Does anyone here not miss their deceased parents or long for more time with them?

Yes. Pretty much everyone, since the dawn of mankind, who has lost their parents.

After my parents passed away a few years ago, I went though some of their records and momentos from their youth. Other family members would offer some insights about my mom and dad. They had difficult childhoods - poverty, struggle, alcoholic family and other issues. I began to understand some of their notions when raising a family. I was spoiled in comparison to their upbringing.

I seem them in a new light now. I regret some of my disrespect towards them and lack of maturity growing up. They now seem more patient and accommodating of my youthful stupidity.

If they were still alive and somehow the same age as me (and not my parents) I believe would be good friends.

I wish my "non-DNA dad" was still alive so I could watch him DIE again. The 5 hours in the hospital I had with him was priceless!!

Talking about "old times". The cigarette burn marks starting at age 9 yrs. old, foster care ending with my beating in a barn with a bull whip at 16 yrs old with his buddies. I was the entertainment! The last 5 hours, the memories and polaroids pictures will live forever.

I wasn't that close to my parents. My dad sold our home when I was ten and took off with the money. My mother drove my sister and I to Canada because she had family there and got a job working in a factory. I can understand the difficulty becoming a single parent back in the 70's but she was very insecure and found an abusive alcoholic who had the means to take care of her.

My father died in 2011. I saw him when he was diagnosed with cancer because someone said I would regret it if I didn't but they were wrong. Didn't go back to his funeral. There was no point.

I miss my mom. She passed at 54 but right before she died she was diagnosed with emphysema so even if she hadn't been killed in an accident I can't imagine the time she might have had left could have been all that pleasant especially when she already had been diagnosed with congestive heart failure years before.

My dad took off when I was 18 and I didn't see him for 11 years so I already kind of feel like I'd come to terms of not having him in my life. After his wife died I became a primary caretaker and he only lived a few more years declining from Parkinson's. We got a lot okay but he never really knew or asked anything about my life so we weren't super close in that he knew anything about me. I'm honestly not even sure if he even knew I was gay we never once talked about it.

[quote] Yes. Pretty much everyone, since the dawn of mankind, who has lost their parents.

Not me, or many others I assume.

My heart goes out to those here who suffered abuse and poor parenting on a level that most of us cannot fathom.

I don't miss my father who died in 2005. He wasn't physically abusive, and while his parenting skills were practically non-existent, I'd say he was emotionally abusive insofar as the absolute minimal effort he put into having kids (with the exception of my brother) amounted to abuse. I and my three sisters have to bite our tongues when we talk about our father with or in front of our brother and I am still confounded about the whole situation when I have occasion to discuss him with my brother. In his eyes, our father could do no wrong, was a saint on earth, and a role model for the ages. Sadly, I have to agree with him on the role model part; it explains why my brother's kids are a mess and have caused him so much pain. My two eldest sisters were from his first marriage as he and his first wife divorced when they were little girls (and she married the man she was having an affair with and became pregnant, the reason for the divorce, and who became my sisters' father doing a truly outstanding job; I envied their relationship even as a little boy).

My mother passed away just over a year ago at 92 with advanced dementia. I've said to my siblings that I mourned her years ago when she lost her mind; it was a blessing when her body gave way last year. She led a remarkable life, and as I have aged I have come to respect her choices a great deal more than I ever did as a teenager into adulthood. My sister, her primary caregiver for the final years of her life, has taken her death with much more difficulty than I anticipated, even when we discuss it and I point out to her that she gave mom dignity in her final years, much more so than she would have received had we put her in a memory care facility. Nevertheless, our relationships with our parents have been at such odds for so long that we have come to simply accept our differences and marvel at them — and that we share such good relationships despite it all.

So, no I don't miss my father, and what I miss about my mother was the relationship we had in the interim between 40 and 10 years ago. I still wish I could pick up the phone and call pre-dementia mom.

R3 = Roseanne Conner

To R8, You're not too far off on that!! The hatred of my "non-DNA dad" was never ending back in the day.

Wah wah poor baby. Grow up. Good grief.

NO,

My dad died at 59, two months after a lung cancer diagnosis (three pack a day smoker); I was 25. He had worked since he was 16 (dropped out of high school during the Depression, when his father died and he needed to support his family) and retired at 57. I wish I had more time with him, I wish he’d had more time to enjoy a well-deserved retirement, and to spend time with my mom, who survived another thirteen years as a lonely, unhappy, “secret” drinker.

“I am a man child and can’t build my own life”

My father had little use to me and I for him. He was a decent provider but a cold uncaring racist asshole. When people you barely know, ask why your dad is such an asshole then he is an asshole. My mother was loving but there was always something that seemed to prevent us from being real close. After my father died I would take her out to eat and shopping but she was a rather outgoing person and I much more reserved, we were just different people. There was respect between us but I can't say real love. She died when it was time, she was getting to the point where she couldn't really take care of herself.

So not not even a week later. If it matters, I am a gay male and the father has been gone a couple of decades and my mother more than a decade, I rarely think about them except when someone on DL starts a thread like this.

I miss my parents but they were far from perfect. Loud and dysfunctional was more like it. Add some alcohol and both were abusive, my dad sometimes physically. I still dream about intra family disputes.

Both were academics by the time I was born. My two elder siblings remember an idyllic time when Mom was home and Dad was out teaching . By the time I was born 9 years later both were university professors. The drinking among the faculty was epic, like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf with different issues.

And as my mother said, "Italian and French families give their children wine at dinner, your father and I never had that. You kids are lucky."

Both truly believed it would immune us from their difficult alcoholic adult lives. In later years we asked Mom if she ever suggested it for a client (she was a psychotherapist) she said no. No one believed her. I do, kind of. I'm the one who gives Mom the most passes. My younger sister and I are right in the middle. Two elder siblings, 13 and 9 years older than I, Mom lost an ovary, then me, my other sister a year later, then my little brother 6 years later. We last three felt like the second family who saw and felt and heard all the abuse.

I really miss not talking to them more about their families and our heritage since I’ve discovered so much more online. We knew a lot but they died early and I was too busy living my own life to absorb everything.