Losing a Parent: The Grief No One Prepares You For

Nothing prepares you for this.

You can know it's coming. You can watch them decline for months or years. You can have the conversations, make the arrangements, say the things that need to be said. You can tell yourself you're ready.

And then they die, and you realize you weren't ready at all.

Losing a parent is a grief like no other. It doesn't matter if you're 15 or 55. It doesn't matter if your relationship was perfect or complicated. It doesn't matter if the death was sudden or expected. When a parent dies, something fundamental shifts in your world—something that can never shift back.

If you're here because you've recently lost your mother or father, I want you to know: I've been where you are. Pachamama was born from the loss of my own mother. I know this grief from the inside. And while I can't take it away, I can sit with you in it and tell you what I wish someone had told me.

Why This Grief Feels Different

You've experienced loss before. Maybe grandparents, friends, even pets. But losing a parent often hits differently, and there are reasons for that.

They were your origin. Your parent is the person who gave you life, who knew you before you knew yourself. Losing them severs a connection that stretches back to your very beginning.

They were supposed to be permanent. Even as adults, we carry an unconscious assumption that our parents will always be there. Somewhere in the back of our minds, they remain the safety net, the people we could always call. When they die, that illusion of permanence shatters.

You lose your role as someone's child. No matter how old you get, you're still someone's son or daughter. When your parent dies, that identity shifts. You're no longer anyone's child, and that's a strange and disorienting feeling.

The family structure changes. If you've lost your second parent, you become the oldest generation. The buffer between you and mortality is gone. If you've lost your first parent, you watch your surviving parent grieve, and that brings its own pain.

The history dies with them. Your parent held memories no one else has—stories of your childhood, family history, knowledge of who you were before you can remember. Some of that is lost forever now.

The grief is both present and anticipatory. You grieve who they were, but also who they would have been—the future milestones they'll miss, the grandchildren they won't meet, the conversations you'll never have.

The Things No One Warns You About

Grief after losing a parent has its own particular textures. Here's what catches many people off guard:

You might feel like an orphan. Even as an adult. Even if you have your own family. The word feels dramatic, but the feeling is real. Something about being parentless touches a primal vulnerability.

You'll reach for the phone. Something will happen—good news, a question, a random thought—and your instinct will be to call them. That impulse can last for months, even years. Each time, the loss hits fresh.

Holidays become landmines. The first birthday without them. The first Mother's Day or Father's Day. The first Thanksgiving with an empty chair. These dates carry weight you can't fully anticipate until you're in them.

Their things become sacred. A worn sweater. A handwritten note. A coffee mug. Objects that meant nothing before now feel irreplaceable, because they were theirs.

You might grieve differently than your siblings. If you have brothers or sisters, each of you had a different relationship with your parent. Your grief won't look the same, and that can create tension.

You'll have good days that feel like betrayal. Laughing, enjoying something, forgetting for a moment—and then the guilt crashes in. How can you be happy when they're gone?

The grief shapeshifts. Some days it's sadness. Some days it's anger. Some days it's numbness. Some days it's all three within an hour. The unpredictability is exhausting.

People will stop asking. After a few weeks, the world moves on. Friends stop checking in. Life returns to normal for everyone except you. The loneliness of that can be profound.

The First Days and Weeks

The immediate aftermath of a parent's death is often a blur. Here's what many people experience:

Shock and numbness. Even if the death was expected, your body may respond with a protective numbness. You go through the motions—making calls, planning services, handling logistics—without fully feeling anything.

Surreal normalcy. The sun still rises. People still go to work. Traffic still moves. The world continues as if nothing happened, and that feels impossible and offensive.

Physical symptoms. Grief isn't just emotional. You might feel exhausted, nauseous, unable to sleep, or unable to get out of bed. Your body is processing a trauma.

Decision fatigue. There are so many choices to make in the days after death—funeral arrangements, notifications, financial matters. It's overwhelming when your brain is least equipped to handle it.

Unexpected emotions. Relief if they were suffering. Anger that they left you. Regret for things unsaid. These feelings may surprise you, and they're all normal.

The Months That Follow

The acute phase of grief eventually shifts into something different—not easier, but different.

The fog lifts, and the pain sharpens. Numbness gave you protection. As it fades, you may feel the loss more intensely, not less. This is normal and doesn't mean you're going backward.

You learn to function while grieving. You return to work. You keep appointments. You fulfill responsibilities. But underneath the surface, you're still carrying something heavy.

Triggers catch you off guard. A song. A smell. A phrase they used to say. Grief doesn't wait for convenient moments. It ambushes you in the grocery store, in meetings, while driving.

You reconstruct your identity. Who are you without them? What traditions continue? What stories do you carry forward? This reconstruction happens slowly and unconsciously.

The relationship continues to evolve. This sounds strange, but your relationship with your parent doesn't end when they die. It transforms. You may understand them differently now. Forgive things. See patterns you couldn't see before.

The Complicated Feelings

Not everyone loses a parent they had a perfect relationship with. Grief is often tangled up with complicated feelings.

If the relationship was difficult: You might grieve the parent you wish you'd had more than the parent you actually had. You might feel relief alongside the sadness. You might mourn the reconciliation that will never happen.

If there were things left unsaid: The conversations you didn't have can haunt you. You might replay arguments, regret words spoken in anger, or wish you'd asked questions you'll never get answers to.

If you were the caretaker: Losing a parent after a long illness means losing someone you'd been slowly losing for a while. It also means losing your role as caregiver, which can leave you unmoored.

If the death was sudden: There's a particular trauma in having no warning. No goodbye. No chance to prepare. The shock of that can take much longer to process.

If you weren't there: Guilt about not being present at the end can be crushing. You may replay the circumstances, wondering if you could have done something differently.

All of these feelings can coexist. Grief isn't clean. It holds contradictions without resolving them.

What Helps (Even a Little)

There's no fixing this. But there are things that can make the weight slightly more bearable.

Let yourself grieve. This sounds obvious, but our culture pushes us to "be strong" and "move on." Resist that. Feel what you feel. Cry when you need to. The only way through grief is through it.

Talk about them. Say their name. Tell stories. Share memories with people who knew them. Your parent deserves to be remembered out loud, not just in silence.

Write to them. Many people find comfort in writing letters to their deceased parent. Tell them what you wish you'd said. Update them on your life. It doesn't matter that they can't read it—it matters that you can write it.

Protect meaningful objects. If there are items of theirs that bring you comfort, keep them close. A piece of jewelry you wear. A photo by your bed. Something that still smells like them.

Create rituals. Light a candle on their birthday. Visit a place they loved. Cook their recipe on holidays. Rituals give grief somewhere to go.

Find your people. Seek out others who've lost parents—friends who understand, support groups, online communities. Being with people who've walked this path can ease the isolation.

Be patient with yourself. Grief doesn't follow a timeline. You won't be "over it" in six months or a year or five years. You'll learn to carry it differently, but it stays with you. That's not a failure—it's a reflection of how much you loved.

What to Do with Their Ashes

If your parent was cremated, you'll eventually face the question of what to do with their ashes. There's no rush on this decision, and there's no wrong answer.

Some families keep ashes at home in an urn—a permanent presence in a meaningful spot. Others divide ashes among siblings, so each person has a portion to honor in their own way.

Many families choose to scatter ashes in a place that mattered: the ocean, a favorite lake, a garden, a mountain trail. This can be done privately or as part of a ceremony with loved ones.

When my mother passed, I used a Pachamama urn to transport her ashes back to Argentina. Her wish was to be released into the open air, in a field outside the city where I was born. That ceremony—standing with my siblings, the wind carrying her ashes over the hills—was one of the most profound moments of my life.

Whatever you choose, let it be meaningful to you and true to who they were.

A Note About the First Year

The first year after losing a parent is often the hardest—not because the grief is worse month by month, but because you're experiencing every milestone for the first time without them.

The first birthday. The first holiday. The first anniversary of their death. Each one is a small mountain to climb.

Many people say the second year is actually harder in some ways. The shock has worn off. The support has faded. The permanence has sunk in. If you find yourself struggling in year two, you're not regressing—you're just finally feeling what was too big to feel at first.

Be gentle with yourself. There is no map for this.

You Are Not Alone

Losing a parent is universal—it happens to almost everyone eventually—and yet it can feel profoundly isolating. No one else had your exact relationship with your mother or father. No one else is grieving exactly what you're grieving.

But millions of people know this particular shape of loss. They know what it's like to be the one who is left, to carry someone's memory forward, to be the generation that's now in front.

You are part of this vast, invisible community of people who have loved a parent and lost them. You are not alone, even when it feels that way.

And your parent is still with you—in the ways you think, the values you hold, the stories you tell, the love you pass on. They shaped who you are, and that shaping doesn't end because their body is gone.

The grief is the price of the love. And the love is still here.

With warmth,

Virginia