Navigating Life After Losing Both Parents

“What do I do now?” 

Those are the words that Elena muttered to herself as a second tree fell, blocking her path. Only moments before the storm had washed out the country road that was her normal route to work. With a tree blocking her way back home and a flooded street keeping her from going forward, she was stuck. She’d have to wait it out—and do so without cell phone service. 

Thankfully, Elena made it home safely. But the situation reminded her of how she felt after both her parents had died within a short period of time. Navigating the loss of one parent is hard enough—it requires significant rerouting. If your other parent is remaining, though, they hold an anchor for you. It’s like still having the path back home opened up. But when both parents have died—especially in a short period of time—you’re often left without a discernible path forward. 

LaTonya’s parents were murdered in one day by her estranged ex-husband. She spoke of the impact of their loss: “The loss of my parents affected me tremendously. It literally changed the trajectory of my life—my future, my children’s future, and my entire family’s future. I didn’t just lose my mom and dad—I lost my best friends. My kids lost their grandparents.” 

Losing both parents is disorienting and the emotional toll runs deeper than most expect. It’s not just grief, but identity, stability, and guidance all shaken at once. 

Emotional and psychological impacts

The loss of both parents can trigger feelings of being orphaned—even in adulthood. When both parents are gone it changes everything. As LaTonya said earlier, it changes the trajectory of everything. It shifts how you see the world, how safe you feel in it, and how you even understand yourself. 

Though you may be a grown adult, even having built a life of your own, the absence of both parents can make the world feel strangely hollow. After Linda’s mom died, leaving her without any parent, she shares, “I just felt totally alone. Even though I still had all my brothers and sisters and my three children and grandchildren, having both parents gone left me as an orphan.” 

Losing both parents in a short period of time is a uniquely disorienting kind of grief. One of the difficulties is that the grief can become tangled and overwhelming. Normally, people will grieve each loss individually. But when your parents die within close proximity, the grief can overlap and flatten. Rather than being able to fully honor and process the uniqueness of each parent, you’re forced into survival mode. Without recognizing how each individual loss impacts you, you’ll have a difficult time accepting and adjusting to the loss associated with each person. You may find yourself struggling to separate one loss from the other, or feeling guilt for not giving either parent the focused mourning they deserve. 

Some losses are like dropping your phone—it cracks, but you can still recognize it, maybe even use it. You can tell where the broken pieces are supposed to go. But other losses? They’re more like shattering a mirror. The devastation is so complete that you can’t tell where one shard ends and another begins. That’s how Stacy describes losing both parents within seven months’ time: 

Losing both of my parents within seven months shattered me. I had so many questions for God—questions I still don’t have answers to, and maybe never will. Their deaths so close together pushed me into a state that I knew wasn’t healthy—spiritually, emotionally, or physically. Everything in me was faltering. It felt like my entire world had collapsed. Nothing felt clear anymore; everything was just gray.

As a logical thinker, I usually process things step by step. But God wasn’t taking me from A to B to C. Instead, it felt like He had to completely dismantle who I thought He was. Emotionally, I was debilitated. I couldn’t focus at work. Everyday tasks felt impossible. I didn’t want to go to church or be around anyone. I don’t even remember crying much after my mother’s funeral. I just laid on the couch for days at a time with the TV on—no sound, no energy. Some weeks I barely showered. I could hardly make it to bed.

Most losses will have certain triggers attached to them. Many know to be on alert for a grief ambush during the holiday seasons, birthdays, anniversaries, etc. But one area that many are caught off guard by are those times when you would have reached for a phone to celebrate with a parent, or to call them when you receive unsettling news. LaTonya shares, 

I’ve made some major decisions in my life now without my parents. And I would love to just hear their voice, to hear those encouraging words. And I think about on holidays when people are going back home—to their parents’ home—we don’t have that home now. There is nowhere we can go and say, “we’re going back home.” There is no more of that. It can be very hurtful, especially when you see other families with their [extended] families or people with their parents, and you don’t have a parent. It takes a toll on you. 

Thankfully, there are some coping strategies, even for the difficulty of a dual loss. 

Coping strategies for a dual parental loss

There are many helpful coping strategies for navigating “regular” grief. You may find these helpful: Coping with the Loss of a Father and How to Face the Holidays After Losing a Parent.  But when it comes to coping strategies for the loss of both parents, there are a few specific tips that might help you. 

To begin, acknowledge that how you experience grief will likely be different for each parent. Tom’s parents died a couple years apart, but the difference in how he grieved each parent was unsettling for him. He says, “[When my mom died] I was really depressed. I didn’t want to leave the house. I started asking myself, ‘Why didn’t I cry this much when my dad passed away? Why wasn’t I feeling so somber?’ I wondered if that meant I love my mom more than I love my dad.”

Tom eventually realized that his emotions were different because the circumstances were different in each. And your experiences and depth of relationship will be different with each. That’s okay. Grieve them individually. 

It’s also important to know that when your parents die within a short amount of time it may be tempting to try to “combine” the grief and rush through it. Sandra did this with her grief. She says, “I just pushed it aside—put it on the shelf—and kept moving. I never dealt with the hurt. But the pain didn’t go away. It just stayed buried.” Eventually, she found herself battling depression and realized that she would have to acknowledge and process the grief for both parents. 

To combat those common pitfalls—comparing your grief between parents or combining it to avoid the pain—consider how you might instead honor each parent’s legacy intentionally. Grieving them individually creates space not just for sorrow, but also for remembrance. 

LaTonya’s dad always “had a huge garden and he would give all his fruit and vegetables away.” So they tried to continue his legacy of feeding people. And she says of her mother “everybody knew her by her love, so we always do love and service.” They eventually combined some of these passions and adopted a highway in their honor. 

We adopted a highway on the road they lived on and we would go clean the road. We’d gather our family and friends and serve the community. Especially around their birthdays, we’d honor and remember them by doing things like feeding the homeless. I’m just trying to train up the kids and keep the legacy going and remember them in a good way. 

You might notice that LaTonya involved others in these memorials. That is also an important part of the healing process. As you grieve and honor your parents in personal ways, it’s also important to begin looking outward. That means to pursue support, connection, and the slow work of rebuilding life in their absence. 

Finding support and rebuilding life

For the first few years, when the anniversary of her parents’ plane crash came around, Karen would “start getting into this funk.” Because they died in February it usually happened around the holidays. Her strategy was to enlist the help of others. 

We formulated a plan as a family group that we’d always make sure to be in touch with each other. Now we’re spread apart, but we text each other and we send emails. We always try to connect because it still is difficult to think back on that day, all these years later. But now we have this support strategy, and now I know if I start feeling that kind of funkiness I can deal with it. It’s not as deep and dark or hard as it was in early years. 

If you don’t have other family members close, you may find help in a grief support group. One that has helped many is GriefShare. In a GriefShare group you will hear from experts and fellow grievers. You will receive a participant guide with exercises, Bible studies, and brief articles that will provide suggestions for responding to your loss and considering what the future might hold. You can find a group at griefshare.org.

After her parents died in a car accident, Susan isolated herself from others. Her healing stalled. But eventually, she found help through her GriefShare support. Now she encourages others: 

This is not a path to take alone. The more time you spend by yourself, the more difficult it is to get through it. And if you’re willing to open up your heart, there are healing processes out there. But if you’re staying at home and you’re isolating, as I did, those processes aren’t available to you. So reach out. Reach out to somebody that can give you some help. And accept their help, no matter how independent or introverted you may be.