Losing your parents is probably one of the most singular life experiences that all of us will go through. They are literally the only people who will, or have the chance to know you from the moment you were born.
I was never close with my mom, my dad liked to joke that I was born premature, just to get away from her.
She was an abusive, emotionally and mentally arrested person, who never learned to break through her traumas.
That said in the last year of her life, I learned to reevaluate my expectations of her and what that makes of me. I try to remember her for doing what she thought were the right thing for us along the way and to remember how she was a product of her time and place (Hawaii in the 50s-70s was worlds different than the rest of the US in many ways). In some ways I think that she never stood a chance. I delve a lot into what parts of her are in me for good and bad in therapy, but I try to keep at least one good thought or memory about her in my mind regularly. I hope that you have more than one good thing that you can reflect on.
