“My grown son died and everyone checks on his wife and kids but nobody checks on me”
When an adult child dies, support tends to gather around the spouse and young children, and the parent, often older, can end up at the edge of it, asked how the widow is coping and seldom asked how they are. Some feel the order of life has broken, since parents are supposed to go first. Some also fear losing contact with grandchildren as the son's household changes. In interviews with nine parents aged 70 or older who had outlived an adult child who died of cancer (Van Humbeeck and colleagues, Death Studies, 2016), parents described keeping their grief to themselves, partly because support centered on the child's own family.
What to check first
It helps to check who in the parent's life knew the son well enough to talk about him, and whether anyone asks after the parent directly. Age brings its own load: health, a partner's health, other losses close together. If sleep, eating or medicines have slipped since he died, a doctor is worth seeing.
What could be going on
When a child dies: bereaved parents: Fits if losing your child hits as hard at his age and yours as it would have when he was small.
Grief (complicated, disenfranchised, anticipatory): Check whether your grief goes unseen because people look first to his wife and children.
Secondary losses: Fits if losing him also means losing your place with his family, or time with your grandchildren.
Survivor guilt: Check whether you keep thinking it should have been you, since you are the older one.
Telling them apart
When a child dies: bereaved parents: The loss of a child weighs on parents whatever the child's age. A son of fifty is still the parent's child, and outliving him can feel against nature. The grief may be as heavy as for a young child, and less noticed.
Grief (complicated, disenfranchised, anticipatory): The grief may be real and seldom acknowledged, because others see the spouse and children as the main mourners. The parent may hold back so as not to take attention from them. Grief that goes unrecognized can be very lonely.
Secondary losses: The death may bring other losses: his calls, his help, his place in family life, and sometimes easy contact with his children. Relations with his widow may shift. Each can come months after the funeral.
Survivor guilt: The parent may keep thinking it should have been them, since they are old and he had a family. Living on can feel wrong. Small pleasures may bring a stab of guilt.
Questions to carry
- The last time someone asked only about his wife and kids, what did I say?
- What do I need right now that no one has offered me?
Also said as
- my adult son died and nobody asks how i am
- lost my grown daughter and feel forgotten
- older parent grieving an adult child
- everyone comforts my son's widow and forgets me
- my son died at 45 and i'm his mother
- people think it's easier because he was an adult