hits you sideways. A brand of biscuits. How someone laughs. Tuesday mornings, because that’s when she used to call.
The Funeral Was The Easy Part
People warn you about the funeral. They warn you about Christmas and birthdays and all the obviously difficult dates. What nobody mentions is the random Tuesday three months later when you’re buying milk and suddenly can’t breathe because you remembered something silly like how she mispronounced things. For forty years. Drove everyone mad.
Miss that now. Obviously.
The paperwork nearly broke me more than the grief, honestly. Death certificates, bank accounts, subscriptions to cancel, pension stuff. You’re barely functioning and there’s a mountain of bureaucracy. I filled out the same form wrong about six times. Eventually just gave up and asked my brother to handle it.
What Rumi Said
There is this Rumi poem about grief being a garden of compassion. First time I heard it I thought – what nonsense. What garden? I felt like a demolition site. Nothing growing. Just rubble.
Years later, I sort of get it. Not in a mystical way or anything. Simply – I can be with people when they are suffering. Really be there. Without trying to fix anything or give advice. Because I know this stuff can’t be fixed. You just sit in it together. That understanding came from having sat in my own, I suppose.
Viktor Frankl Was Right
Viktor Frankl survived concentration camps. Lost his wife, parents, brother. If anyone understood grief, it was him.
His thing was – we cannot control what happens to us. But we can choose how we respond. Meaning exists alongside suffering, not after it goes away.
Your parent still shapes you. Even now. The habits they gave you. The values. Even the things you do differently on purpose because of them. All of that keeps living in your choices.
Things That Helped (Maybe)
Everyone is different with this. What worked for me might seem stupid to you. Take what serves you, leave the rest.
I wrote letters to my mother. Not to send anywhere – obviously. Just to say things I wish I had said. Thank yous. Questions I never asked. Sometimes angry letters too. Those were important.
My brother and I exchange silly stories about her. Things that make us laugh until we cry. Then the crying turns into something else. Both things feel necessary.
Small rituals helped. Nothing fancy. On her birthday I make her terrible soup recipe. It does not taste as good as hers. I make it anyway.
Buddha talked about attachment causing suffering. True enough. But he also knew that love and loss come packaged together in this human existence. We are not trying to feel nothing – we are learning to feel everything without drowning.
When It Was Complicated
Not all parents were good. Some were absent. Some were cruel. Some were complicated in ways that leave marks.
If yours was like that, your grief is probably a mess. Anger and sadness and maybe relief and guilt for the relief, all mixed up.
That is valid. All of it. You can mourn the parent you wished you had while also mourning the one you actually got. Both things true at once.
One More Thing
The love does not disappear. It finds other places. The patience you show people. The stranger you help because your parent would have done the same. Small kindnesses with their fingerprints.
Their story did not end. It just changed who tells it. You are the narrator now.
No deadline for this. No “you should be over it by now.” Whoever says that has not lost someone essential yet. Or they have and they are lying to themselves.
You will be different after this. Not worse, not better. Just different, the way big losses change us. Cracked in some places, yes. But also deeper. More capable of real empathy. More aware that everything we have is borrowed.
My mother has been gone for years. I still miss that Sunday soup. I think I always will. And strangely, that is okay. Missing someone is just love without anywhere to land. It finds somewhere eventually.
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