My mom died when I was 5 years old (33 years ago). I think I& #39;m doing okay with it but it& #39;s hard to know.

It& #39;s a tricky age to have that happen. https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="👇" title="Rückhand Zeigefinger nach unten" aria-label="Emoji: Rückhand Zeigefinger nach unten">
The problem with 5 years old, I think (and I don& #39;t know anything, for the record, I& #39;m just making sense of my experience here), is that you& #39;re old enough to understand your mom died but not really old enough to do anything with that.
In my case I just kind of turned off my emotion chip for a while (a couple decades?). Like sometimes it would fritz out and I& #39;d fly into a rage, but I don& #39;t remember feeling _sad_ really. In my recollection I could count on one hand the number of times I cried.
This might be the best way to describe the dissociation: Today, when I hear that a child has lost a parent, I feel compassionate feelings about that tragedy (my emotion chip works now), _but it does not occur to me that I share that child& #39;s experience_.
It& #39;s the most bizarre thing: I& #39;ll be thinking about how sad it is that a 45-year-old dropped dead leaving two little kids behind, but something will have to explicitly jog my memory for me to think "Oh... right... My mom died too... I have experience with this."
The truth is that I don& #39;t _feel_ like I actually have experience with it.

I was too young—wait, that doesn& #39;t make any sense—_That& #39;s the experience, the one we& #39;re talking about, losing a parent when you& #39;re young!_
And by the way, ask anyone who knows me: I like to share my experience, maybe too much. Every exchange I have is comparing experiences, looking for similarities, verifying assumptions, etc.. It& #39;s what I do.

But not with (probably) the most important event of my life.
The other issue I& #39;ve had with losing my mom that young is, by the time I got around to "doing something with it" it was already so long ago. 5-year-old me just doesn& #39;t have much to say about it.
I remember we had the memorial service on a weekday at the Unitarian church where my pre-school/kindergarten was in the basement. I wore a double-breasted navy blazer with brass buttons.

It was very important to me that my friends downstairs see me dressed up importantlike.
I have this one picture of my mom, who I don& #39;t remember much. I was looking at it today and it stirred the emotions that led to this thread. Now that I have kids it means a lot more to me, how devastated I would be to leave my kids (I mean, I& #39;d be dead, but—you know what I mean).
The reason this picture makes me emotional now is that I wish I could let her know that I& #39;m okay. Not to worry.

I feel I can relate much more to her experience than my own.
I& #39;m happy to be able to write this down because it& #39;s helped me to do so, and I& #39;m happy to be able to share it in case there& #39;s anyone else whose experience is like mine and, like me, they just haven& #39;t heard others talk about it much
You can follow @zachphillips.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: