LifeStyle of 2026-09-10
Dear GhanaWeb: I’m unmarried, childless, lost both parents at 42
Dear GhanaWeb,
I am in a very bad place emotionally, and sometimes I honestly do not know what to do with myself anymore.
I am 42 years old, unmarried and without children. Until this year, I had my parents, and even though I did not have a husband or children of my own, I never truly felt alone because they were my world.
Now, they are both gone. My parents were married for 51 years, and I was their only child. We had a very close relationship. They loved me deeply, and I was the centre of their lives just as they were the centre of mine.
Then, within just a few weeks, my entire life changed. I lost my mother in February. She was 77 years old. Losing her was one of the most painful things I have ever experienced. I was still trying to come to terms with the fact that my mother was gone when I started preparing for her funeral.
At the time, I kept telling myself that at least I still had my father. I thought I still had one parent left. I thought I could hold on to him as we mourned my mother together. But life had something else planned.
In the first week of April, just two days before the weekend we were supposed to hold my mother's funeral, my father also passed away. He was 80 years old. I still cannot explain how I survived that period.
One moment, I was grieving my mother and trying to be strong for my father. The next moment, I was left without both of them. We eventually buried them together in June.
Since then, my life has not felt the same. The house is quiet. There is nobody to call the way I used to call them. Nobody checks on me the way they did. Nobody loves me the way my parents loved me.
They were my best friends. Everything my father worked for was for me. Most of his businesses and properties are in my name. My mother was the same. Every penny she made and everything she did was dedicated to me.
Today, I have all these things they left behind, but I do not even know what to do with them. What makes everything even more painful is that one thing my parents desperately wanted was grandchildren.
I have been in relationships, but none of them worked. I never found a man who truly wanted to marry me. Most of the men I dated took me for granted, and eventually, the relationships failed.
When I turned 33, I decided that marriage or no marriage, I wanted to have a child. I kept hoping that one day I would become pregnant. I kept believing that it would eventually happen, so I never seriously considered whether there could be a medical reason why I was struggling to conceive.
I would rather have my parents here, even if they were sick and needed me to spend all my money caring for them, than have all these properties and businesses while living with this emptiness.
What am I supposed to do with the life and everything they left behind when the only people I wanted to share it with are no longer here? I’m so devastated and I need help!
FG/EB
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