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[quote=Anonymous]I was 16 when my mom died at 52 of cancer.  My dad is still alive and is 79 living on his own with his girlfriend of 25 years.

16 is obviously very very young to lose a parent, but I had an unusual "gift" literally at her funeral that gave me immediate perspective that stayed with me my whole life.  One of my best high school friends found me in the bathroom at the funeral home right before the service, sitting alone.  She sat with me and started to talk and cry.  Then she said something that shook me, she said "Why did this happen to you?  You LIKED your mom!  Why couldn't it have happened to MY mom?"

I'll never forget that, couldn't believe she said why didn't her mom die instead.  In that instant I understood that I may have only had my mom for 16 years, but I was lucky to have her even that long and I never resented losing her or felt abandoned.  I knew she didn't want to leave me (my parents divorced when I was 3 and I'd always lived just with her after that).

So it's hard, I'm sad my daughter won't meet her in this life, but glad my DH's 2 sets of parents (parents split when he was 3 as well, each remarried and had 2 more kids) are welcoming grandparents to her.

How it affected me other than that, I understand what a gift every day with loved ones is, and I also believe in making the most out of opportunities when you have them.  Our daughter got sick when she was 1.5 yrs old and was hospitalized.  Of course we were freaked out and scared and also hopeful she'd be fine (which thankfully she was), but I also understood that every day with her is a gift.  I know too many families who've lost kids (whether young kids or adult kids), and too many people who've had unexpected tragedies.  So I live life responsibly (obviously try to always have a job and stability for myself and family), but I also try hard to enjoy it and encourage those I love to do the same.

I had a health emergency when my daughter was 2 and she unfortunately saw me on a friend's bathroom floor with blood around me and paramedics giving me an IV before taking me to the hospital.  She started asking lots of questions about death and my mom when she was 5, so another way losing my mom young and my daughter knowing that plus her memory of me being hospitalized affects us is she is really sensitive to themes in books, movies or anywhere that involve a mother leaving a family or kids being hurt (like we watched a Netflix movie about a witch that drains fire from dragons and the dragons turn to stone, and near the end witch drains fire from a baby dragon (who is later saved by his mom and turned back to a living dragon) and you'd think someone had killed her puppy in front of her, she was SO DISTRESSED that the witch hurt the baby dragon).  Also the great recent cartoon "Song of the Sea" where the mom and daughter are fairies, dad and brother are human, and at end daughter decides to stay with dad and brother but mom returns to fairy-land and my daughter was inconsolable "WHY DID THE MOM LEAVE THEM???"

Needless to say I try hard to know the plots of things before we watch to avoid storylines like this when I know![/quote]

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