Double loss both parents
chickaroonie
17 years ago
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jlj48
17 years agolast modified: 9 years agomarylmi
17 years agolast modified: 9 years agoRelated Discussions
Question re double ovens: How much use do they both get?
Comments (8)Hey anna_bannana, I am in the planning phase as well and have found from talking to friends and salespeople that most folks are going with a single oven. Unless you have a large family & use both alot you probably won't be using 2 ovens. I have had a double KA for 10 years that replaced a Thermador double oven. Ninety-five percent of the time the 2nd oven is used as storage. I plan on a single 30" with microwave above it and a warming drawer below it. I wasn't interested in a warming drawer but now see it's advantages of keeping food warm and ready to serve while the oven is in use. I also had a 24" oven and will go to a 30" single. Hope this helps. Carol...See MoreBoth parents died, raising siblings
Comments (13)Erica and Josh, my thoughts and prayers are with you! I am a bit older than the two of you but have a similar story. i am in my mid-30s and the oldest of 8 children. Both of our parents passed away in 2008. Our dad was diagnosed with advanced colon cancer and passed away after a very hard 3 1/2 month battle. Six months later, our mom was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer and passed away a month and a half later. It was a devastating time for all of us and most especially, our youngest brother who was still in high school. Our grandmother had lived with our parents for a bit and fell ill in 2007 and passed away that spring - this was during my brother's sophomore year of high school. During his junior year, our dad got sick and passed away. This was an incredibly hard time for my brother because he's the only boy in the family so if our mom wasn't home to help our dad go to the bathroom at his bedside and my husband wasn't there, our dad would get my brother to help him. There were times when our dad would try to get up in the middle of the night and because he was so weak, he would fall on the floor and then our mom would need my brother and sister to help her pick him up and get him back into bed. It was devastating to see our parents deteriorate so quickly and especially hard on our brother to have to take on so many difficult adult responsibilities at such a young age. Our mom was diagnosed with breast cancer at the end of the summer just before our brother started his senior year and then passed away a month a 2 weeks later. So our brother dealt with 3 major losses throughout his last 3 years of high school. As soon as my mom passed away, i immediately went to the court to get official custody of my brother. My mom and I had talked about me and my husband taking on a guardianship role. Because my brother was 17 at the time and would turn 18 a month and a half later, we got court appointed custody rather than full guardianship. Guardianship would have taken several months to put in place and go before a Judge and at that point, my brother would have been 18 which would make guardianship more difficult. With custody, it is me and my husband vs. my parents but because my parents are deceased, they cannot argue any of the guidelines of the custody agreement. We needed to have some form of official documentation stating our custodial responsibilities in order to get my brother under our health insurance and thankfully, this worked. Erica, it is wonderful that your father set up a trust to help you with school! I wish I could say the same about our parents. Unfortunately, they were not at all prepared for what might happen if they passed away. There were no Wills, no education trusts, nothing to help out with any of the costs to help raise the younger siblings who needed help and guidance, both financial and otherwise. One of my sisters and I are administering the estates (my grandmother, mom, and dad's estates) and our lawyers made it very clear that no estate money could be used to help with education because even though my brother was 17 at the time of their passing, our parents had every right and opportunity to designate money to be left to help with education costs. It was incredibly frustrating and left me in tears many times as I tried to work step by step to figure out how we were going to manage everything financially. Both my husband and I were still paying back our own student loans and I had been laid off from my job shortly after returning back to work after my mom's funeral. I think that changing the dynamics of switching roles from sibling to a parental role can be quite a challenge in many ways. It can also make you feel very isolated from others, even from your family and other siblings sometimes because there can always be those who question how much control you should have, among many other things. Most of my friends have babies or small children so it was hard to find someone I could relate to who could at least understand what it's like to have a child in high school who would soon embark on all of the excitement of senior year - senior trip, prom, graduation. I can remember heading to the bookstore shortly after my mom passed away, pouring through the shelves, looking for any books that would help explain how to handle the transition from sibling to parent... how to raise your teenage brother. There was nothing. The best I could do was buy a book about raising teenage boys and even that wasn't much help because my brother wasn't just an average teenager but one who had been through an enormous amount of trauma and loss. I found that working through the school was a good place to start. His guidance counselor recommended an excellent therapist that some of the other parents had also recommended. This therapist has been wonderful and I am so glad that I thought to ask for resources rather than just trying to wing it on my own. My brother has gone through issues with depression, substance abuse, and thoughts of harming himself. Just recently, he reached a very low point and we were able to find a wonderful treatment program for him and he's already sounding like his once happy, comfortable self. I am so thankful that this program has been so helpful to him and has been teaching him the coping skills he needs to help him get through the rough times which tend to fall around holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries of their passings. The 2nd anniversary of our mom's passing was earlier this week in fact. In spite of the difficulties, my brother graduated from high school and went on to start college, then realized after his first semester at that school that he wanted to transfer to a school where he could follow his passion. He is an incredibly talented musician and wanted to study recording arts. Once he was settled in a new school, learning and studying in a subject matter that he loves, he really began to excel. There have been bumps in the road as he and the rest of us try to pull together as a family and create our "new normal" but there have also been wonderful milestones accomplished and experienced too. In spite of everything we've lost, we are still very blessed! My thoughts and prayers are with you both Erica and Josh. I am so glad that you found one another! I too come online to try to find other people who have experienced a similar situation because it always feels good to find others who you can relate with. Take care and may God Bless you and your families!!...See MoreLoss of both My Parents
Comments (1)Hi Beverly238, I am so sorry to hear of your losses...it is such a terrible thing to have happened, but I don't think you should blame yourself, although I know that must be almost impossible. We are taught to trust our doctors, priests, policemen, etc. so it is common that you should trust what they told you, even if you had some misgivings. I don't know if there is anything that you can do to make yourself believe this, but I think from an outside perspective you were not in the wrong. I just lost my mom as well, that is why I am on this board, and I hope I can offer you some comfort as others have tried to comfort me. Maybe someday, as healing progresses, you can tell your story to others, and maybe make a difference in their lives if they come upon the same situation that you were in. Again, I am so sorry for your loss....See MoreBeing an adult orphan (Loss of both Parents)
Comments (3)I'm so sorry. Yes, I think it's normal to feel like you've been hit with a sledgehammer/run over by a truck/body-slammed by a sumo wrestler. & especially when you've lost your parents; this changes your very identity, & it doesn't matter how young or old you are. My 86-year-old friend told me one day, after we went Christmas shopping, that her parents always gave her a doll for Christmas; seeing people buying dolls for their children made her realize all over again that she was nobody's little girl any more. I do urge you, though, based on some of my own experience, to make some actual, face-to-face contact with more than one person. It's so easy to become isolated, & isolation does make things worse, & it prolongs the grieving time. One key to making contact is to set yourself the task of getting out of the house & doing one specific thing every day, & make is flexible so that you can do it even on a bad day. (One of my 'daily requirements' was to initiate contact with a real-life person every day. Some days I would drop by a friend's home or office to say hello or to bring her a grocery coupon or a paperback book or some such, & some days all I could manage was to tell the grocery check-out person that her nails looked nice. so even on a bad day, I accomplished my task). Please take care of yourself, & be good to yourself. I wish you the very best....See Moresocks
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