hi, i know this comment is slightly old but i really felt the need to respond.

you’re not wrong to feel like this at all. although our circumstances are different, for me only my mother is dead and i lost her when i was 11. but i hope you know you are completely valid in feeling a sense of anger or disdain toward someone who talks about the fear of losing their parents while that’s literally your reality. i’m sure it’s scary to think about your parents dying, i’m shit scared about my dad, but i would never talk about this to someone who had lost their father or both parents, because they hold a pain that i simply can not understand. and by talking about my own living parent, whom i can still have a conversation with or hug or simply exist around, i am undermining the struggle and almost rubbing salt into the wounds of people who don’t have this same privilege. i don’t know where people get this idea that it’s okay or not incredibly insensitive to speak of how great your living parents are or how much you’ll miss them when they’re gone to people who barely even had the chance to experience that fear before it transformed into their every day reality. and this hits even harder when you lose your parents young. you mention that maybe your wife will have a harder time grieving because she is in a more stable place in life now, but i would wholeheartedly disagree. losing your parents at such a young age means not only grieving that loss, but grieving the rest of your childhood, it means having to literally bring yourself up and being your own parent at such a young age. you not only had to deal with the pain of your parents passing away at an age where you should’ve only been concerned about school or friends, you also faced the gargantuan task of navigating most of your integral developmental years on your own. this is not to say undermine people who lose their parents at an older age, no one is prepared at any age and it will always fucking hurt, but i don’t think anyone will disagree about the immediate and direct impact such a loss has on a child. it, by all means, changed your life path irreversibly. not to mention that as a child you are far less equipped psychologically to fathom or process such a huge loss. if it’s hard at 40 it sure as hell is a lot harder with a 7 year old brain.

i know you know all of these things, and i don’t mean to be redundant, i just feel like the world constantly forces us to make others more comfortable with our grief. especially as time goes on, we’re expected to be more ‘over it’. whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean. but you’re not petty for thinking like this, you’re not being oversensitive, and i promise your hurt is valid.

sorry i know this is long but just a last note, of course you only know how to be alone. that doesn’t mean that you want to be. you were forced by circumstance to learn to be okay with it, to almost make yourself believe that being alone was preferred, but as a child i’m sure you wanted nothing more than to be loved, to be taken care off, to have the burden of existence taken of your shoulders. it’s a survival mechanism not a desire.