On losing a parent

Have any of you felt the loss of a parent? I lost my dad when I was eight, but I never knew then what it was. There were a number of people around me and I was a pampered kid with aunts and uncles doting on me. But as I grew up I felt the loss of my dad. Imagine when I had to fill up my application form in school, my friends would crowd around me with curiosity to see what I wrote in the column " Father's name" and invariably I had to write Late........... This was a novel experience for the other kids and I felt miserable. I did not like to upset my mom as she might get depressed too. I grew up and now when I am in college away from my mom I still feel my dad could have done something different for me. Believe me, my mom is everything for me and she really turns the world around for my sake but do you feel that I am wrong in missing my dad? I look at the childhood pictures where he had carried me and hugged me and kissed me and I do feel things could have been different, had he been alive.