My Child Has Died, and So Have I! : Grieving the Loss of an Adolescent Child
by Jane Bissler, Ph.D., LPCC-S, FT
Grieving the death of a child – at any age -- is indeed the most difficult experience an adult can face. To parents their child is an irreplaceable extension of self. The death simply takes their breath away, as well as their active will to live. This event has the muscle to shake the adult personality to its very core. It sets up a complex intermingling of physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual and mental elements that parents must live with for the remainder of their lives (Breznitz, 2000).
There are recognizable common elements to any parental bereavement and the loss of a child at any age is excruciatingly painful. Still each developmental stage raises its own special issues and challenges. It is essential that helping professionals attend to the loss for this particular parent of this particular child rather than basing assumptions or interventions on any general model of or assumptions about parental grief. The relationship the parents had with the deceased child seems to be the primary factor and possible predictor in the way the family will grieve. Additional factors include the circumstances of the child’s death, the family structure, the spiritual and religious beliefs, the cultural and social contexts and the personalities, and normal coping mechanisms of the family.
While all of the above factors are significant, the social support that comes from friends, family, and community can mitigate the disruption of this life-shattering experience. Nonetheless, many of the bereaved parents I work with report that this support is not available, or is brief at best. The parents find themselves without the support and resources they need to process the ways they must work to rejoin the living since the living cannot or will not join them. This is where we as professionals can offer validation and the kind of supports that parents need to endure and to cope with their grief and their profoundly changed lives.
This article focuses on experiencing the death of child in adolescence. Counselors and caregivers for parents of the deceased adolescent need to be sensitive to the particular shape and experience of this loss. As our children mature into adolescents, we change the way we relate to them. We no longer have total responsibility for their behavior and we work toward creating a partnership with them. We expect they will take on more responsibility for their own care and development. We begin to see glimpses of adult-to-adult conversations, sharing life on a more equal and less responsible footing. Many parents report a deep sense of unfairness when their adolescent dies and feel cheated out of enjoying their child after putting in years of hard work.
All parents are in charge of taking care of their children, protecting them and raising them to be independent, strong and responsible adults. Parents of adolescents see helping their child reach that goal as their duty. It is daily -- sometimes hourly -- work and emotional investment. When that process ends, parents are left feeling as if they are standing on one foot. There is no stability in life. Their life, as they knew it, is over and nothing can replace it.
My Mom died five years ago. My Dad died three years ago. I have experienced the death of grandparents, many aunts and uncles, several friends and a few cousins. However, my fourteen-year-old daughter, Alexia, died this past summer and it feels totally different. This never should have happened.
The grief, says one parent, is “mind blowing and it never seems to get better, only less bad”! Part of the reason for this continuous horror is because of the involvement parents have had in their adolescents’ lives, their activities, sports and commitments. In the process, parents have generally become involved with the parents of their child’s cohorts; thus beginning the yin and yang of parental grief. On the one hand, the parents of the child’s friends can be very supportive of the grieving family. They can help by giving the surviving siblings a time away from the family home. They can provide meals, housekeeping, laundry, and errand running when the bereaved parents are unable to manage these. Basically, the friends can provide a sense of balance and a link to the non-grieving world. However, at the same time the bereaved parent experiences the deep anguish of watching their deceased child’s cohort continue to develop, grow and leave the deceased child behind. With each school dance, play, sporting event, newspaper article, party or graduation, these parents are pummeled with reminders that their child will not be a part of this or any other future event. This is devastating for the grieving parents who compare it to “rubbing salt” into their very open and raw wounds.
My sweet 18 year old son died. He wasn’t supposed to die! My parents are supposed to die when I get to be middle aged, not my precious son!
As professionals, we understand that the death of a child is considered and treated as being “off time”. We expect that our parents will die before we will; we expect a 50/50 chance that our spouses and those in our own generation will die before we will. When we have children and especially those of school age, we don’t give the possibility of them dying before old age a thought. There is an expectation about how life and loss will occur over time. When an adolescent dies, it rocks parents to their core and they are faced with trying to make sense out of this new world. Our core belief regarding the way things are supposed to work is seriously shaken.
A client once told me, after the death of his 24-year-old son, that grief was like trying to look through glasses smeared with Vaseline. He told me how exhausted he was trying to see what was “clearly in front” of him through this haze of grief, sadness and disbelief.
Jenny was 17 and we were looking at colleges for her. We bought all new bedding, rugs and the cutest lamps for her dorm room. The house was going to be quiet, not empty and dead!
Most adolescents are excited about going off to college. They plan, purchase and pack every possibility for their greatest adventure. Parents haul, hover, and help them fulfill this adventure whether to college or to their first apartment. They see this as their duty, responsibility and many times their pure joy even as they know that these children will now be visitors in the home of their parents. Parents dream about watching their children graduate from high school and in turn, from college. They save old dishes, silverware and glassware for their child’s first apartment. Parents feel robbed when they do not get this chance to launch their child into young adulthood. It is devastating. This is often what brings them into our counseling offices.
My son, Scott, was the perfect child. After he was born, I didn’t want another one because no other human being could be as perfect as he was. I was his mother! It was my identity! I went to all his games, chaperoned all his activities and our house is where all the kids wanted to come.
When our children are small, we are right there beside them, meeting the other children and their parents. Our child is part of us and thus forms our identity, “Oh, Andrea is your daughter”. However, as our child reaches and progresses through adolescence, these peers and parents see us as part of our children, not the reverse. “Oh, you are Andrea’s Mom.” Somehow, we lose some of our own identity and take on that of our adolescent children. When a child dies, our identity as a parent dies too.
I was just getting ready to retire when our 24-year-old son died. We got him through college and were so proud of him. He had a new job, a new apartment and a new car. I had worked hard and could now sit back and watch him change the world.
Eric Erikson’s developmental stages help us understand one reason why experiencing the death of a child, particularly an adolescent, is so difficult. According to Erikson, as adults in the stage of “Generativity vs Stagnation”, we are searching to integrate and deal with our own end of life issues. Many of us ponder what we will be leaving to this world when we die. Erikson noted that this question could best be answered by working through this stage adding that those who have children see them as the work of a lifetime and can be at peace facing their own deaths. There is comfort in believing that the time and energy spent raising a child will provide for the world after the parents’ deaths. When the child dies before the parent, facing their own death becomes much more difficult and frightening.
Mark put a gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger. I knew he had a drinking problem but there are lots of 22 year olds who drink too much. What did I do wrong that he could think this was okay? Didn’t he know how much I loved him?
Unfinished business can bring additional suffering to bereaved parents. Adolescent children enter into and play “the push/pull game” well. Sometimes they play this game constantly. The polarities of love and anger, companionship and parenting, immature and mature sexuality, collaboration and opposition, hope and disappointment are fully engaged in the role of parenting an adolescent. Parents work hard to help their adolescent achieve independence and individuality. This push/pull often causes times of anxiety and creates mayhem within the family system. When the child dies before these issues have been worked through, especially through accident or suicide, the parent may be left lwith a sense of unfinished business, unresolved questions, and guilt. They worry:
He was driving too fast.
He was too tired.
He knew the water was too shallow there.
Why didn’t I sign her up for swimming lessons last summer?
Sniffing glue, what was he thinking?
I never heard of auto erotica.
According to the Center for Disease Control, the leading cause of adolescent death is accident. Many adolescents are risk takers. They feel invincible and push the limit. This sometimes creates more anger for survivors who may feel they have failed their child. They didn’t teach their child “better driving skills, or not to be a follower, or how to swim, ski, or surf more safely”. Most bereaved parents have a difficult time grasping the adage that accidents happen. This accident happened to their child and, therefore, it was preventable.
Both the parental role, and the parental bond with their children will endure countless and significant changes over the course of child rearing. Parental development will not end, but will be changed due to the child’s death (Klass, Silverman and Nickman, 1996). Working to assimilate this loss into the parent’s life is the hard work done through the grieving process. The goal of this work is to find an appropriate place for the dead child in the emotional lives of the parents. It will take the parents the remainder of their lives to do this work. If the parents can find growth from this loss, their lives can and will truly be richer for having known the child, for experiencing the death of the child, and for finding a way through the darkest valley in life’s journey.
Many bereavement models place emphasis on the bereaved parents letting go of their relationships with their deceased child. However, my experience has suggested that this approach does not help the grieving parents construct meaning and growth from this life changing experience. Maintaining a loving connection with the child allows the parents to grieve for their child while not being physically with them. This approach helps parents relish and grow from the feelings that the essence of their child has not evaporated but is still powerfully present and meaningful. Parents can and do work hard to remain connected with their child. Some do this through linking objects and sharing stories about their children (Talbot, 2002). Others take a more active approach by feeling their child’s presence, in talking with and hearing from their child, and some will also use assisted communication through intuitives for these connections.
It’s important to note that not all bereaved parents can find support for these activities within their own families or the support systems that were in place before their child died. Partners and families experience intense loneliness after the death of a child (Riches and Dawson, 2000). Parents derive consolation and solace from holding on to possessions and carrying out rituals associated with their child. Helping these bereaved parents to know the significance of continuing bonds is our new responsibility. However, it is not enough for them to know about it. It is imperative that they be taught how to create a new relationship with their child rather than letting it go. We, as a profession, need to put this into practice for the health and welfare of this suffering and deserving population.
References:
Breznitz, S. (2000). Preface. In R. Malkinson, S. Rubin, & E. Witztum (Eds.), Traumatic and non-traumatic loss and bereavement: Clinical theory and practice. Madison, CT:
Psychosocial Press/International Universities Press.
Klass, D., Silverman, P. R., & Nickman, S. (Eds.). (1996). Continuing bonds: New understandings of grief. Washington, DC: Taylor & Francis.
Riches, G., & Dawson, P. (2000). An intimate loneliness: Supporting bereaved parents and siblings. Open University Press, Buckingham.
Talbot, K. (2002). What forever means after the death of a child. London: Brunner-Routledge,