It’s three years since my father died and almost 18 since my mother did. I am
no longer anyone’s daughter. While no one can deny the tragedy of the small
child whose parents have died, the fact remains that however “grown-up” you
are when your parents die you still feel like an orphan; an adult orphan.
It’s not a state that is discussed much or considered seriously and
yet it is one that fills the adult orphan with a profound sense of sadness
and loss. “There are a number of books on the subject,” says American
psychologist Alexander Levy, author of one of them, The Orphaned Adult (Perseus
Books), “but it is not the subject of any research or professional interest.
Anyone who does research the subject comments on how little research there
is and then doesn’t do any more.”
Perhaps it’s because it’s the natural order of things; after all, we all know
that we will lose our parents one day. “In some ways,” writes Edward Myers
in his book, When Parents Die: a Guide for Adults (Penguin), “there
is no death that can seem less unfair, less outrageous, than the death of a
parent whose children have reached adulthood.” The words, “in some ways” are
key; they hint at a darker truth, because nothing can prepare us for how we
feel when it happens: lost, abandoned, orphaned and crying for our mum and
dad. The knowledge that our parents will one day die proves no comfort to
the terrible pain we experience when we finally lose them. We grieve not
only for them, but also for the place we called home and the passing of our
own childhood and youth; those stages that marked our journey to adulthood.
When they die, those around us, trying, no doubt, to comfort, say things like
“He or she had a good innings” (actually, my mother didn’t, she died
suddenly at the age of 58 and was cheated out of a large portion of her life
and missed the pleasure of being a grandparent), or “You’re lucky you had
parents as long as you did.” Most people simply don’t know what to say;
there is an absence of an effective language that is comforting, and,
anyhow, what can anyone say? After all, they can’t bring our parents back.
Without them, you feel you will flounder and miss your footing for, whatever
your age, you’re still your parents’ child and your parents are your most
profound source of unconditional love; they have been with you from the
moment of your birth and, if you’re lucky, have always walked beside you,
loving, teaching and guiding you. Even if you haven’t been lucky enough to
have an intimate and loving relationship with your parents, the grief on
losing them remains acute. As Sara Smythe, the central character in Douglas
Kennedy’s novel The Pursuit of Happiness, says after the death
of her emotionally distant father, “I think that is the hardest thing about
bereavement – coming to terms with what might have been, if only you’d been
able to get it right.” The finality of death takes away any last opportunity
to repair the relationship; it’s as good as it’s going to get and, all too
often, that’s far from good enough. Besides the grief, there is the
additional pain of guilt and regret.
Whatever the relationship, parental death causes a seismic shift in the
foundations of their children’s world. Peter Grimsdale, a thriller writer
now in his early fifties, says, “Suddenly there was no older generation.
Even though I was in my thirties it was like being on a flight somewhere and
going forward to the flight deck and finding no one at the controls.”
Their death is the thing you most feared as a child, so when it happens, even
though you’re an adult, you feel once more like that fearful child. “Longing
isn’t necessarily a sign of emotional reliance on a parent,” writes Myers.
“Instead, it seems just as likely to indicate how deep the parent-child bond
is, and how long it lasts.” Notwithstanding the depth of this relationship,
a few weeks after the death of a parent we are somehow expected to be
getting over it and on with life, and we sense impatience in others when
we’re still grieving. As the time passes and the grief fails to lessen, we
feel we must be emotionally immature, too bound to our parents, altogether
ill-equipped to cope without them. Alexander Levy says, “People who’ve lost
their parents come to me and say, ‘I’m having a surprisingly difficult time
of it.’ The truth is that no one gets through it easily; you have to pay
sooner or later, you have to go through the grief process.”
No one can deny that the release death offers to ill parents who have no hope
of recovery is preferable to their continued suffering. But, while it’s
certainly better for them, and may be something of a relief for you in
practical terms, it doesn’t necessarily prove any easier emotionally. Lola
Borg is a journalist and radio playwright in her forties; she lost her
mother when she was 21 and her father seven years ago. “I lost them both in
different ways, one quickly and one slowly – both were hideous. It doesn’t
matter how they die, whichever way it happens it’s not great: the bolt out
of the blue or the lingering illness where you’re on an emotional precipice
and expect each time you see them to be the last.”
One of the first things that people ask you when a parent dies is their age.
It’s as if there’s an age/grief/sympathy equation – the older they are, the
less you’re expected, or somehow allowed, to grieve their loss and the less
sympathy you’re entitled to. In my experience, the grief is never over,
although, with time, it becomes less acute. When first they die there is a
terrible, resounding silence. The realisation that you’re waking up to a
world that no longer contains them and to a future empty of them hits you
the moment you open your eyes. While the fact of your parents’ death ceases,
with time, to be your first waking thought, the map of grief has many roads
which, I suspect, one travels in some form or another for the rest of one’s
life. The one comfort is the dreams you have about them; in your dreams they
are alive again and the silence is replaced once more with the sound of
their voices, albeit temporarily. It’s this silence that drives people to
mediums and clairvoyants in the frantic search to find their parents again
and speak to them one last time. You never cease looking for them and
sometimes glimpse them in the expression of a stranger, or a face half-seen
as a train pulls away from the station, or, more comfortingly, if you have
them, in the mannerisms of your own children. When I was pregnant with my
daughter, I found it comforting that she would have my mother’s DNA. Now 13,
she often reminds me of my mother.
For all that, it’s very lonely being a mother without a mother yourself. “I
felt so forlorn,” says Lola Borg. “You can have all the supportive friends
in the world, but it’s not the same thing. It’s a tremendous loss. My mother
was my great protector.” Lots of people in middle age still have not only
their parents, but also their grandparents. To the orphan adult this feels
terribly unfair – they have to rely on themselves and have lost the people
who would have their best interests at heart. It’s particularly difficult
when your own children are small; they don’t have grandparents and you don’t
have parents to help you out. You have to pay strangers to help you. “My
deepest sorrow is that they did not live to see their grandchildren grow
up,” says my brother, molecular biologist Conrad Lichtenstein. “Perhaps such
longevity is what we expect now; although, for us as parents, the loss of
our own parents at a time when our children leave the nest may be a triple
bereavement: loss of our mother and father, our own lost childhood and our
children’s too.”
There’s yet another associated loss, for in addition to your parents, you tend
to lose access to their social circle and forfeit the company of that
generation. “You end up being everyone’s parent and no one’s child,” says
Borg. I find myself making friends with people in their seventies and
eighties to fill the void.
It is curious that there appears to be no literature on the subject in this
country; the books I found were all written by Americans, who even have a
website, www.adultorphan.com, which
provides a forum for bereaved adults. It seems our British upper lip may be
too stiff to acknowledge this fate from which no one escapes. For, as Levy
writes, “Parental loss is the ultimate equal opportunity experience,
requiring nothing other than children not predeceasing their parents.” When
your parents die, you find yourself the member of a club that you’d never
willingly apply to join. And it’s true, adult orphans feel a sad kinship
with each other; we recognise ourselves in each other’s eyes when people
talk about their living parents and know how to comfort each other.
When your parents die, there is no buffer between you and the grave and you
finally have to grow up. Your anchor has gone and rather than damage
yourself further by bashing against the harbour walls, you have to set sail
on the unknown seas of a life without living parents. It seems you have to
wait a long time to grow up if you can only properly do so once your parents
are dead. It’s a terrifying prospect to face life without our teachers and
no wonder, therefore, that we internalise the voices of our dead parents to
keep ourselves on track, for, reassuringly, your relationship with them
doesn’t end with their death. Stephen Nathan, QC, is in his fifties; his
mother died when he was 40 and his father, seven years before. “I still use
them as a mental tool, a sounding board to examine what I’m doing or saying.
It’s quite a useful tool to have and can be convenient to validate what
you’re doing. It gives you a reason to say, ‘Yes, I affirm’, or ‘No, I don’t
want to do this.’ You may not always be consistent with what your parents
would say, it depends how honest you are with yourself.”
