The Club
There’s this club that I hope you never join.
It’s the club for twenty-something year olds that unexpectedly lose a parent and suddenly finds themselves facing a world that’s way more real than they could every imagine. For many of us in this club, it’s something that weighs on us everyday and will probably continue to weigh on us for the rest of our lives.
The entry into the club is usually swift and unexpected. One minute your parent is on the phone telling you about the new restaurant that just opened up back home, next thing you know you’re in the hospital, and then you’re at their funeral holding on to your grieving family. It’s your first lesson that life comes at you quick.
So much of the pain comes from the timing. We go through a few stages with our parents over the course of our lives. At first we absolutely need them. They literally feed and take care of us. Then we enjoy them as they take us camping and teach us how to ride a bike. The change comes during our teenage years when we can’t stand the sight of them and do everything we can to avoid them. That relationship takes us all the way through college when we only need them when it’s time to buy books or have to explain to them that we’d rather go on a trip to Cancun than spend the week back home.
But after college becomes real life and that’s when the relationship grows the strongest. We’re no longer kids that need to be talked down to. We can differ about politics, know more about the phones they plan on buying, and generally talk about grown folk stuff that we never could before. The relationship changes overnight to healthy one where you are finally an equal to the parents that raised you. It’s a great time.
But then all of that goes away when you find yourself in this club. At this time in your life big decisions are being made and your number one advisory comity is gone. Honestly, does anyone know how to buy a house without asking their parents?
The pain is unbearable and can only be challenged by those that never knew a parent. I don’t know about you, but it would hurt me more to have a million dollars stolen from me than to never have it. I’m not saying my pain hurts more than yours, I’m just saying that when you give a kid the best dad ever for twenty-five years and then take him away, it’s really tough and hard to imagine any worse.
So much of the pain from losing a parent at this age comes from all the newly adult-like stuff that was just within our grasps. We almost got to tell them we were thinking about proposing, we almost were able to host Thanksgiving at our new house, and we almost had the money to buy them that first really great gift that we could never afford until now. Our weddings will be missing an important guest. Our kids will be missing an important grandparent. ”We make tacos on New Years Day because that’s what my dad did,” is something that has to be explained to your future wife instead of her witnessing it firsthand. So much of what made you, “you”, is now gone and only a memory.
No matter how much time passes, you’ll still find yourself at pain, even at the most random occasions. Just recently I was almost brought to tears when I had to decide what kind of hard drive to buy. I knew a few years ago I was only one phone call away from my dad spending way too long explaining all my options before simply telling me which one to buy. Now that’s gone and I’m stuck with someone else’s dad telling me with their online review. Your dad wasn’t smarter than my dad and there’s nothing in this world that can convince me otherwise. But now my club membership only entitles me to second best and for whatever reason that hurt really bad.
Three years ago to this day I joined this club. I joined a club that a few of my friends were already in. And in those three years I’ve seen some really good friends be forced to join too. It’s not a fun club to be in, but we in the club eventually come to an understanding that it’s just the way it is. The longer you’re in the club, the easier it gets. Sometimes it hurts more on certain days, sometimes less. But the one lesson that all of us learn is that life is short, and if we could go back, we’d never regret the times we “had” to call our parents just to say hi. Learn from us; let those you love know you love them before it’s too late. All of us in this club had to learn the hard way and we never want that to happen to someone else.
Oh what we wouldn’t do to just have one day out of this club.
