Serious stuff

I have written a bit about how our decisions affect others. Our relationships with Parents and Children, others much better placed than me have written a lot about how transition can affect our relationship with partners.

Recently a few of my friends have lost parents, this is always a traumatic and difficult time.   Even when the death is expected it is still hard to accept that the loved, trusted strength of our parent is no longer there.   It is now nearly twenty five years since I lost my Father, yet I still think of him.   I will see something and think I must tell Dad, or think Dad would like that.   We were not particularly close, as a family we were not good at close at all, yet he was my pattern of a man, his combination of strength and gentleness, his ability to be tender in no way undermining his masculinity.   All the time I was trying to be a man he was my role model.

The thing that has struck me with my friends is the contrast in how complex sorting out "arrangements" has been for them, and so much of that comes from the amount of pre-preparation that the parent has done.   There is so much that we can do in advance to make it easier for our children to sort things out when we are no longer there.  

Tomorrow I will be publishing another guest post, this time from of these friends of mine who lost a parent over the last year, in her case that parent was trans and even in death that added a few complications.

Even though I expect to be around for a very long time yet, I know I will be making as many arrangements in advance as I can, so that my daughter has less to deal with.