You spend your entire life knowing that one day your parents will leave this world.

It’s one of the few certainties we all share. Children are supposed to outlive their parents. We grow up with that understanding tucked somewhere in the back of our minds.

But if I’m honest, I never truly believed it would happen to mine.

Even as I watched them grow older, I couldn’t quite imagine a world where they didn’t exist. They had always been there. They were simply part of the landscape of my life, as permanent as the sky.

Neither of my parents died suddenly. In many ways, I had the gift—or perhaps the burden—of watching them die slowly.

Their bodies became more fragile. Their movements slowed. Their worlds became smaller. Every visit revealed another change I wished I hadn’t noticed.

And yet, somewhere deep inside me, I held onto hope.

I believed that maybe tomorrow would be different. Maybe they would regain some of their strength. Maybe this was just a difficult season they would somehow overcome.

Even when my eyes could see the truth, my heart refused to accept it.

It’s strange how anticipatory grief works. People assume that when you’ve had months or years to prepare, the final goodbye somehow hurts less.

It doesn’t.

If anything, it creates the illusion that you’ll know exactly when to say everything that needs to be said.

I thought I had time.

I thought I had asked all the questions I wanted to ask. I thought I had heard every story worth hearing. I thought I had thanked them enough.

But after they were gone, I realized how much was still left unsaid.

There are stories I’ll never hear now.

I want to know more about their childhoods, their first dreams, the mistakes they made before they became my parents. I want to know what scared them in their twenties and what gave them hope in their forties. I want to ask what they wished they had done differently, what they were most proud of, and whether becoming parents changed who they thought they were.

I want to ask them about the road that brought them to me.

Not because the answers would change anything, but because now I understand how precious ordinary conversations really are.

When we’re young, we think our parents will always be there to fill in the missing pieces later.

Then one day, there is no “later.”

At forty-two, I find myself in a place I never imagined: an orphan.

It’s a word I associate with children, not middle-aged adults with careers, mortgages, and children of their own.

But grief doesn’t care how old you are.

There is something profoundly lonely about realizing that there is no one left who remembers every version of you.

No one who knew you before you knew yourself.

No one who can tell you about the day you were born from memory.

No one who remembers the little habits you had as a toddler, the questions you asked as a child, or the dreams you had before the world shaped you.

When your parents die, you don’t just lose them.

You lose your oldest witnesses.

You lose the people who held the beginning of your story.

Now, as I raise my own daughter, I feel their absence in ways I never expected.

I wish they could see the person she is becoming.

I wish I could ask them questions about parenting that only they could answer.

I wish they could tell her stories about me that I don’t even know.

Mostly, I just wish they were here.

There are moments when I still instinctively think, I should call Mummy. She would know what to do. She would have an opinion. She would probably tell me a story that somehow made everything make sense.

Then, just as quickly, I remember.

People often say that grief gets easier with time. I don’t know if that’s true.

Perhaps we simply grow around it.

The love remains. The longing remains. The urge to pick up the phone and call them appears in unexpected moments.

I still find myself thinking, I should ask Mummy about that, or Daddy would know the answer.

Then I remember.

I suppose becoming an orphan in your forties isn’t about suddenly feeling alone.

It’s about realizing that no matter how independent you’ve become, a part of you never stopped being someone’s child.

And perhaps that part of us never really does.

Now I look at Jordyn and realize that one day, many decades from now I hope, she may stand where I am today. She may wish she had asked me one more question or listened to one more story.

That thought has changed how I think about motherhood.

It reminds me to tell her the stories of where she came from. The stories of her grandparents. The stories of our family, our mistakes, our traditions, and our love.

Because now, those stories live with me.

I have become the keeper of our family’s memories.

It is a responsibility I never wanted, but one I will carry with love.

And perhaps that is how the people we love never truly leave us.

They live on in the stories we tell, the lessons we pass on, and the children who will one day know them through us.