How Losing a Parent Young Can Affect You in Adulthood
There is something about autumn that makes me want to go back.
I grew up in Western New York, where the leaves started changing in mid-to-late September. I remember the cool air while playing outside with friends and riding my bike down the street on a gray Saturday.
I can feel it. I can see it. I just cannot reach for it.
I live in Charlotte now. Autumn here never feels quite the way it did when I was a kid in New York. It makes me want to be wrapped in that time again, when I still had parents and my dad was alive.
I know I cannot recreate it. Even if I returned to the same street on a cool, gray Saturday, I would not be returning to the same life.
Time is a thief that way.
Losing a parent young can change what you miss
My father died when I was fourteen. My mother died when I was in my mid-twenties.
I have a good life now. I am married to an amazing woman, and we have two beautiful little girls. I love the family we have made.
That does not replace the parents I no longer have.
I think people sometimes struggle to hold those two truths together. You can love the life in front of you and still long for the life behind you. You can be grateful for your spouse and children while wishing your parents were here to see who you became.
Having a family of my own has not removed that longing. Sometimes, it makes the absence more noticeable.
You may feel as if you had to grow up quickly
After my dad died, I used to tell myself that I had to grow up quickly.
Looking back, I am not sure that I truly had to. But I believed I did.
I finished high school, attended college, entered the workforce, and felt as if I needed to be an adult by eighteen. I took on the world because I did not believe I had a mom or dad I could lean on.
That did not mean I always knew how to be an adult.
There were times when I did not have car insurance or did not pay traffic tickets because I did not understand what I needed to do. Even when I knew something needed my attention, I sometimes assumed nothing bad would come from ignoring it.
I had decided that I was on my own before I knew what being on my own required.
I also never gave myself much opportunity to be a kid. That may be one reason I long for my childhood as much as I do now.
I do not know that for certain. Some parts of grief cannot be reduced to a clean explanation.
Birthdays and holidays may stop feeling special
My birthday often feels like another day.
Weeks before my most recent birthday, my wife, Kylie, asked what I wanted to do. I did not have an answer. I was not sure that I wanted to do anything.
Maybe part of me did not think the day was worth celebrating. Maybe part of me did not feel worthy of being celebrated. I am still figuring that out.
Kylie and our girls wanted to make the day special for me. I love that they wanted to celebrate me. Still, I waited until the day before to suggest going out to dinner, and then I almost did not want to go.
It was not always like that.
Years ago, before we had children, Kylie and I would go to the U.S. National Whitewater Center for my birthday. We would go zip-lining or whitewater rafting. Those days were special.
The older I get, though, the more comfortable I seem to be celebrating other people instead of myself.
When I think about birthdays as a kid, I remember the last birthday my dad was alive. I turned fourteen. I got a Razor electric scooter and a PlayStation 2 that I had wanted forever because all my friends had one.
It felt special.
That was probably the last birthday I remember genuinely enjoying.
My parents were already divorced. My dad had custody of us, and I did not see my mom that day. It was not a picture-perfect family celebration. I do not want to rewrite it as one.
It was simply one of the last birthdays when my dad was alive and I still felt like a kid.
Holidays carry a similar feeling. I remember Thanksgivings and Christmases at my grandparents’ house with the family around. Even Easter felt different then.
Now, holidays can feel almost unworthy of being celebrated because my parents are not here to celebrate them with me.
I still show up. I still want Christmas, birthdays, and other special days to feel joyful for my daughters. But creating those memories for my children does not mean I stop missing my own.
Becoming a parent can expose the questions you cannot ask
Our daughter Willow is getting older. Sometimes she has a breakdown or tantrum, and Kylie and I look at each other because neither of us knows exactly what to do.
That is a normal part of raising young children. Parents do not always have the answer.
But in those moments, I sometimes wish I could call one of my parents and ask, “What did you do when I was this age?”
I do not even know whether I would follow their advice.
Kylie and I are raising our children differently from how we were raised. There are times when one of our daughters does something, and I look at Kylie and say, “If I had done that in front of my dad, I would have been in so much trouble.”
The point is not that my parents would have given me the perfect answer. They probably would not have.
The point is that I cannot ask.
I cannot hear their version of what I was like at Willow’s age. I cannot compare memories with them or learn how they experienced me as a child.
Losing a parent young can mean losing the adult relationship you might have had with them. You do not only miss who they were. You miss the person they might have become in your life.
You may grieve a relationship you never got to finish
My relationship with my mother was complicated.
I was a mama’s boy when I was little. We were very close. After my parents separated and divorced, though, she did not come around much. The story I told myself was that she did not want anything to do with us or with me.
I still do not know the full story.
We began seeing each other again when I was around eighteen, nineteen, or twenty. I lived with her for a while. We had some good moments, but she did not really feel like a mom to me anymore.
When my sister Katie called to tell me our mother had died, I said, “Okay.” Then I hung up.
I did not attend the funeral. I regret that now.
I cannot tell you exactly when that regret began. It may have been immediate, or it may have surfaced years later.
What I know is that I wish I had gone. Even though we did not have the relationship I wanted, part of me still wishes she were alive. I wish there had been time for us to have some kind of relationship.
Losing her meant losing that possibility.
You can miss a parent while being honest about what happened between you. You can grieve someone who disappointed you. You can wish the relationship had been different without excusing the ways you were hurt.
We do not have to forgive every choice our parents made before we are allowed to miss them.
Why can the loss still affect you decades later?
Someone might ask, “It happened decades ago. I have a good life now. Why does it still affect me?”
My honest answer is that maybe it still affects you because you still care.
That may sound too simple, but sometimes the simplest answer is the true one.
I still long to have parents.
Having a wife and children does not eliminate that longing. Building a good life does not require me to pretend I no longer wish my parents were part of it.
The effects are not always dramatic. They may appear when the air turns cool, when your birthday approaches, or when your child does something that makes you want to call home.
You may notice them when everyone else is celebrating and you are quietly waiting for the day to be over.
You may also notice them in the way you learned to become responsible, independent, or self-reliant before you were ready.
None of these experiences prove that every feeling or decision in your adult life comes from losing a parent. Grief is not always that tidy.
Sometimes you can only notice the connection and remain curious about it.
You are still allowed to experience joy
Losing my parents young does not mean I have to stop enjoying my life.
It does not mean I cannot be a good father. In fact, being a father gives me opportunities to think about what I needed as a child and what I want my daughters to receive from me.
I will make mistakes. I have raised my voice and gotten upset. What matters to me is that I return and repair the relationship.
For people who are not parents, the question can still be useful: What did you need to hear when you were young that you did not hear enough?
Maybe no one told you that you were loved, cherished, kind, handsome, or beautiful. You can begin speaking to yourself with the care that was missing. That might mean a daily affirmation, a prayer, or simply noticing the harsh way you talk to yourself and choosing different words.
My Christian faith is part of how I live with this loss.
There were times when I sat in my car and talked to my dad. I would tell him, “Dad, I miss you. I wish you were here. I do not know what to do.”
After I encountered Jesus, I began to understand that I have a heavenly Father who cares about me and will not abandon me. That belief does not make me stop missing my earthly father. It gives me somewhere to bring the longing.
Your faith may look different from mine, or faith may not be part of your life. You are welcome here either way. I will never hide what I believe, but you do not have to share my beliefs for your grief to matter.
You do not need to explain the longing away
I cannot return to those autumn afternoons in Western New York. I cannot call my parents for advice or ask what I was like at my daughters’ ages.
I cannot make birthdays feel exactly the way they did when I was fourteen.
But I can stop treating the longing as proof that something is wrong with me.
I can love my family and miss my parents. I can make birthdays special for my daughters even when my own birthday feels like another day. I can experience joy without pretending the losses no longer affect me.
Both can be true.
Explore how an early loss may still be affecting you
If you lost a parent young and are beginning to recognize how that loss follows you into adulthood, you do not have to map it out alone.
In a Complimentary 45-Minute Grief Map Session, we can look at what you lost, what you needed then, and how those experiences may be showing up in your life now. The goal is not to fix your grief in 45 minutes. It is to help you understand what you are carrying and identify where you may want support.
