Why Life Feels Different After a Parent Has Died

Parents can occupy a particular place in our lives. Even as adults, there can be something about their existence in the world that feels strangely permanent. You may not speak every day, live nearby, or even have an easy relationship — but they're there. Until suddenly, they're not and something that once felt immovable has moved. And sometimes you feel that change before you can make any sense of it.

You might feel less safe in the world, more aware of everything that could go wrong, or frightened in ways you weren't before. Things that once seemed ordinary can suddenly carry a weight they didn't used to. A phone call at an unusual time. Someone you love being late home. A symptom you would once have brushed off.

Something you always knew intellectually — that people we love can die, that life can change without warning — has become something you know in your body.

After the worst has already happened

Before someone important dies, there can be a kind of distance between knowing that something terrible could happen and believing that it actually will. Then it does and afterwards, you might find yourself waiting for something else to happen.

A phone call makes your stomach drop. Someone doesn't reply and your mind goes somewhere it never used to. You become more aware of illness, accidents, ageing or the possibility of losing somebody else. You might replay what happened and wonder whether there was something you should have noticed, something you could have done differently, some way you could have prevented it.

I often hear variations of:

“I'm always so anxious now.”

“I'm always waiting for the next person to die and I don't know how to stop.”

“I should have done x, y or z and then maybe it wouldn't have happened.”

I've said these things myself since losing my dad. When something devastating has happened once, it can become much harder to reassure yourself that it probably won't happen again. Your body can remain braced for another piece of bad news, as though being prepared might somehow make it hurt less next time. It can be exhausting.

When the world doesn't feel quite as safe anymore

Grief isn't only about missing the person who died. Their death can change how the world itself feels.

Perhaps you used to assume there would be more time. You made plans without thinking too much about whether everybody would still be there for them. You knew people died, of course, but that knowledge lived somewhere in the background. Now it can feel much closer.

You might notice your parents getting older in a way you didn't before. If one parent is still alive, you may become frightened of losing them too. You might worry more about your partner, your children, your siblings or your own health. Sometimes the fear is loud and obvious. Sometimes it's simply there in the background — a slight sense of bracing, checking or waiting. And sometimes it appears in places that don't seem connected to grief at all. You find decisions harder. Change feels more threatening. You want people you love nearby. Or perhaps you pull away because loving people suddenly feels frightening when you know how much there is to lose.

You may feel different, too

There can be a strange experience after a significant loss of looking at your own life and thinking: I don't feel like the same person anymore.

Things that mattered before may matter less. Things you once tolerated might suddenly feel unbearable. You might question work, relationships, where you live, how you spend your time or what you're doing with your life.

Or perhaps nothing outwardly changes at all. You go back to work. Answer messages. Buy food. Put the bins out. Make plans. Laugh at something funny. And still, somewhere underneath ordinary life, you know something fundamental has changed.

There is the person you were when your parent was alive, and the person who now knows what it is to live in a world where they aren't. That can take time to get used to.

Grieving a parent in your 20s or 30s can feel particularly disorientating

Losing a parent when you're a young adult can bring its own kind of disorientation. You may be building a career, forming long-term relationships, having children, deciding whether you want children, buying a home, moving somewhere new, or simply trying to work out what adulthood is supposed to look like for you. And suddenly one of the people you expected to still be there isn't.

There can be moments when adulthood feels strangely unforgiving. You're expected to keep functioning, make decisions and carry responsibilities while desperately wanting somewhere to fall. You may watch friends call their parents for advice, spend Christmas with them, complain about them, or casually mention something their mum or dad said — and feel the absence all over again.

There can also be grief for the future. The things they won't see. The questions you won't get to ask. The milestones they won't be there for. The ordinary conversations you assumed you had years left to have.

And if your relationship with your parent was complicated, their death doesn't necessarily make that simpler. You can grieve someone you were angry with. You can miss someone who hurt you. You can feel love, relief, guilt, sadness and resentment — sometimes within the same hour. You may also grieve the relationship you hoped might one day become possible. Death can close the door on the chance of an apology, a different conversation, greater closeness, or simply more time to see what might have changed.

Living with what you now know

So often, grieving people tell me they want to go back to who they were before. Back to when they didn't think like this, worry like this, or know quite so vividly how quickly life can change.

You can't unknow what has happened. But that doesn't mean you will always feel as frightened, exposed or untethered as you do now.

Over time, there can be more room for ordinary life again. You can love people without spending every moment preparing to lose them. You can make plans knowing that life is uncertain without uncertainty swallowing the plans themselves. And you can miss the person who died while still finding moments when you're absorbed in something else — laughing, interested, hopeful, irritated by something completely mundane, or simply okay. None of that diminishes your grief. The person who died can continue to matter enormously while your life also contains other things.

But where do I go from here?

If losing a parent has left you feeling less safe in the world, more frightened of losing other people, or simply different from the person you were before they died, there is room for that in grief. You don't have to force yourself back to who you were before. And you don't have to spend the rest of your life braced for what might happen next either.

Therapy can give you somewhere to bring the fear as well as the grief — including the thoughts that feel irrational, the things your body reacts to before you've had time to think, and the parts of your loss that other people may not see. There can be room for the person you've lost, the relationship you actually had with them, what you miss, what hurts, what you're angry about, and what their death has changed for you.

Over time, it can become possible to live alongside what you now know about life's fragility without fear taking up quite so much room. You may have been changed by what happened. But there is still space to discover how you want to live from here.

If you're grieving the death of a parent and would like somewhere to talk about what has happened, I offer online bereavement and grief counselling for adults across the UK and Europe.

Read more about how I work with bereavement, grief and loss →