Hello! I wanted to reach out to Reddit to see if there is anyone out there who have felt a certain way about deceased parent(s) being buried away from you or alone. For context my father passed when I was a child and my mother had him buried in the local cemetery. Both my parents immigrated from a different country and neither of them have any family here (all of the family is back in their home country). Essentially, my father is alone there. My mother has remarried and has expressed desire to be buried with her new husband when she passes. I am an only child and have literally no one to speak to about these strange feelings. I am upset thinking about my father being forever buried alone and in addition I worry about ever leaving the town as then he would be extra alone. I feel guilty. Has anyone experienced these sorts of emotions? Any words of wisdom on how to cope?

Thanks.

My Dad/my Mom's husband of 40 years passed away in December 2024. As of today it's been about 10 months and my Mom has done well to try and live life independently because she was heavily reliant on my Dad and had no real social connections outside of my sister and I and Dad. A few weeks ago, during one of her activities, she met a man in his 80s (we'll call him Rich) at a dance class at a community center and they've recently sparked up a friendship with each other. He takes her out to dinner sometimes, and spend part of the day together. Some background on my Mom, she's in her late 60s and Asian. I know my Mom has told me that she does not want to be any type of relationship, but we've encouraged her to seek out friendships. I guess we expected a female friend, but its a friendship nonetheless. I always ask her if he's respecting her boundaries and making it clear to him that she just wants to be friends, and she says she does. This week she told us that her friend Rich bought tickets for them to go on a cruise. This is where my sister and I feel uneasy. Yes we've encouraged her to seek out friendships, and learn to live life for herself, because shes always lived life for us and Dad. She sounded excited about going, because she's never been on a cruise. Part of me is like, this could be good for her, but the other part of me is concerned that Rich is moving way too quickly with the expectation of trying to date her. We told her we would like to meet him, so that we know who this person is. We don't want to hinder her and we want her to experience new things. A cruise does sound fun, but with a man shes only known for a few weeks, just doesn't sit right with us. I keep thinking that maybe its because my sister and I have only seen my Mom with our Dad. Maybe we just don't like the idea of Mom being with another man. We're also very protective of her because we made a promise to our Dad to always be there for her. I know she's an adult, but she's also very naive about the world around her. She's a kind and warm woman who has the biggest heart, we just want to make sure shes ok.

I lost my mother when I was 14 and while you learn to live life without them, you are never the same. Whenever I’m sad or down I become overwhelmed with grief and yearn for my mother’s comfort. It’s especially hard being almost 30 and getting older, reaching milestones and wishing that she were there to see it all.

I’ve just discovered this sub, and I’m very sad reading these stories but also grateful that I’m not alone in many of my emotions. My dad died of a heart attack when I was 17 in December 2023 during my senior year of high school. Long story short, I still pursued college because it’s what he would have wanted me to do. Freshman year was pretty rough but I made it! However, I feel as though I only made it because I had other stresses to distract me from the grief I was ignoring such as classes, making friends, drama, etc. These first couple weeks of classes have been really rough. Ive been slumped, sad, unmotivated, and I keep getting these waves of uncontrollable pain and sadness. I am pursuing the campus counseling, but I just wanted to know if anyone else has had to deal with grief while going through a life change like college and if they had any advice.

Hey gang. Warriors and warettes.

My mom passed recently after a brave ass courageous battle with COPD.

She was the matriarch of 4 boys including my dad. She was the rock, the fixer, the safety net, the care giver, the person who always had the answers, crafted the moments, was intentional, and strong and helped others, and now shes gone.

And i find myself 34, in another city, out of time, and just obliterated y’all, i was the mommas boy of my brothers. It just feels like my world stopped. Like i just finished a movie or a main video game quest and now im just in the credits.

Im just here now. I will never know a love like that again, i will never feel held like that again. She deserved so much more time and so much more life.

Ugh, what a fucking feeling this is. Its shock, and fear, and desperation, and pride, and gratitude, and abyss.

Cheers to you mom. Thank you for everything.

My mom took her life almost 2 months ago now. Still recent, obviously. I have bad days and some days that aren’t as bad. But, without exception, every time I go to the grocery store I find myself tearing up in the cereal aisle or picking avocados or whatever I’m doing. It takes everything in me not to start sobbing right then and there. What tf is it about the grocery store that brings all my walls down and will it always be like this?

My dad passed away unexpectedly in Nov 2024 on vacation.

To be honest, I would have kept the car, but I had already a bought a car for myself in July, since I was planning to move out this year and needed something to drive. He had that mindset that buying a used car = bad, so I wasn’t planning to tell him until he came back from his trip early this year and surprise him when I would pick him up from the airport lol.

Even though the car was under his name, we basically shared it. There’s a lot of memories tied to it (bought it with him, and he actually let me have input on the model and color) and obviously there are feelings of guilt of letting it go. Since that car is under my name now, realistically, it’s not feasible for me to take care of two cars (insurance, maintenance, lack of space in the garage). I also feel like I should drive the car that I want and paid with my earned money.

At the moment, I’m still mourning his loss, but I guess once it’s gone, it’ll be one less painful reminder that’s he not here anymore.

My mom died 01/19/2014 , I was 10 years old when she died. It seems like it’s honestly harder on me now at 22 than it was then. Does anyone relate to this & have any advice ?? She passed away due to heart failure and drug use

My dad died in December. I'm going through a divorce and have had to move apartments since then and I live 5 hours from my family and everything has just been all over the place. My mom started dating someone who is covered in red flags 2-3 months ago. I'm not taking it well. I haven't met him yet but I guess she introduced him to my other family members over the weekend. I'm terrified he'll be there at Christmas or the holidays. My heart is broken and I can't control my anger. I know it's irrational because I'm a grown woman. But something about it makes me feel even more alone. Has anyone else been able to stop that anger? I'm so heartbroken and it's just hard to control.

i miss them so much, especially these last 5.5 weeks

i desperately wish my parents were still alive right now. my husband left me for another woman 5.5 weeks ago; our second child hadn’t even turned one yet. he decided to carry on an affair for a couple months and then admitted to it and left us.

i am so heartbroken and all i want is my mom and my dad to tell me it’s going to be ok.

he and my daughters are my only family and now i don’t even have him. we were together for 14 years.

i don’t know a lot of people who have separated/divorced, but all of them had their parents there to support them. i don’t have either and i feel like im going to die. i just want him to come back - i can’t handle this on my own.

has this happened to anyone else here?

I’ve never posted anything like this, and I’m sorry if any of this digs up anything for people.

This year my dad shot him self the night before Mother’s Day. I was with my mom the next morning cleaning out a stall that a neglected pig and goat had been kept in, I live on an animal sanctuary that we both volunteer at often so it felt pretty normal. When we were done she got a call from my step mom, I watched her eyes get bigger and her hand cover her mouth, I knew immediately what was going on. He had been struggling for years with alcoholism, he gave me reasons to not communicate with him but I stayed around, he had pushed everyone else away and I felt if I wasn’t there he would do something. He texted me the night before, it sounded like the same drunken texts I’ve been receiving for years. I was always quick to be there for him. My best friend who passed away 4 years ago had finally received her headstone that day. I went to see her multiple times a month for years waiting to see it, however that did not take away how devastating it was. When he texted me I was already grieving, and did not have the capacity to be there. At this point idk if that’s truly how I feel or if I’ve convinced myself to help. I just had my first bday with out him, I’m glad I had 24 years with him, but I wish my little sister had more time. It’s a double edge sword, she’s now 11 and because of that she really doesn’t have any bad memories, but it’s not fair how little time she had with him. I was balancing talking to lawyers about how to set stuff up for her to maybe have a college fund or something that could help her later on, playing counselor for a lot of the family, and try to think about myself. I still don’t feel like I’ve fully recognized that he’s gone gone. I had to clean up his blood the day after it happened, I couldn’t stand the thought of anyone else having to burden that, it didn’t help that you have to pay for another service to clean up stuff other than the body itself. A month after that I was moving stuff in the garage and found a chunk of his jaw on the ground, this was weeks before my roommate and I were supposed to move in to the house. I go through waves of numbness and hypersensitivity, there hasn’t been very long stretches of time that those images didn’t pop in my head. I couldn’t sleep for weeks without having dreams of walking out in to the garage right before he does it. In all of this I recognize my privilege, I got to have a father, and he tried for a long time. I’ll never not think I’m the luckiest person on earth and am always thankful for everything I have, I just hate he left us.

If anyone is reading this I hope you’ll always be kind to people that are mourning their parent’s death. It was 10 years ago at around 10:30 pm my dad’s coffin was entering our gate, me and my family and loved ones were standing outside to receive him then suddenly a young aunt from my grandma’s side grabbed my mouth and wrapped me around and whispered in my ears with gritted teeth “if you cry infront of your grandma I won’t spare you” , till this day it echoes in my ears and I still can picture the scene. Today I had a moment looking back to the past, I was around 13 back then and I didn’t fully register it since I was still a kid but years later weight of that memory hits me harder. I understand why she did it , she wanted to protect my grandma and I understand she forbid me from mourning because I lived with my grandparents so she probably thought it was okay to do that to me since I lived separately from my dad but still then he was the only father I had, the father that’s lying inside the coffin. Now that I’ve grown older I realised how much of a kindness I needed at that time, I was someone who didn’t get to spend as much time with her dad and now he’s gone. So guys please be kind to people that are mourning. 🫶🫶

me, my mom and my sister were all together again. we were fighting over something stupid. i made a joke about it and we all laughed. and i woke up laughing and laughing and laughing until i realized it wasn’t real, and she was gone, and i was laying asleep in my boyfriend’s lap and then i couldn’t stop crying. why does the mind torment us?

hey everyone, tomorrow is my 25th birthday and it’s my first birthday without my dad. milestones have all been hard so far but this one is particularly getting to me. it’s also one of the last of the last major milestones for me as he passed eleven days after my birthday last fall. looking to see if anyone has advice on getting through it- i really don’t want to bring everyone around me down, but i’m really struggling with it. kinda dreading it altogether and wondering if it gets easier or if it’ll always be bittersweet moving forward.

Mom died when I was 14 and I quickly learned that I hated the reaction people had when they found out. I can't stand the look of pity. Back then I just wanted to be a normal kid, so I never told anyone who didn't already know. Now at 30 my dad is dead too and I am experiencing the same thing again but almost worse. Having to explain to people that both your parents are dead and youre only 30, people are so surprised and make it such a big deal. It is a big deal, but I don't want to talk about that with anyone I'm not close with. I just want to present it like a fact and move on. I mean like when someone I barely know asks something about my parents and I have to say they're dead. How do you say that without making it awkward? Side note, I hate people assuming everyone has parents or are close with them!

Shes been dead for 5 months.. I mean .. yeahh .. ? How are people my age so brain dead when it comes to parents passing early???!

Really missing my mum, growing my first baby and feeling so sad I can’t ask her things and she can’t teach me, and my daughter wont know her. My dads dead too so it feels really lonely. 💔

I cut off so many people I considered friends because they just weren’t there for me. I only kept a few people in my life after that. It makes me feel bad like I’m the problem & I have issues. But I just can’t be around those people who didn’t support me when I would have them. lol

My mother died when I was 25 in December 2018. She was only 44. The last big memory we had was my college graduation 2 years prior. I have a photo from that day I've kept close to my heart.

In it, I was looking goofy, with my cap and gown on and headphones on my shoulders. She had her arm around me, looking down with a smile on her face. 19 Year Old Mother who had to escape from her country as a teenager because of war, raised a kid who graduated from one of the most prestigious universities in America. She looked happy.

When she died, I was in active use. My few years with her after college was fraught with conflict and chaos, often sparked by my drinking. It was a miserable 2 years for her, and then she suddenly died.

It took me a long time to be functional again. The alcoholism got worse, until I finally landed in Rehab in 2021. I carry a deep regret that I don't expect to ever go away. I think it's a permanent scar, which I've slowly learned to live with.

Has anyone else had a similar experience, this interplay between grief, regret, and addiction?

This whole situation is just so unequivocally unfair that I can’t even wrap my head around it.

From when I was 17 until I was 21, my dad fought Parkinson’s disease that caused him to succumb just weeks before my 22nd birthday.

Now, at 29, my mom went from seemingly healthy to diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and then died less than a month later (two weeks ago)

I have no siblings, my dad died when I was 21, my mom died when I was 29, and I turn 30 in three weeks. While I don’t expect to be in the mood to celebrate a lot, I do look forward to saying goodbye to this horrid decade.

I want to add: I have extended family that I have a very close relationship with that live about an hour away, I have a few very tight knit friends, and several good friends in my city, and about a dozen an hour away as well. I am safe and people have been giving me lots of support. But this is tough.

My dad passed away completely unexpectedly from a heart attack on May 1st 2024. He was 62. I was 27 at the time and i’m 28 now. I feel so alone. I am so guilty for things I did or said to him. I was resentful of him and annoyed at him a lot of the time. He was never abusive to me, he was a good parent and I feel like I treated him badly. I feel like he kind of gave up and he wouldn’t do anything all day (he was on disability) and I was working 60-65 hours a week as an underpaid social worker and I felt weirdly jealous of him and that made me annoyed. I also wanted him to start taking better care of himself and find an activity or something and stop staying up all night. I distanced myself from him on purpose because of these things and then he died during this period of our relationship. I feel like a horrible daughter and I don’t know when it will go away. Some people on this subreddit say it never gets easier and that makes me feel hopeless. I’m not going to hurt myself but I don’t want to live the rest of my life without my dad. It seems so long and daunting.

I lost my mom on November 14, 2022. I’m an only child. I was 29 years old then. She gave birth to me when she was 29. She taught me everything I needed to know about life and love and the world. The world that I used to know anyway and that world is slowly being destroyed by evil governments and corporations everyday and it’s like a breathing nightmare to be here experiencing it without her. I wish that we had more time together, I wish that I had called more or went to visit more and that she could see me become engaged and do some good things with my life even if it’s not all together right now and I’m trying to make it better despite everything going on around me. I pray that something stops all this madness and things can return to normal because going through grief and this is just not something I think I can handle long term.

this will be the first time my mom’s birthday is coming up without her and i want to celebrate her & her birthday. i miss her so much every day it hurts

i feel so lonely. nobody really understands my grief. i'm an only child, so i'm the only one who can really understand what it's like to lose /my/ mom. i don't have any other siblings that can share this sadness and loneliness that is so uniquely mine. i'm the only one in this world that calls my mom "mama". i try to be fine everyday, as i know it's what she would've wanted. but i'm slowly realizing that i fear i can never be fully happy and okay again.