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People often think of orphans as children. But losing your last living parent as an adult can be just as disorienting – and just as heartbreaking.
People often think of orphans as children. But losing your last living parent as an adult can be just as disorienting – and just as heartbreaking.
Ms Chua Jia Ling, 33, became an orphan three years ago when her father died of renal failure and cardiac arrest. Add CNA as a trusted source to help Google better understand and surface our content in search results. Even now, three years after becoming an adult orphan, it still feels strange to think of myself that way. When we think about orphanhood, we often picture children.
We think of young and fragile lives disrupted and upended too soon, their losses easily visible and widely understood. But being older does not inherently insulate the heart from the pain of loss. If anything, the loss of our parents can be felt more deeply because we've had more time with them. We understand wholly and exactly what – and who – we are losing.
When my mother passed away some 30 years ago, my three siblings and I were, for the most part, too young to immediately grasp the gravity of it. My brother, the oldest, was only eight; my sisters, seven and two. I was a toddler at the time, so I don't remember much of the details today. What I do remember is the resilience my father showed in the years that followed.
He mourned in his own way, without spectacle and in an unspoken language we could never really understand. Right up until the end of his own life, I believe he never stopped grieving and thinking about my mum. Over the next three decades, he simply carried on despite the pain, holding together our household and a heart that never really healed. People often talk about losing loved ones as a"heartbreaking" or"shattering" experience.
When my father died, my world did not break or shatter. It did something far more unsettling – it emptied. Ms Chua Jia Ling looking back at photos that she took on her wedding day with her father. After Dad's funeral, I went back to our family home.
On that visit, all I could see was how everything he left behind still felt so familiar. His worn work bag rested in its usual corner by the dining table, still holding the tools he'd used daily as a school gardener. His clothes still hung in the same wardrobe he'd had in his room for the past decade.
The cup he always used was still on the table – his favourite out of the many others we had around the kitchen. His chair – the one he passed countless hours in, watching TV, listening to the radio, talking to my siblings and me, thinking of Mum – sat empty beside the dining table.
It's funny how after a person dies, they can be everywhere and nowhere all at once – in sentimental objects, longstanding routines, in the rooms and spaces they once occupied physically, but now only in the form of feelings and memories. We like to believe grief fades over time. What I've learnt is that it doesn't truly disappear – it only settles.
It becomes a part of us – in the way we see life differently, and in the way we hold on a little tighter to the people who are still here. When my father died, my world did not break or shatter. It did something far more unsettling – it emptied. Dad's empty chair during family dinners.
A photo of him smiling with his grandchildren. His contact information, still saved in my phone as"老爸" ; the messages we once exchanged left undeleted in my inbox. The shops I pass by, still selling his favourite Chinese kuehs or goreng pisang . There were my parents' wedding photographs, which he'd held onto so carefully all these years.
The birthday card I had written to him many years back. A stack of red packets my siblings and I had given him through multiple Chinese New Years, the money inside left untouched. A small notebook he used to track family expenses, where he also occasionally scribbled his thoughts. Each item carried a piece of him, the life he had lived and the love he had both given and received.
To me, the hardest part of being an adult orphan is how invisible grief becomes. There are no defined rituals for it, no clear language. There is no protocol – no one is placed in charge of our welfare, the way a guardian would be appointed to care for an orphan child. A photo from the wedding of Ms Chua Jia Ling's parents, taken in 1983.
On the first day back to work after my compassionate leave, I told myself that I needed to be strong. I needed to just ease back into routine, keep myself busy and get through the workday as normally as I could. On the outside, I tried to maintain the same composure as I cleared emails. But on the inside, it felt like all that was holding me together was a thin thread.
Almost immediately, the walls I had carefully put up gave way. I forced the words out:"Yes, I am okay.
"Without saying anything, she readily enfolded me in a warm and steady embrace. Somehow, that was exactly what I needed. It permitted me to stop being strong, even if only for a few minutes. There's no neat ending to grief.
We don't just wake up one morning and suddenly feel"okay". Closure begins with understanding that grief is not something to overcome, but something to carry with us – but that doesn't mean it has to be a painful burden always. Since Dad's death, my siblings and I have made sure to keep up with family dinners every Sunday – a ritual he had always been so fond of.
We're also careful not to miss the temple prayers that he upheld so diligently. Every Feb 2, on our mother's death anniversary, we gather to offer her a prayer, as he asked us to before he died. In those temple visits, we each get to speak to both of our late parents, to say the words we never quite had the time – or perhaps the courage – to say when they were still around.
My nieces and nephew remember their grandfather in their own way, too. Sometimes, when they look up at the night sky and spot the moon, they will point to it and say,"Ah Gong is there!
" Till today, we do not quite understand how they first got the idea of associating Dad with the moon. Nevertheless, it feels comforting to know that he is remembered so fondly and frequently by his grandchildren. I'm beginning to see that my grief for my parents may stay with me forever, but so will the love we shared.
They continue to live on in my life – I see them in my everyday habits and core values, in my cherished memories, "Moving on" is not about forgetting. It's about accepting our grief – not as a painful burden to bear, but as an imprint of love, and learning to carry that and those we've lost with us as life goes on.
My mother no longer remembers me and it hurts more than I can say We know it's a hassle to switch browsers but we want your experience with CNA to be fast, secure and the best it can possibly be.
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