When There’s No One Left Who Knew You First

There’s a kind of silence no one really prepares you for.

Not the kind where the room is quiet.Not the kind you can fill with music, or TV, or noise.

Something deeper than that.

A silence that sits underneath everything.

Recently I lost my dad who was my best friend.

Now my mom is fading in a way that feels harder to explain than death itself.

She’s still here.But not really. Dementia sucks.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I’ve started to feel something I didn’t expect:

Not just grief.

Not just sadness.

But a kind of… void.

It’s a strange realization when it hits you.

There is no one left who remembers you from the very beginning.

No one who knew you before you became who you are now.

No one who can say,“I remember when you were little…”

And mean it in that way that only a parent can.

You can be surrounded by people.Friends. Family. Coworkers.

And still feel something missing that nothing else replaces.

It’s not about support.

It’s not about love.

It’s something more fundamental than that.

It’s the quiet awareness that the place you came from…

is gone.

I don’t think people talk about this part enough.

We talk about grief.

We talk about loss.

But we don’t talk about the shift.

The strange, disorienting feeling of being…

on your own in a way you’ve never been before.

Even if you’ve been independent your whole life.

There’s no dramatic moment where it hits all at once.

It shows up in small ways.

A thought you want to share.A memory you wish you could check.A moment where your instinct is to reach out—

And then you remember.

And it’s quiet again.

I don’t have a clean message to wrap this up.

No lesson.

No “everything happens for a reason.”

Just this:

If your parents are still here—

Go sit with them.

Even if it’s boring.Even if it’s repetitive.Even if it’s not perfect.

Because one day, without much warning…

that silence will be there.

And it doesn’t go away.

And right now, I’m living in that space.

Figuring out what it means to keep moving forward…

when the people who were there at the beginning,

aren’t anymore.