Coping With the Grief of Parental Loss

On 4th February, my mum died. She was 80 years old and had lived with Alzheimer's dementia for seven years. Her passing follows the death of my dad less than three years ago after a long battle with a degenerative condition related to Parkinson's. The grief and sadness I have felt have been intertwined with relief, guilt and shame, and so this week I talk to psychotherapist Bill Sullivan to try and make sense of the grief of parental loss.
This is not a polished conversation about grief, but a raw and honest exploration of what loss actually feels like in midlife. I talk openly about the complexity of the emotions I have been feeling now that years of caregiving responsibility have come to an end, and I ask questions about whether my grief response is 'normal'.
We unpack anticipatory grief, caregiver fatigue, the dual process of loss and restoration and how we oscillate between practical functioning and emotional overwhelm. We explore what it means to lose not just a parent, but the sense of safety and structure that having living parents provides, even in adulthood. And we challenge cultural expectations around how men 'should' grieve.
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