Losing your last surviving parent unearths an extra grief on top of the grief of the individual losses. It is the very singular grief of being an orphan, of no longer being somebody’s daughter or son. It brings into sharp focus your own mortality now you’re ‘top of the tree’ which then permeates every aspect of your life from your friendships and parenting to your relationship and career. What kind of legacy do I want to leave behind? Who do I want to spend the most time with? How can I make my life and time here on earth matter?

With 139,000 UK deaths during the pandemic, many midlife men and women have lost their surviving parent and now find themselves navigating life as an orphan and asking themselves the same questions. Dipti Solanki is one. She lost her mother when she was 13 through an act of medical negligence and then her father died in January last year of Covid, at 73.

‘Ever since my mum died, the biggest fear for my two siblings and I was losing our dad – he was the pillar around which our family revolved,’ says Dipti, 44, a grief recovery coach and mother of two from London. ‘After he died, I felt anchorless. Your parents are a blueprint for your life and they provide incredible structure but suddenly there was no one to go back to, no reference point. I’ve been going through perimenopause and I went to see my doctor recently and he asked about my mum’s experience and I realised I didn’t know and I had no one to ask. Your parents are a treasure trove of memories that you no longer have access to and it’s so final, and such a shock to no longer have them there. I’m never going to hear the words, “that’s my daughter” again and that’s devastating.’

It’s a devastation I can relate to having lost my mother six years ago – and my father last year. The depth of connection to our parents is intrinsically deep-rooted and was never clearer to me than when I heard my own mother pine for her mother just hours before she died. She’d been incoherent for days, her eyes barely open but at 78, on the precipice of passing from this world to the next, she unleashed a primal cry for her mother, calling out for comfort from the only person she still considered able to provide it.

It left a profound effect on me then and for some years afterwards. Why did my mother, surrounded on her death bed by her adoring husband and five adult children call out, like a child, for her long-deceased mother?

Then my father died 15 months ago and understanding coiled itself around me, my mother’s longing for her mother at her most challenging moment making sense at last. Not everyone receives unconditional love from their parents but for those who do it’s hard to live without it when they die. 

Whatever age, whatever stage of life, nothing can ever quieten our primal, childlike need for that feeling of love, that beautiful, whole, unconditional feeling of love and protection that a mother and father – not a sibling, partner, friend or child – can provide. It is a feeling I long for, even now, at 51 as a midlife orphan.

I yearn for it typically on anniversaries and family celebrations when their absence pinches but also in the most mundane of moments; in the newsagents when the birthday cards for Daughter slide into view and my eyes fill, knowing I will never receive that card again; in the car when I recall a piece of news I haven’t told them and I reach to call then stop, my finger hovering, the breath catching in my throat as I remember.

Linda Magistris, Chief Executive of the Good Grief Trust, says they have received an increasing number of calls from adults who have lost both their parents – one or both during the pandemic – but that empathy is often in short supply.

‘It’s almost like if you lose your parents in midlife it is expected and you don’t deserve to be sad and you just have to get on with it,’ she says. ‘People use unhelpful platitudes like, “Well, they had a good life,” but the longer you have your parents, the more you might feel isolated and lonely without them. You might have cared for them and have now lost your routine and purpose. Your grief needs to be talked about and acknowledged.’