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| Ai generated with my late mom and I |
WHEN OUR PARENTS ARE GONE!
Abstract:
what happens to the bonds that currently exist because parents are alive, and whether siblings will consciously preserve those bonds when they become the older generation.
When Our Parents Are Gone
Sometimes, I travel into the future in my mind.
I look at my siblings, not as they are today, but as they might look when they turn fifty. I imagine the lives they will have built, the homes they will occupy, the children they will raise, and the families they will become responsible for.
Then I ask myself a rather uncomfortable question:
When our parents are no longer here, what will become of us?
Not just individually, but as a family;
Who will call whom?
Who will visit whom?
Who will still know the children of their brothers and sisters?
Who will tell their own children, “That is your uncle. That is your aunt. Those are your cousins”?
And perhaps the most difficult question of all:
Who will keep the family together?
There was a time when family was much bigger than the walls of the nuclear home. A child did not belong only to a mother, father and siblings. There were grandparents, uncles, aunties, cousins, nieces, nephews and family friends who were almost indistinguishable from relatives.
The extended family was not merely a concept. It was a living institution.
If your parents travelled, another relative could take care of you. If there was a funeral, the entire family gathered. If someone was building a house, getting married, having a child or going through difficulty, family members showed up. Sometimes they came with money. Sometimes with food. Sometimes with advice. And sometimes, they simply came to sit beside you. It was not perfect. Extended families had their disagreements, rivalries and misunderstandings. But there was an understanding that blood carried responsibilities beyond individual convenience.
Today, the structure of the family is changing. The nuclear family has become increasingly important. A husband, wife and children can live independently, make their own decisions and build a life that does not necessarily depend on the wider family.
There is nothing inherently wrong with that. But independence can quietly become isolation if we are not careful.
A generation can grow up knowing only the people inside its immediate household. Children may know their parents very well but barely know their uncles. They may have cousins somewhere, but those cousins remain almost strangers. Brothers and sisters can live in the same country and still become occasional names on WhatsApp.
And then our parents grow old.
Eventually, they leave us.
That is when something profound happens. The people who unconsciously served as the bridge between siblings are no longer there.
No mother is calling to ask;
“Have you spoken to your brother?”
No father is reminding everyone that “this is your sister's child.”
No parent is organising the family gathering.
And suddenly, the family that once seemed naturally connected has to make a deliberate decision:
Do we continue being a family, or do we simply become people who share a surname and a history?
This is why I sometimes imagine my siblings at fifty.
I imagine them sitting with their own children and talking about the family they came from.
Will they tell their children stories about their brothers and sisters?
Will their children know their cousins?
Will they attend each other's important moments?
Will disagreements between adults be allowed to become permanent divisions between children who had nothing to do with them?
Will they teach their children that family is more than the household in which they sleep?
I wonder about these things because family does not automatically remain united simply because people are related.
Someone has to preserve the connection.
Someone has to make the phone call.
Someone has to organise the reunion.
Someone has to forgive.
Someone has to say, “Regardless of what happened between us, these are our children, and they deserve to know one another.”
Perhaps that is one of the great responsibilities of our generation.
Our parents inherited an extended family. Many of us are inheriting a much more fragmented version of it. The question is whether we will simply accept that fragmentation or consciously rebuild some of what is disappearing.
The future of an extended family is not determined only by where its members live. It is determined by whether they remember one another. Because one day, our parents will no longer be here to remind us that we belong to each other.
And when that day comes, what will remain of the family will depend largely on what we choose to preserve today.
Maybe the real inheritance our parents can leave us is not land, money or houses.
Maybe it is the ability to remain brothers and sisters long after they are gone. And perhaps, years from now, when our own children ask:
“Who are these people?”
we should be able to answer with pride:
“Those are your family. Never let them become strangers.”
But Perhaps We Should Also Ask What Parents Are Doing
It is easy to look at today's generation and complain that siblings are no longer as close as they used to be. We blame technology, migration, individualism and the rise of the nuclear family.
But perhaps we also need to look upward.
What role have parents played in creating the family their children are expected to preserve?
Parents are not merely the people who give birth to children. They are often the first architects of the relationship between those children.
When parents separate or divorce, the responsibility becomes even greater.
A child may suddenly find himself living with a mother and a stepfather, or with a father and a stepmother. There may be stepbrothers, stepsisters, half siblings and children from previous relationships. The family becomes more complicated, but the children's need for belonging does not disappear.
This is where parents have a difficult responsibility.
BOX OFFICE
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| BOX OFFICE. |
A stepmother should not have to become the biological mother of her husband's children, but she can become a safe and welcoming adult in their lives. A stepfather may not have fathered his wife's children, but he can still treat them with dignity, fairness and genuine care.
The same responsibility applies to the biological parents.
When parents remarry, they should be careful not to create a hierarchy of "my children" and "your children."
Children notice these things.
They notice who gets preferential treatment. They notice who is defended and who is blamed. They notice whose needs matter and whose presence is merely tolerated.
And sometimes what adults dismiss as childhood behaviour becomes something much deeper.
A child who continually feels like an outsider may eventually stop trying to belong.
That child grows up.
Then the siblings grow up.
They establish their own homes, marry, have children and move in different directions. What began as a small division in the home can eventually become a permanent distance between branches of the same family.
This is why the responsibility for keeping an extended family together cannot be placed entirely on the children.
Parents must first teach their children that they belong to one another.
Kill THEM & ASK GOD FOR FORGIVENESS
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They must create opportunities for siblings and step siblings to know each other. They must discourage unnecessary competition. They must avoid using children as instruments in marital conflicts. They must allow children to maintain relationships with both sides of their family where it is safe and appropriate.
Because when parents fail to build those bridges, they cannot be surprised when their children grow up without knowing how to cross them.
Perhaps, then, the question I ask when I imagine my siblings at fifty is not only:
"What will my siblings do to keep this family together?"
I also ask:
"What are our parents doing today to make sure there is a family worth keeping together tomorrow?"
That, to me, is where the conversation about family becomes much deeper.
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