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.