What to Expect When You Lose a Parent in Your Twenties

When you bag yourself a dead parent in your twenties, there’s one thing you must remember to do at every possible stage: make lists.

You want one list for the funeral, another for the wake. For the weird interview you have to do with the government to prove your loved one actually died, for the paperwork, the paperwork, the paperwork.

For me, it began last September. Jo, my now-dead-but-then-53-year-old-step-mum, felt a lump in her throat. Doctors gave it a complicated name and sent her to chemo, delayed by the pandemic. Before we could blink, it had spread to her liver, lungs and spine.

The lists started when Jo was in hospital: requests and promises, like swearing we’d do one of those cheesy bus tours around London after lockdown. But the next week – into November now – she was moved to a hospice to regulate her breathing. She deteriorated quickly. 

Jo died on Friday the 13th of November, 2020, three hours after I told her she could let go, that she could trust me to look after everything.

At 1AM that night, I made my first absolutely normal to-do list for the next day: go see dead step-mum; pick up her clothes from the hospice; reluctantly find a funeral director who can do a horse and carriage during a global pandemic; locate will; pick up dead step-mum’s elderly mother (not dead); drive her to see dead step-mum, call the boyfriend, childhood best friend, uni mates, her boss.

There is no script for grief – only lists. An endless avalanche of lists: lists for landlords, banks and bosses; lists to make sure you’re sleeping right, so that you can keep going, so that you can do this terrible, wonderful thing you’ve been asked to do; so you can keep at least one of your promises.

For now, here’s how you deal with grief, slowly, one step at a time, with one final – possibly even helpful – list.

Talk. Sleep. Meditate. Tick off every task you accomplish, especially if it’s inconsequential, like remembering to drink water. Consume content about death to help you cry. I recommend: It’s a Sin, Upright and Ted Lasso (not so much death in the latter, but people are often pointedly pleasant to one another, which is definitely worse). 

Listen to Griefcast. Read old interviews with Rob Delaney. Turn off the news. Ask for help, especially when selling things, or wondering how to responsibly recycle your dead step-mum’s vibrator.

For the first fortnight only: get some melatonin and take one tablet half an hour before bed. 

Beyond that, exercise. I lifted weights, ran a lot and completed Red Dead Redemption 2 (totally counts).

Prioritise finding a rich benefactor to pay for several months of private therapy. In the absence of your own personal Magwitch, consider robbing a bank* (this is a good place to start). Though, fair warning: that path will, inevitably, result in more lists.

A friend of mine, also in the Dead Parent Club, said that if you’re at uni, you should check student counselling services. She was showered in free sessions after her dad died.

Your mates will ask how the funeral went. 

You will confirm that all prerequisite targets regarding incineration were hit on deadline, and as far as you know, there were no further deaths, which was convenient, because another funeral would mean booking another crematorium, an experience not dissimilar to trying to find a pub for the Euro 2020 final, because demand now far exceeds supply, because: pandemic.

People will ask how you are, all the time, for a week. Then they won’t, and you’ll feel lonely, like nobody really cared. Forgive your friends for not knowing how to deal – they’re flying as blind as you are, desperately wanting to help, but not knowing how. For most people in their twenties, grief is perhaps more conceptual. If you can, offer the empathy you want in return. Remind them, kindly, that you’re still mourning.

I am here, begging you, pleading with you, to take time off work. 

Be honest with yourself and the other person. Don’t be afraid of scaring them off with the truth – it’s part of who you are. You’ll be surprised by how many people in the last year have experienced grief, or at least a sense of loss. Communicate with your partners!

Dating is no panacea. Do not use it to fill a void. Don’t let it be a distraction from the hard work of looking inwards. But when your life is fleetingly locked into someone else’s, it can feel like nothing else exists, like this universe of two you just made is impenetrable, a San Junipero of expensive pints and late breakfasts and Spotify playlists and movies on your laptop. Resist guilt. It does not shame the memory of your dead parent to want to feel alive again.

I like how Natalia puts it in Before Midnight, when she talks, with the deft lightness of someone who has confronted their shit, about learning to live again after the death of her husband. When I think of dating, and grief, and growing old, my mind wanders to this:

"Like sunlight, sunset, we appear, we disappear,” she says. “We are so important to some. But we are just passing through."

Months later, when you’ve stopped dreaming of them, you might still cry a bit too hard after smashing a nice plate, or while watching the “human bits” in Drag Race UK. There will still be songs you can’t listen to, and stories that hurt to tell.

This does not make you a hot mess. Successfully moving on doesn’t mean cutting out the sad feelings and surgically replacing them with fun ones. To paraphrase a meme sent to me by a mate who lost someone to COVID-19: grief never shrinks, we just grow.

Everyone is different, so here is some crowdsourced advice from friends. Write letters to your loved one. Buy a plant. Do not freak out if that plant dies because you watered it too much to overcompensate for human mortality. Keep something physical of theirs on you, as a reminder that they survive through you. Remember them in your own way, with your own sense of ceremony (before the year is out, a group of us are going to do that London bus tour after all). And if you go a day without thinking of them, or a week, or a month, that’s OK too. It does not mean you suck as a person.

Don’t forget that grief is nothing more or less than a physical manifestation of love – a reminder that you felt something for someone, a feeling that is, by nature, renewable.

@jameshh__

*Please note that neither VICE nor the author seriously suggests actually robbing a bank. Instead, consider signing up for cognitive behavioural therapy on the NHS, where you will be on a waiting list until your 72nd birthday, at which point the floating head of a now immortal Richard Branson will offer a fair price on the VHS (Virgin Health Service), if you’re willing to offer the last of your organs that haven’t been decomposed by air pollution, so you can exchange your place on the waiting list with your grandchildren, whose mental health problems have been somewhat exacerbated from having to swim to school every day.