Yes, I believe it's only fanon that the senior Lamberts are dead.
But it's really a very strong interpretation of the available canonical evidence, as PJ points out. If they're indeed alive, yet never, ever mentioned by Natalie (or Richard or Sara or the ghost of Nana), and not in any pictures in her home, and never, ever there for her in all the things that happen to her (e.g. SD, OtLo, 1966, AMPH) and hers (e.g. Richard, Cynthia, Lora)... that's a different sort of story for someone to tell, I suspect! I mention my mother more often than Natalie does, and my mother died when I was ten.
(I didn't mean to suggest that these "What if?"s are wholly new and have never been written before! Some may be, but of course Marian G.'s "Forever Nat" series, written during the hiatus, was the first I ever recall reading in which Natalie's mother had been on an around-the-world trip when Richard died.)
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But it's really a very strong interpretation of the available canonical evidence, as PJ points out. If they're indeed alive, yet never, ever mentioned by Natalie (or Richard or Sara or the ghost of Nana), and not in any pictures in her home, and never, ever there for her in all the things that happen to her (e.g. SD, OtLo, 1966, AMPH) and hers (e.g. Richard, Cynthia, Lora)... that's a different sort of story for someone to tell, I suspect! I mention my mother more often than Natalie does, and my mother died when I was ten.
(I didn't mean to suggest that these "What if?"s are wholly new and have never been written before! Some may be, but of course Marian G.'s "Forever Nat" series, written during the hiatus, was the first I ever recall reading in which Natalie's mother had been on an around-the-world trip when Richard died.)