1. Life will never feel normal again.

Eventually, you will get used to a new normal, but you'll wake up most days with an ache in your heart for what used to be. You realize that you'll never again wake up to your parent making breakfast and sipping coffee on Sunday mornings.

The restaurants that you used to frequently go to now feel foreign and cold, no longer a welcome retreat from everyday life. Other places are frozen in time, like the field where your dad coached your childhood softball teams.

2. Days begin to bleed into one another.

There's no way to prepare for a loss this big. Even if you've seen it coming from miles away, the sheer agony of losing your parent will knock you down until you're sure you will never stand up again.

You can try to maintain your daily life as it was before your parent's passing, but this is your new reality and it's okay to take a break. Energy is changing its form; your parent is passing from the physical realm into the spiritual realm from where they will always protect you from danger.

This is a huge transition for anyone to comprehend; you'll feel tired and bleary. The days will run together, and you'll feel run down and defeated. Take time to be kind to yourself.

3. New emotions will pop up that you don't understand.

When my dad was dying, I was so angry: at him for waiting so long to get re-checked for skin cancer, at my family for dragging me to see him in that state of defeat, and at myself for being scared to confront the reality of having to say goodbye to my dad. I was so pissed at the world and at the situation in general.

It didn't seem fair; my dad was only 59, way too young to get sick and die. He still had so many more years of life left, and there was so much that he could've experienced.

No matter how I looked at it, I couldn't understand why my dad was being taken away from me. It's surreal to feel that amount of helplessness as everyone did as we watched my dad wither away into nothing. It's something that I'll never forget for as long as I live.

4. Old emotions will come back, too.

Everyone kept telling me, "You need to tell your dad everything. Don't have any regrets." But the fact is that for the entire first night that I visited my dad in hospice, I held his hand and cried.

I couldn't stop crying. I'd never felt so vulnerable. Usually, my dad was the person that protected me from the world, but at that moment, he couldn't. How was I supposed to talk to my dad when the only thing coming out was a sea of tears?

5. The pain never completely goes away.

It's only been a few months since I've lost my dad, but I know that the pain will never go away. It won't get easier, necessarily. I think I'll always be adjusting to the new normal that is my life without my dad.

6. You feel really, completely alone.

It's frightening. There are always going to be people who support you. Your family and friends will do their best to take care of you, but at the end of the day, you'll probably feel alone in your grief. This is normal.

7. Everybody grieves differently.

There is no correct way to grieve. Sure, there are the five Stages of Grief, but that's just a basic outline of what happens during grieving periods.

It's depressing, but I think that there are different ways that people grieve the loss of a loved one, especially a parent, throughout their own lifetime. Some people want to be surrounded by others. They want their family around them at all times. Other people want to be left alone to process their emotions.

That's how I was, and I am still like that on most days.

8. People will ask you how you're feeling, and you won't know how to answer them.

That's a seriously loaded question. Your answer can depend on your relationship with the person asking.

For example, I'll tell my mom personal things, like if I had a weird dream about my dad, or if I couldn't sleep because I couldn't stop thinking about him.

But I wouldn't go into that kind of detail with someone that I don't know too well, mainly out of fear that they wouldn't understand.

9. Sometimes, you just don't want to talk about it.

Usually, I'm very open with my friends about my experience. If there are people you haven't talked to in a while who are asking how you're doing, you may feel obligated to catch them up.

This is something that I struggle with; sometimes, I have a hard time saying no, and I'll tell my story because I feel like I'm obligated to keep friends in the loop. But the hard truth is that your friends will understand if you don't want to talk about losing your parent.

Some of them may have lost parents themselves and they feel the pain that you're experiencing. It's okay to not want to relive all of the emotions every single time you meet up with a long lost buddy.