It started with a casual scroll through vacation photos. My mother beamed as she showed me the villa in Tuscany she and Dad had just booked — just the two of them, a pool glimmering under the Italian sun. “YOLO,” she said brightly. You Only Live Once. The phrase I’d taught her years ago now echoes through my mind like a cruel joke.
They’ve earned it, of course — decades of work, kids raised, mortgages paid. But somewhere between Provence and Thailand, their dream retirement turned into my vanishing inheritance. Every photo they post feels like my future slipping away — my down payment on a house, my shot at stability, my one financial lifeline.
I’m 34, renting a tiny apartment, juggling freelance work and a cost-of-living crisis that feels endless. I don’t want to be selfish, but I can’t help wondering: who’s being selfish here? Them, for chasing joy after sixty — or me, for wishing they’d slow down before the savings run out?
It’s not just me. Friends admit to muting their parents’ “we’re in Bali!” updates. One said bitterly, “My inheritance is being drunk through a straw in the Caribbean.” Another misses the childcare she counted on — her widowed mother is now “off skiing at 80.”
And yet… part of me gets it. After all those years of giving, maybe this is their time to take. Maybe they deserve the sunsets, even if it means I’ll inherit nothing but postcards that say, Wish You Were Here.
