Lost my mother when I was 12 when she died in a car crash driving drunk, with me in the car. Sadly, had she listened to me when I told her she was too drunk to drive, she might have lived. Selfish me, realizing how drunk she was, and unable to convince her to pull over, and unable to figure out a safe way to assume control from a drunk and resisting person while going 65 mph, climbed into the back seat, prayed she wouldn't crash us, and survived when she did crash us into a telephone pole. She died instantly.

Lost my father when I was 5. But he didn't die. What happened was, he and my mom decided to get divorced, they separated, and my dad brought in another woman with six kids of her own. They were mean kids too, almost killed me by locking me in a toy chest during the summer, came awfully close to suffocating. After that, I said I wanted to live with my mom, and so I went to stay with her. Since that time, 1969 I guess, I've seen my father maybe four times. So far as I know, he's still alive, but he wasn't much of a father: he never tried to see me, he declared me a dependent even after I was no longer living with him, he never paid child support or alimony (and as a consequence we went hungry a lot - I weighed about 95 pounds at age 17, at 5'10" height).

I've lost other family members as well (grandma, brother-in-law, stepfather), but none that really had such profound effects as those caused by my losing my father (because of his choice) and then my mother (because she wouldn't listen to me that night about her inability to drive).

But all-in-all, it's kinda like they say: the finest swords are forged in the hottest fires. I just look at the the various hard times I've had to endure as things that make me a stronger person, and hard times have made me, if nothing else, a capable survivor of hard times.