Reply to Losing a spouse vs. Losing a parent or child

Forum Index » Family Relationships

Reply to "Losing a spouse vs. Losing a parent or child"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here.

Putting the loss of a parent aside, what about losing a spouse vs. losing a child? That's the real debate. And it's exacerbated by the fact that one friend just got married (thus, prompting the "moving forward" comment from the other one who lost a child (and can't have another one since she's pushing 50). [/quote]

I have a friend who is in her 60s and lost her husband of about 40 years.  They have no children.  I doubt she's going to "move forward" because she pretty much spent most of her life with him.  So I would caution someone against minimizing her grief or the huge impact (and change to her life) that losing her spouse has had by saying it isn't as bad as (fill in the blank).

I also would not do that to someone who just lost a child, no matter how old they were or whether or not they could have another one.

I just don't think you can view humans as replaceable -- whether they are spouses, parents or children.  So telling someone that, "hey, it's not so bad because you can remarry" or "hey, at least you can still have more children!"  is obnoxious.

There are some things that just shouldn't be ranked and compared.  And grief and losing someone close to you are among those things.

It also all depends.  A lot depends on the relationship.  Some people aren't close to their parents.  Some people love their spouses, but they never viewed them as life partners and lived a long time without them, so perhaps to them, the experience would be different.  And believe it or not, some people aren't close to their children.  I know everyone likes to say that a parent's love for their child is unconditional, but there are many instances where that just doesn't appear to be the case.

So who knows how people who fall into the above categories deal with the losses.

I also think that one aspect of how hard a loss is on people is what other resources for joy they have in their lives.  Someone who isn't very social, doesn't have a large social/familiar network and is pretty much reliant on spouse/parent/child for most of their social interaction might take the loss harder partly because the person literally was their *entire* life.

It really all depends.  And I think trying to rank loss in those stark terms is naive, ignorant and immature.  [/quote]

+1 Well said.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics