Even for older adults, life changes when parents are gone

You’ve probably heard it said that you’re not really grown up until your parents are gone. “We don't fully grow up until some day we lose them,” NPR’s Scott Simon said after his mother’s death. By that measure, it took me awfully long to grow up. Both of my parents were alive on my 70th birthday. Dad died three years ago at 99, Mom last October at 95.

Surely I was a full-fledged adult decades before — self-supporting, living alone, paying my bills on time. I asked my folks to help me move once, and Mom hemmed my pants, but otherwise I tried to avoid behaving like I was still their little girl.

Yet life is different without parents in ways beyond missing them.

My three siblings and I can’t go home again. There is no home to go to.

Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Father’s Day and Mother’s Day, Mom’s and Dad’s birthdays — it was a given that those occasions would bring not only their four offspring but also their grandchildren to our parents’ place. 

Pat and I, the two unmarrieds who don’t have children and grandchildren around whom to plan, can’t have expectations about where we’ll be on holidays. We were invited to join our brother Rick’s family for Thanksgiving and our sister Nancy’s family for Christmas in 2022, but our married siblings may make different plans in other years. 
 
Wherever we will be, the Christmas rituals are gone — Pat’s and Nancy’s shopping with Mom, while I decorated Mom and Dad’s home; a traditional meal from Mom’s Slovak heritage; opening gifts one at a time in turn. Mom would have been disappointed about our not exchanging gifts this year. Although I agreed with the decision not to, it felt off-kilter to do no Christmas shopping.

Now that we’re not gathering at Mom and Dad’s for occasions, we will see less of one another. We also won’t stay as up-to-date on one another’s doings as we did when we all spoke to Mom and Dad and they passed along our news to everyone else. We’re not in the habit of phoning each other just to see how we’re doing.

In short, we’ve lost the center around which our family revolved. 

There are also somber realizations. There’s no longer a buffer between me and awareness of mortality. Once your parents are gone, you’re the oldest generation, the next that’s expected to die. I’ve become aware that I’m not primary in anyone’s life as their children were primary in our parents’ lives. I used to be able to think that at least Mom and Dad loved me when I wondered about everyone else. Now there’s no one to blunt those moments of self-pity. 

Do all these realizations make me more grown up? If it’s more grown up to be aware that you’re on your own, yes. If it’s more grown up to be aware of your age, yes. But grown up isn’t how I want to look on it. It implies that you lacked maturity before and now have advanced to a higher state. It implies that there is something childish about wants and needs between generations. I don’t think that it was adolescent to fulfill our parents’ expectations of our presence at holidays, and I wanted to be there. 

Instead of finally becoming a grownup, I’d like to think of this as another stage on life’s journey, not more mature than but different from before. It’s a stage where I’ll have to create my own holiday customs and make a point of staying in better touch with family members. It’s not diminishing our loss to think of this stage as an opportunity to reshape the family dynamics.