I think it is very common for parents to use their children for emotional support, to help them meet their own emotional needs. This is a form of abuse, in my view. You should keep yourself disentangled from their lives. Support them where needed, always be available, guide them when you can and they are willing to listen, but take care of your own needs without reliance on them.
Now, the experience of mothers must be different than that of fathers. How much, I can’t know. I’m not a woman, much less a mother. But for fathers at least you have to make your own way.
I would like to grow to be old. I would like to see grandchildren, and even great grandchildren. But the loss of one or even both of my children would not put me in state of permanent shock. We are all heir to the frailties which come with these bodies, and we will all cross that great river, sooner or later.
I don’t think losing your child is the worst thing that can happen. I think the worst thing that can happen is that you stop seeing the sunrise, stop feeling the life around you, stop being open to new and wonderful experience. You owe all this to yourself, and I think giving it to yourself cannot but make you a better parent. You are modelling health to your children. All personal growth which you undertake for yourself is, in the long run, a gift you give, or at least make available, to your children.
Who you are is what you teach. This is an important principle. And in not relying on your children for emotional support you teach them to be independent. And when they do not feel they need to pull away from you, they are more likely to stay close emotionally.
Neither of my children ever really went through a rebellious phase. They made mistakes, and no doubt did not tell us everything they were doing, but neither ever went through a period of being a sustained little shit.
I think the necessity of rebellion comes with both clingy parents, and perhaps even disengaged parents. In the first case, anger and emotional distance are needed to attempt the process of individuation, and in the latter I think the sense of feeling felt is missing, so on some level the child attempts to force engagement through anti-social behavior.
As I slowly thaw, I am feeling the passage of time. I am getting back sensations and feelings that happened 30-40 years ago. It is strange. They were things that I felt on some level, but would not have known I felt, would not have acknowledged.
In a certain sense we are all all alone. We pass into death alone. But life can also be filled with moments of connection, too, especially if we do not force it, are not starved for it, and if we allow it to happen.
We all happen to see rainbows from time to time.