I used to be absolutely terrified at the thought of losing my parents. It kept me up nights at times, wondering how I would deal with it. I'll admit.. I'm fairly immature (for 40yrs old) and just don't know how to handle serious situation.
Then, my wife lost her mom suddenly, and completely unexpected. It messed up that family for a while. We went to grief counseling sessions, read books, took tons of time off work to deal with things, every year for her birthday or mother's day we'd go to the cemetery. It was a massive change for her family. This made fears of losing my own parents even more pronounced. However, generally people in my family live forever, so I expected my parents to be around for at least another decade, if not more (my grandma is 95).
Fast forward four years. My dad, out of almost nowhere, was diagnosed with leukemia and didn't last very long. I sat in the room with the Dr and made the decision to end treatment. The time leading up was not fun, the last day was absolutely awful.. I mean, completely horrible experience for everyone. I won't even get into it. The next couple days were in slow motion, and I took a week off work and just stared at the wall and watched Netflix all day. Then I went about my business.
Thankfully, I had some great conversations with my dad about "life after" and he was good about it. He made it seem like it would be ok, I didn't need to worry.. and due to that, I don't. Sure, there are hard days here and there, and I reflect and miss him like crazy everyday.. no doubt. I lost my temper a few times right after because I had grief and didn't know how to deal with it. But I am pretty quiet and introverted and don't really talk about it much. To anyone. In fact, this is probably the most I have said and it's been a year. Perhaps I have unfinished business and a year from now I will lose my $hit and have to go through the grief process all over.. or maybe not, I don't know.
I will say. Spiritual stuff and deep thoughts aside, preparing the business end of things was something we did NOT consider. I wish my dad had disclosed his financials to me beforehand, I wish he had more life insurance for my mom, I wish I knew about his business dealings (big picture) so I could close those up, and so on. He didn't hide anything, but he didn't tell people much either.. and it was a mess to clean up. And when they say "get a million dollars of life insurance" on the radio, they aren't kidding. Unless you have other means. But, becoming a widow/widower is bad enough; having to then worry about money and bills is insult to injury.
I'm rambling here.