Childhood Pre Postmortem

© Paha_l | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

© Paha_l | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

“I guess I’m really a grown-up now” is a thought that has crossed my mind a lot lately.

I think my “kid emeritus” status has less to do with the rings on my trunk — and the wrinkles on my neck — than it has to do with the inescapable passage of time.

This week it was the anticipation of attending the memorial service for the father of a dear old friend that spurred my “I guess I’m really a grown-up” thoughts.

If middle-age has a rite of passage, attending your friends’ parents’ funerals must be it. In our twenties and thirties, our get-togethers were about engagements, weddings and babies. Now they are starting to be about funerals. It’s definitely not as much fun.

Losing a parent may be a common experience once you get to be in your 40s, but that doesn’t make it any less difficult. No matter how much you anticipate the loss – in this case my friend’s father battled cancer for ten years – it’s still a shock.

“My mom was on Hospice care and they told me she had only days to live, but I still didn’t quite believe it when it happened,” said my friend Ron. “It seemed like such a surprise.”

Many people think that once they reach the age of adulthood and get beyond the milestones of marriage and parenthood there are no more surprises. Surprise, surprise — it couldn’t be further from the truth.

“A myth supported by most theories of pre-adult development is that at the end of adolescence you get yourself together and, as a normal, mature adult, you enter into a relatively stable, integrated life pattern that can continue more or less indefinitely,” wrote psychologist Daniel Levinson. “This is a rather cruel illusion since it leads people in early adulthood to believe that they are, or should be, fully adult and settled, and that there are no major crises or developmental changes ahead.”

I’ll never forget how devastated and shocked I was the first time my mom got cancer. I was out of college and living on my own, but I could not have been more crushed by the news if I were a little girl and completely dependent on her.

That was my first dress rehearsal for the death of a parent. Thankfully, even though we’ve had a few more rehearsals over the years, we haven’t gotten to the curtain call yet.

“Our parents project an illusion of permanence,” writes Alexander Levy in “The Orphaned Adult: Understanding And Coping With Grief And Change After The Death Of Our Parents.” “Their death forces us to confront our own mortality.”

“Before we have experienced the death of a parent, we may expect that this will be a fairly minor milestone in our adult development. In fact, we may implicitly believe that once we reach adulthood, particularly if we have children of our own, that our development is more or less complete. We do not expect that there will be major changes in the way we experience the world or react to it. The research … demonstrates that the loss of a parent has profound and wide-ranging consequences for most of us,” wrote Debra Umberson in “Death of a Parent: Transition to a New Adult Identity.”

“It still surprises me that the stupidest little things can bring me to tears,” said my friend Carol, whose father passed away last year. “My dad used to love Nutter Butter cookies, and when I saw that flavor of yogurt last week I just lost it.”

I almost lost it myself when she shared this story. Frankly, every time one of my friends’ parents dies, I feel like it’s yet another dress rehearsal for the day my own parents pass away. I know it’s morbid, but I can’t help myself.

The idea that “we are next in line to die,” as Levy wrote, is the very thing that may actually force us to grow up. And yet – just like my son already knows that growing up is going to include more responsibilities than he wants to undertake – I really don’t want to have to grow up.

Share your thoughts with Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com.Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on October 9, 2009.