The Parents Do Not Die — Summary

The speaker in Ndrek Gjini’s poem sees a parent’s death not as disappearance but as a delayed homecoming. Parents mostly don’t die, the poem says; they grow lonely once their children leave, and that loneliness turns into missing their own parents. Eventually, they go to find them and simply forget to return. The tone is quiet and tender rather than mournful. There is no fear or violence in this version of death, only a kind of absent-minded wandering toward loved ones. The final line, “That’s all,” makes the whole idea feel modest and inevitable, as if dying is just the last act of a family bond. The mood is bittersweet but soothing: it acknowledges loss while imagining that parents remain somewhere, reunited with the people they once missed.