Dealing With the Loss of a Parent

Everything changes, and things don’t stay the same. These common reminders are especially true when something as tragic as the loss of a loved one occurs. In particular, the loss of a parent can set off a variety of emotions, thoughts, and memories that reinforce the painful reality that things don’t stay the same. If you lose a parent, there are healthy and unhealthy ways of dealing with the loss and grief that follows.

Ways of Losing a Parent

The loss of a parent can happen in different ways. Loss occurs in myriad ways. Generally, when we refer to loss, it typically means the death of a loved one. When a parent dies, whether through illness, suddenly, or as the result of old age, it is a deep loss, even when it’s expected.

It’s also important to acknowledge that loss occurs in other ways as well. Sometimes, a person feels guilty for grieving their parent because their loss doesn’t look the same as what others have experienced. Loss can sometimes be more ambiguous, like if a parent abandons you and their whereabouts or circumstances are unknown.

Loss can also occur if your parent has a degenerative condition like Alzheimer’s or dementia, which can feel like losing pieces of your parent each day. If your parent is terminally ill, their ill health and slow decline can result in anticipated grief. It can feel as though you’ve already lost them before it actually happens. Loss, then, takes many forms, but regardless of its guise, the grief that comes with that loss is real.

Losing a Parent – Distinct from Other Forms of Loss

It’s never wise to compare different forms of loss or pain. Each situation is unique, and you shouldn’t have to justify the pain you feel. All forms of grief are difficult, and they affect each individual in ways that are hard to predict. The loss of a parent affects you chiefly by radically altering your place in the world. That’s true whether that loss occurs when you’re a child or when you’re an adult with children of your own.

To say that losing a parent is a distinct form of loss is a way of saying that the loss may impact you in specific ways. The loss of a parent may draw you to ask questions about your own existence and relationships with others. It can even shake your sense of identity in certain ways. It affects you in a myriad of ways.

The Impact of Losing a Parent

All loss has an impact. We feel loss keenly because the relationships, sense of connection, and the things that provided a sense of normalcy and constancy in our lives are no longer there. Meaning has to be derived from elsewhere. It’s no longer possible to make new memories with your loved one, and even simple things like shared jokes or walks take on a different meaning.

Losing a parent affects you by shaking the foundations upon which your life was built. Even in those cases where you had a strained relationship with your mom or dad, losing them means you’ve lost the person who raised you, supported you, protected you, and was a core part of who you are. The loss of an absentee parent can hit hard just the same, if only because of what might have been or what you may have hoped for.

The loss of a parent is the loss of a primary attachment figure, and with that comes the need to reconfigure yourself and how you understand yourself. Your parent may have been your anchor. Your precious childhood and other memories may be closely connected with them. Losing your parent is a loss of that connection, and it can trigger a need to figure out who you are now that they’re gone.

Another way the loss of a parent can affect you is that it reconfigures other family dynamics. Whether your parent was the peacemaker or they stirred up conflict in the family, their passing could change the dynamics in how the remaining family members relate to each other. Old sibling rivalries or tensions might be reawakened or put to rest, and conflict can erupt over the estate or how to care for the surviving parent.

Losing a parent can also result in complex and conflicting emotions and experiences. Grief can surface old memories, buried feelings, and much else. You never quite know what you’ll feel, think, or do, or when these feelings will arise. Depending on your relationship with your parent, your responses to losing them may be complicated further. Feelings such as relief, guilt, regret, or shame about what was or might have been can accompany the loss.

When you lose a parent, particularly when you’re a bit older yourself, it can change your relationship with your living parent. Perhaps it means being more present for them as a support. Losing a parent when you’re older can also compel you to face your own sense of mortality. The words from Peter’s epistle can hit home with greater immediacy:

All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord endures forever. – 1 Peter 1:24-25, NIV

The loss of a parent can make you take stock and reconsider your relationships, priorities, and how you spend your life.

How to Deal with the Loss of a Parent

The process of grief isn’t a straight shot from one feeling or set of experiences to another. You may have heard of the five or even the seven stages of grief, and those are helpful ways to talk about the various feelings that accompany loss. These include things like denial, shock, anger, depression, and so on. It’s important to remember that the process isn’t a linear one with neat boundaries. Grief can be quite unruly and messy.

Dealing with the loss of a parent can take several forms. There are some ways to check in with yourself as well as get the necessary support you need to work through the experiences, thoughts, feelings, and the impact of losing your parent.

Acknowledge the loss Even if your relationship with your parent was fractured or nonexistent, it doesn’t mean that you haven’t experienced loss. You may even have lost your parents a long time ago, but that doesn’t diminish the loss and how it may affect you. Loss can have lasting effects, including a sense of insecurity about close relationships, and it can result in anxiety or even depression.

Recognize the unpredictability of loss When you experience loss, there isn’t necessarily going to be a script that you will follow. Those stages of grief aren’t a one-and-done sort of thing. You could find yourself in a place of peace and acceptance but then experience renewed feelings of sadness or anger when you graduate, get married, or welcome a child into the world. These milestones can make you miss your mom or dad.

You must recognize that loss and grief will take you to unpredictable places. Knowing this will better prepare you for these experiences when they occur.

Self-care is a priority If there’s a concept that has been overused lately, it could be self-care. But there is wisdom in taking active steps to protect and nurture your well-being. Grief can be mentally, emotionally, and physically draining, and you’re liable to fall into unhealthy patterns. Self-care is about finding balance and ways to stay healthy so that you cope better with things.

Self-care can mean simple things like going to bed at a consistent time, eating healthy and balanced meals, staying away from substances like recreational drugs or alcohol as coping mechanisms, taking in some form of exercise, and being outside where you can get some sun and touch some grass. These things fuel your well-being in big and small ways, and you need them to carry on without burning out.

Seek support Loss and grief aren’t solo activities. Have people you can rely on and share what you’re going through. Talking can help you gain perspective, as well as get a handle on what you’re feeling about losing your parent. You can talk with a professional grief counselor to get an objective perspective as well as guidance through the paths of grief.

Help with the Journey

Walking through your grief with a stranger may seem an odd thing to do, but it can be a freeing and enriching experience. When there’s little risk of offending someone, it’s easier to speak truthfully. Counseling can provide you with a safe and non-judgmental place to have an open conversation and work through your loss in a meaningful way.

If you have lost a parent, contact a counselor listed on this site to discover help.