When your parent dies, who gets to mourn their loss? Everyone feels the loss, to be sure, but some people’s grief seems to “matter” more, especially if you’re taking care of other people at the same time. You may be supporting your surviving parent with the numerous legal tasks that follow a death or helping them navigate their own health issues. You could be helping your siblings sort through your parent’s belongings or sell their property. You may also be tending to the emotional needs of your children who have lost a grandparent.
What about you? Are you allowed grieve the loss of your parent or are you busy caring for others and don’t feel you can pay attention to your loss? Sometimes we minimize our own experience by comparing the impact of the loss on others: “Mom is struggling so much more after being married to Dad for 50 years.”
If you’re like most people, you don’t know what to do when you’re faced with a significant loss. You’ve never been taught how to grieve, and there’s no “right way” to grieve, at any rate; everyone experiences grief in their own way. If you had a strained relationship with the parent who died, grief can be even more of a challenge.
“This is the person who has known you the longest,” says Mary, a Centrica Care Navigators grief counselor. “How we see the world is strongly influenced by our parents. Your worldview can change when they are no longer there.”
A different kind of loss
Mary is leading our Parent Loss grief group, which runs Thursday afternoons, August 15 to September 19. Like all the special grief groups the Centrica Care Navigators team hosts, the Parent Loss group focuses on individuals who sometimes get overlooked in their grief.
“They learn to support one another,” Mary says. “It allows them time and space to grieve their own loss while still trying to support other family members.”
For many people, the loss of a parent is different than other kinds of loss. Much of the support from friends and extended family members is naturally focused on the surviving spouse who has lost their partner. Adult children may even experience what is called “disenfranchised grief,” feeling that their own loss is less important because it is expected.
We all know that everyone dies, and parents typically die before their children do. Still, knowing that is one thing; witnessing it, and living with the grief, is something much different.
“We’re all going to lose our parents, but that doesn’t make it any less profound,” Mary says. “There needs to be space for everyone to grieve.”
Tools for your family
Participants in the Parent Loss group will learn strategies for interacting with family members who are also experiencing grief. They’ll also discover that even though their brother or sister lost a parent, too, their grief may look and feel very different.
After a parent dies, family relationships often shift. Siblings may have worked closely together to support a dying parent, and now their priorities have changed as they resume other obligations. There may be feelings of resentment or guilt among siblings if certain family members took on a greater caregiving role. Though everyone in the family may be mourning the loss of a parent, that’s no guarantee that it will mend strained relationships or bring a family together.
“Sometimes, the parent was the primary focus of a family,” Mary says. “What happens when that parent is gone? It is not unusual for families to experience a period of disengagement as members settle into new roles within the family and readjust to life without that person.”
Parent Loss group members will explore what some of these changes mean within their family. They’ll also learn to care for themselves throughout their grief journey and give themselves permission to grieve their loss.
Looking for support
Maybe the most important part of the Centrica Care Navigators Parent Loss grief group is the chance for grievers to meet others like them and use meetings as an opportunity to acknowledge their own needs.
Most participants in the Parent Loss group are between 30 and 60, though younger adults have also joined in the past. Mary has also seen husbands and wives come to meetings just to be there for their partner.
“Sometimes a husband or will ask to attend, saying, ‘I want to understand how to support my spouse in their loss,’” Mary says. “It’s OK to look for other support outside of the family. Everyone is trying to cope, and you may need other types of support, like counseling or a support group.”
You can learn more about the Parent Loss group and all of our Centrica Grief Support services here on our website.
