Helping Your Parent Deal with the Loss of the Other….

Perhaps the hardest task you will ever be faced with is to help one of your parents cope with the loss of their spouse.  Naturally, this is going to be a traumatic time for the whole family because you have grief yourself.  This is a difficult transitional time in the remaining spouse’s life as well as the family.

As you grieve the loss yourself, others around you will need your support such as your own spouse and children.  Add to that the remaining parents grief and you may now feel overwhelm at all that has been heaped on your plate.  Patience to understand and support everyone around you may be the hardest thing to do at this moment. 

Many times, this pulls families together like nothing else and other times it pushes them apart.  Remaining tuned into your own feelings is essential to your own emotional health so that you may care for those around you.

Assisting with funeral arrangements allows both you and your parent time to prepare.  The purpose of the funeral is to allow everyone that cared about the deceased to feel closure and to celebrate their life.  If your dad was ill and going through a lot of discomfort, there is often a sense of relief that he is no longer suffering.  It also provides comfort to the family members with strong religious faith with that assurance of the afterlife.

Only you will be able to gauge how much support or comfort your parent needs in the days just after the passing.  It’s important to remember that grief surfaces in strange ways.  Many times the real deep grief does not surface at the funeral or even in the days just after as family stays around to be close and go through group processing of the loss of a loved one.

It’s often when family goes home, the cards, flowers and phone calls stop and the routine of daily life sets in that you should plan to be very accessible to your parent.  That is when the emotions of grief will surface in the quiet and privacy of the home.  It might be advisable in this kind of situation that you stay with the grieving parent for period of a week or two to help with the transition or to have someone look in on them often.

Everyone grieves in their own way, often we expect someone to behave in ways that we would.  It is imperative that we do not impose our own ideas of how she or he should be grieving... Many times when long illnesses are involved the bulk of the grieving was done before the person was gone.  Although, there will surely be a period of adjustment and there will be the stages of grief that one has to go through it may be very different then you expect it to be… be patient and allow them their privacy and choice of how to deal with it.

On a very different hand, we put a noble face on it and say we are grieving “for” the lost one; grief can be just as real for the one who remains because it is she who has to learn to go through life’s routines without that spouse.  The loss of what life should have been for them that remains is very real and should be acknowledged to allow the healing. Taking extra measures to be present during mealtime and those little moments of the day, you can talk through times when your widowed parent remembers that the dearly departed was part of this part of life.

Rebuilding what is now will take some time and being alone during those first months may be difficult for them.  You as caregiver can help that transition by not letting large lapses of time happen between visits. Yes, obviously, your parent will eventually have to learn to get through the rituals of life alone; however you being there for her will be comforting and allow for an easier transition.

Allow the memories and talk of the deceased to happen as often as it comes.  The value of talking about the fun, interesting and wonderful things about the dearly departed is essential to healing.  It is a way of reminding ourselves that he didn’t really go away.  The memory of him will be here forever in your hearts.  Go through old family photos together, enjoy your family history, laugh about the good times and cry when you need to… nothing is more cathartic than sharing grief together.

The joy of these times will be tremendously healing for the grieving senior and for you too.  Living through your grief, healing, closure and moving on together, allows even deeper bonding with your parent and lays the groundwork for the important care giving challenges you and she will face together in the months and years to come. 

Offering the opportunity to attend a support group to your loved one and for yourself is a viable option to help you wade through the stages of grief as well.. Accessing professional assistance can help in ways that could not be done alone. 

For more info contact www.fulllifecentre.com or 905.436.2772.