Processing Grief

Or "How to keep your spouse or significant other when you lose one of your parents".

Losing a parent to death cannot be overestimated in the unexpected changes it brings to one's life.

Because of this, thinking that one can easily breeze through a parent's death and go on with their lives without any changes is very very naive.

In my own life I have seen horrific things directly caused by the death of a parent. Even if one is in their 30s or 40s or beyond, it should not be underestimated what one likely will have to endure.

Obviously, the hardest thing to deal with is psychological and emotional. When a parent passes on any support of any kind usually leaves with the parent. So, depending upon how one has structured their life, there are going to be severe or less, monetary, mental, emotional, and psychological changes to be endured for at least 2 to 5 years after the passing of a parent. To some degree, the pain never goes away. But at least, usually after about 5 years one has come to terms with the loss first mentally, and then slowly by slowly one finds coping mechanisms to endure it. However, none of this come easily.

The most vulnerable person in all this is not you but your spouse or significant other. It is very very easy to lose your significant other or spouse during this 2 to 5 year period of grief. If your relationship with your significant other isn't very strong, losing them is very common.

For example, when my father died, my now ex-wife forbade me to spend time with him before his death. This set up a hatred toward my wife that never ended and moved me toward long term passive aggressive behavior that eventually ended our marriage 9 years later. And the only reason we stayed together that long was that we were raising (at that time) 4 children together. Though, in the end we were married 15 years, the last 9 were hell. It wasn't until her father died that she had any inkling at all of the hell I had been through with my father's passing. My ex and I no longer speak at all for the last 5 years. This was my second wife.

When my first wife's father died, luckily I was already remarried to my second wife. However, when my first wife came back from living in France, she broke up with her third husband,(I was her first), who was a french musician, mostly because she didn't want him to have mistresses which she found was common in France at that time. Then when her father died she came and spent time with my 2nd wife and I but she didn't seem right psychologically. I asked her if she was grieving her father's death but she said, "I went up to heaven with him so I know he is okay." However, I said to her, "I'm very worried that you are in denial of your grief for your father."
She said, "No. there is no grief."
This really concerned me because I knew this might mean serious psychological troubles ahead for her. The next thing I heard was that she was staying on a mutual friends large property and had shaved her head and was walking around in towels. I was afraid something like this could happen to her because of her denial of her grief.

This is a cautionary tale of how important it is to have your grief when a loved one passes on. To stuff it or to deny it can be the straw that breaks the camel's back and you may drop into temporary unsanity. I define my word unsanity as a temporary state. My first wife now is reasonably okay, but for about 2 years things were very difficult for her. Her life is okay and she is living with her latest boyfriend. The incident I'm talking about happened in the late 1980s.

However, it is important to grieve your losses. If you just stuff or deny your grief because it is inconvenient to experience it could cause much worse problems in your life, like when I and my second wife broke up from my not psychologically processing or dealing with my father's death in a healthy way or my first wife's complete denial of her grief of her father's passing and shaving her head and walking around in towels for a while. Yes. These are both extreme reactions to death. But from everyone I have spoken with they are not uncommon at all.

If you can afford it when a loved one passes seek out a grief therapist, pastor,relative or friend that you trust to help you process your grief so you can survive the passing in as healthy a way as possible.