I’m 44 years old and both of my parents are dead. I’m pretty sure that’s the first time I’ve written that combination of words in that order. It looks strange on the screen. It feels stranger to read back.
At some base level, we all know our parents are going to die someday, abstractly, at a safe distance, filed somewhere in the back of our brains under “eventually.” But knowing something intellectually and living inside it are two completely different experiences. Our parents are our first experience of consistency. They’re the ones who teach us object permanence: that people continue to exist even when we can’t see them. They leave the room and they come back. We build our entire understanding of the world on that foundation.
Nobody tells you what happens to that foundation when they stop coming back.
My parents died very different deaths. My mom died May 30, 2020, essentially from complications from addiction and mental illness. She and I had a complicated relationship with long stretches of not speaking, so when she died, I did what I do best: I put it in a box labeled denial and avoidance. When the grief spiral started, I’d just tell myself we weren’t speaking again. We’d done it before.
Denial is a hell of a drug. Highly effective. Zero long-term sustainability.
My dad died December 30, 2024, from lung cancer. They were both 65. They both took the whole “not wanting to get old” thing extremely literally. No senior discounts. No AARP cards. They just retired. Permanently.
My dad’s death started with a text in October 2024.
“You got a minute?”
My dad didn’t preface phone calls unless the phone call was going to be hard. And it was. Two months and nineteen days later, he was gone. No slow fade, no old pattern to hide behind. Just a text, a phone call, a lot of prayer, and then gone.
Which is how I ended up here: 44, an only child, an adult orphan, sitting with the particular kind of alone that comes when the two people who were supposed to come back don’t. Nobody handed me a manual. So I’m writing the list I wish someone had given me.
1. Nobody warns you that death comes with a mountain of bureaucratic homework.
Grief doesn’t pause while you spend three weeks on hold with the Social Security Administration. Death triggers a full administrative avalanche: banks, insurance companies, credit cards, utilities, the IRS, all requiring certified death certificates and your complete emotional availability during business hours of 9 to 4, Monday through Thursday. Order more certified copies than you think you need. No one will release anything until they know your parent is certifiably dead. Grief is a full-time job. The paperwork is unpaid overtime.
2. People stop asking and it’s somehow both a relief and devastating.
In the beginning, everyone asks. Then one day, they stop. Other people’s crises rotate in and the silence where those questions used to live is somehow louder than the questions ever were. C.S. Lewis nailed it in A Grief Observed: “I hate it if they do, and if they don’t.” You’ll want to be left alone and desperately want to be known, sometimes in the same five minutes.
3. There’s nobody left who remembers you as a baby.
Your parents carry your origin story. And before you picture a cape: no. This is less bitten by a radioactive spider and more the only person who remembers what you were afraid of at age four. The birth details, the early memories, the stories told so many times they felt like your own memories. When they’re gone, those stories go with them. You become, in some small but significant way, a person without a witness to your beginning. I’m an only child, so I can’t even turn to a sibling and say “do you remember?” Some of my own story is just gone. I’m still figuring out how to make peace with that.
4. You’ll catch yourself wanting to call them.
Something funny happens. You take a cute picture of your dog. You see a video your dad is the only person who would find as funny as you do. You have a hard day and want to hear a familiar voice. And your brain, completely independent of your grief, reaches for the phone. And then it remembers. It’s a split-second moment, but it lands every time with the full weight of the loss, like your body is relearning it on a loop.
5. Cleaning out a parent’s home is one of the most emotionally violent things a human being can do.
Nobody prepares you for standing in a kitchen holding a spatula for twenty minutes because you can’t figure out if it’s sentimental or just a spatula. Every object is a decision and every decision feels like a verdict on someone’s life. You’ll also find things you didn’t expect and things you really, really wish you hadn’t.
Disclaimer: If you are a living parent who has stumbled across this blog, consider this your sign to do a walk-through of your home with fresh eyes. Is there anything you wouldn’t want your child to find after you’re gone? If the answer is yes (and you know if the answer is yes) please handle it immediately. I am begging you. From experience. They will find the thing. And they will never be the same.
Give yourself more time than you think you need. Bring snacks. Bring help. You’re going to be there a while.
6. Customer service will try to upsell you on a better plan. For the deceased. While you’re crying.
There are special words reserved for the representative who responded to “my dad passed away” with “Oh, I’m so sorry. Have you considered our annual plan? It’s a much better value.” Have your script ready: “I’m calling to cancel. My parent passed away.” Full stop. Do not engage with the upsell. You owe them nothing.
7. Their digital life doesn’t die with them.
Digital accounts don’t die when people do. The email address, the Facebook profile, the newsletter from a store they liked: it all just stays. Some platforms let you memorialize social media profiles so the algorithm stops cheerfully suggesting their birthday to mutual friends every year. That’s worth looking into before a random notification ruins a perfectly good Tuesday.
8. Inherited money feels different from every other money.
The first time you spend it on something ordinary, groceries, a utility bill, it feels wrong. This money has weight. It came from somewhere that cost something enormous, and using it to buy paper towels feels like a category error. There’s no right answer. What I can tell you is that the feeling is nearly universal, and it doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. It just means the money came from love, and love doesn’t spend like everything else.
9. The second year is often harder than the first.
In the first year, people show up. The second year, the window closes, at least in other people’s perception. Their nervous systems have moved on. Yours hasn’t. I know this because I’m in it right now with my dad. The casseroles are gone, the check-ins have slowed, and the world has largely concluded that I am fine. I am largely fine. I am also not fine at all. Both things are true and they coexist without much warning about which one is going to be in charge on any given day.
10. Nobody prepares you for the grief math your brain will do without your permission.
Both of my parents died at 65. I’m 44. That’s 21 years. I know that without doing any math because my brain already did it, probably while I was sleeping. Grief math is involuntary and merciless. Timelines, ages, how many years you had versus how many you assumed you’d get. And then it gets personal: if they were gone at 65 and I’m 44, I have a certain number of years to stop treating time like a renewable resource.
The math never adds up to enough. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s what makes you put down the phone and go outside. Call the person you’ve been meaning to call. Stop waiting for the right time, because now you know the right time is not guaranteed.
If you’re an adult orphan reading this: Hi. I see you.
You’re not behind. You’re not broken. You’re just in it.
Welcome to the club nobody wanted to join. We’re glad you’re here. (or not really, but welcome anyway.)