The Death Of Our Beloved Parents Changes Our Lives

After the death of the parents, life changes a lot. Or maybe a lot. Facing orphanhood, even for adults, is a daunting experience. In the depths of all people, that child always continues to live who can always turn to his mother or father to feel protected. But when they leave, that option is gone forever.

You are going to stop seeing them, not for a week, not a month, but for the rest of your life. Parents were the people who brought us into the world and with whom we shared the most intimate and fragile. There will no longer be those beings through whom, to a great extent, we become what we are.

Death: from talking about it to living it, a great abyss …

We are never fully prepared to face death, especially if it is that of one of our parents. It is a great adversity that can hardly be totally overcome. Normally the most that is achieved is to assume it and live with it. To overcome it, at least in theory, we would have to understand it and death, strictly speaking, is completely incomprehensible. It is one of the great mysteries of existence: perhaps the greatest.

Obviously, the way in which we integrate losses is going to have a lot to do with the way in which they have occurred. A so-called “natural causes” death is painful, but an accident or murder is more so. If death was preceded by a long illness, the situation is very different from when it occurred suddenly.

Really, not only a body is leaving, but a whole universe. A world made of words, of caresses, of gestures. Even repeated advice that sometimes got a little fed up and “manias” that made us smile or rub our heads because we recognize them in them. Now they begin to miss each other in an unlikely way.

Death does not warn. It can be bragged, but it never announces exactly when it will arrive. Everything is synthesized in an instant and that instant is categorical and decisive: irreversible. So many experiences lived next to them, good and bad, suddenly shudder and are engulfed in memories. The cycle is completed and it is time to say goodbye.

“What is, without being …”

We usually think that that day will never come, until it comes and becomes real. We are shocked and we only see a box, with a rigid and still body that does not speak or move. That is there, without being there …

Because with death many aspects of the lives of deceased people begin to be understood. A deeper understanding appears. Perhaps, the fact of not having in mind the loved ones raises in us the understanding about the reason for many attitudes hitherto incomprehensible, contradictory or even repulsive.

For this reason, death can bring with it a feeling of guilt towards the person who died. It is necessary to fight against that feeling, since it does not contribute anything, but to sink deeper into sadness, without being able to remedy anything. Why blame yourself if you made mistakes? We are human beings and accompanying that farewell there must be a forgiveness: from the one who goes to the one who stays or from the one who stays to the one who leaves.

The importance of sharing the pain

What to do when our parents pass away? Debra J. Umberson, professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin and author of The Death of a Father: Transition to a New Adult Identity, states:

In addition, she adds that, during grief, it can be comforting to spend time with other people who have suffered a similar loss, whether they are friends or strangers in support groups.

For his part, David Kessler, founder of grief.com and co-author of the book On Grief and Grief: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss , points out that sharing grief through online platforms, too it can help you cope.

For example, posting a photo of our parents on the anniversary of their passing can help us connect with friends and family who are also grieving.

Additionally, Kessler highlights as a primary need that “our pain has witnesses”, since isolating ourselves can be harmful.

Enjoy them while you can: they won’t be around forever …

When parents die, regardless of age, people often experience a feeling of abandonment. It is a different death from the others. In turn, some people refuse to give the fact the importance it deserves, as a defense mechanism, in the form of a disguised denial. But those unresolved griefs return in the form of illness, fatigue, irritability, or symptoms of depression.

It does not matter how many conflicts or differences you have had with them: they are unique and irreplaceable beings in the emotional world. Although we are autonomous and independent, although our relationship with them has been tortuous. When they are gone, their lack is experienced as a “never again” for a form of protection and support that, in one way or another, was always there.

In fact, those who did not know their parents, or were estranged from them at an early age, often carry their entire lives with those absences as a burden. An absence that is presence: a place remains in the heart that always claims them.

Either way, one of the great losses in life is that of the parents. It can be difficult to overcome if there was injustice or negligence in dealing with them. Therefore, while they are alive, it is important to realize that parents will not be there forever. That they are, genetically and psychologically, the reality that gave us origin. That they are unique and that life will change forever when they leave.