The Twenties Grief Club

There is a group of people stuck in a kind of limbo. Not quite grown-up, not quite a child. It’s a criticism that has been levelled at many people in their twenties in recent years. We aren’t responsible enough. We rely too much on our parents. But what about those of us who have lost a parent?

We are too young for this to be an experience sadly shared with our friends. When we tell them, they do not nod in understanding. They are quiet and uncertain. They are on the shore while we navigate waters unknown to them. Yet we are too old to be taken care of. Too old for it to be someone else’s responsibility. We are handed stacks of paperwork and the heavy expectation that comes with planning a memorial and there is nobody to turn to. We look for the person who would have guided us, only to realise they are gone. There is a terrible irony that comes with realising the one person you want to talk to about your grief is the person you are grieving. I imagine that feeling is ageless.

I have unwillingly joined the club of people grieving a parent in their twenties. I don’t have a family of my own and would come home for Christmas or when I wanted a break from the day-to-day frustrations of my life. I still had so many questions I needed to ask. So much advice I didn’t even think I would need but now do.

Most of my friends still have grandparents. I am in a strange position of being happy for them that their lives are so full and yet disgustingly jealous that they get so much when I have so little. I am enraged at the Queen for daring to grow so old. It’s ridiculous, isn’t it. Of course she should get to be old. Of course anyone should. Bitterness is not an attractive quality. Being angry at an old lady for having the audacity to be old in the public eye is so pointless I am ashamed to be writing it.

I never brought a boyfriend home. I never will, there’s no home to bring them to. I didn’t write that book I said I would. I’m going to hand in my dissertation, and she will never know, because I wasn’t quick enough. Because she couldn’t hang on just a little longer.

Sometimes I watch my friends argue with their parents and I want to scream. “Stop! Stop it now! You do not know what you have!” Of course they don’t. I didn’t either. Most of us are ungrateful children until we are either given the chance to grow up or have something torn away from us that is such an integral part of us we cannot ignore the gaping hole that has been left behind.

We look for each other, members of this club. Perhaps because we need to know that we are not alone in this. Our experience is so specific and so lonely that we must find one another, if only so that we can tell someone that there are times we hate our friends and know we will not be judged for it. We don’t really hate them, couldn’t if we tried. We’re lost, really.

Most of us find a way to still go out and live a normal life, whatever that is. We still look forward to post-exam day drinking. We plan holidays and stay up too late and watch terrible television. We worry about our career progression or if we’ll ever sort ourselves out enough to have a career at all. We’re normal, confused twentysomethings.

Some days we pick up our phone to text another member of the club. “I just miss them, you know?” We tell each other how we are already dreading Christmas even though it is only May. Who will step in this year? Everyone wants to help you when your grief is new and raw. Everyone makes sure you do not drown, that first December. But what about this year and the one after that? And then we laugh. “Why the fuck am I worried about Christmas when it isn’t even summer yet?”

We are not the same. All of us shaped by our unique relationship with the parent we lost and the experiences we have had. But we share something. We are an us, a plural. The twenties grief club. I hope you don’t join us, but if you do, reach out. Find a spot at the table. Do not do this alone.