Leaving and Waving

> People waxing emotional over having living parents who took part in their lives, who had something to contribute... kind of turn my stomach upside-down. They have no idea how good they have it, and yet they present their quite happy and fulfilling life as some kind of world-ending tragedy.

Good fortune can open oneself up to greater heartbreak, and misfortune can do the worse. Likewise, the opposite can happen: fortune can blind the fortunate, and enable happiness when the unfortunate overcome.

It goes all ways and directions. But for whatever hardship you have, you missed out on other sorts of hardship. And whatever hardships you dealt with, the author of any memoir may have missed those obstacles. Be at peace! And don't expect anyone to walk the same path as you.

I'm sorry you missed out on these experiences, but that doesn't mean that the normal experience of being a human - that is your parents living into your own adulthood - ought to be taboo.

I would have done that with my other grandma, but we grew apart and then dementia destroyed what was left of her. I will likely digitalize her photo collection when she is moved to a retirement home.

As others have said, you should also get their stories on camera on as a recording, if possible. There will come a time where this is no longer possible.

Someone with living and attentive parents, who lived in good health to their nineties, lived in their own home, in a well-to-do country, where their child came to visit them, in their own car, in good weather, etc... what more did they expect to happen? This is the best outcome by far they could expect from life. They've won the lottery, what more do they want?

No. You completely misunderstood my point. I'm not "emotionally damaged". Overwhelming majority of people on planet Earth don't have it anywhere near as good as the people in OP or a bunch of people commenting here about their quite alive and quite well-to-do families. With all that happened to me, I'm still among the few percents who has it relatively well. Vastly more people in this world will have it worse than I have.

The entitlement of people crying about how bad they have it, when they are among the fraction of a percent of those who have it the best it can possibly be is what's so disgusting.

I was never really close with my mother. We would eat dinner in separate rooms. We grew more and more distant throughout my teen years and when I was 20 I decided to disown her and we're now estranged.

There were multiple attempts to "get back" but none were successful. I think what I realised in the end was that she was too much of a free spirit. She wanted to have her separate life and have me co-exist in it, without dedicating herself to me like a parent normally would.

I don't think I'll miss them or feeling anything for them when they pass. My mother, maybe a little. My father, not at all. But I don't forsee being at her death bed, even if she told me she was dying. Maybe I'm just stubborn or am held captive by a matter of "principle and integrity". If a relationship is cut off, then it's cut off. Meaning you both have to deal with the good and the bad. I've decided there's more good than bad.

In some senses it feels like I never had parents at all. Like there's nothing to miss, because how can one miss an absence?

I hope though to be the parent I never had to my daughter. Unfortunately my partner has stage 4 cancer so won't be around for most of my daughter's life at a very young age, but that's okay. This is life and life is me.