How to Show Up For Kids Who’ve Lost a Parent

My dad died when he was 15 years old. A couple of months ago, I talked to Natalie Greenberg pain therapist, and she said something that had left: “When you are a young adult who loses a father, friends often do not show how they want them to do it because they don’t have a plan to follow.”

I remember how crushed I had been when certain friends had not registered, and how seen I had felt when others had given me long and persistent hugs. Now, with my own children, I want to show you how to be there for afflicted friends. Of course, I have my own experience to take advantage of, but I was curious to know what had helped (or had not helped) others who had lost the parents early in life. I talked to three women, and this is what they told me …

Carmel Breathnach, who lost his mother when he was 11 years old

“A few months after my mother’s death, I went to my friend’s house.

“At that time, most of my friends were too young, eight, nine, 10, to talk to me about the death of my mother. In recent years, some even apologized for not supporting me during that time, but I assured them that they had, in their own childhood forms. They were kind, and we played together and we laughed. All this was important and what I needed.”

Erika Veurink, who lost her father at age 15

“After my best friend heard that my father had been diagnosed with cancer, she slipped a chocolate bar in my locker. The class was skipped with me to sit on the fire staircase and talk. His father was one of the first people that my father told her, and I saw that the interaction happened in a soccer game, curious why they were both crying. It was a sacred experience of the second I discovered.

“I was with my best friend when I received the call that my father had died. She and I were knotting wool blankets with her mother, seeing Gilmore Girls in her living room. She felt good to have a project while we were waiting for the inevitable. After we received my mother’s call in my friend, my friend and my friend.

“That summer, she and I spent hours hanging out on her grass, walking towards CVS and seeing more Gilmore girls. We were 15 years old and her mother made sure we felt like this, even in the pain.

“During that time, I wanted my friends to act as if everything were normal and Scare with me, in waves. Sometimes he felt great to lose himself in a gossip session in the locker room. Other times, I wanted to shout to listen to my friends to complain about their parents after mine had died. Above all I wanted to be close to people all the time. I spent a lot of time floating with my friends in the pool, without saying anything at all. And that felt comforting!

Jannelle Sánchez (myself), who lost his father at age 15

“A few days before my father’s funeral, my mother asked me if I wanted to invite a friend, and the first person who came to mind was my best friend since the fifth grade. S was hilarious and knew me better than I knew myself. Besides, it was not a strange to lose a father. Her father had had a blow and died when she was eight years old. Then, she knew she was like losing a father.

“But after my mother told her mother about the death of my father, everything she got was silence. Without text messages. Without calls. When my mother sat on my bed, I realized her eyes on her eyes that I was going to share news that I didn’t want to listen: S I didn’t want to go to the funeral. I felt that they had hit me in the instinct.

“Now, as an adult, I understand why he had moved away. Dealing with death is as difficult, especially as a girl. Yes, she didn’t get to feel alone and hurt. But now I know that her distance arose from her own pain, not coldness or cruelty.

“Besides, to be fair, I had not communicated with her either. I never wrote a text message that said:” I really need you now “or ask if it was free for a phone call. In the heart of my pain, I did not know how to tell my friends what I needed of them. That everything I really wanted was for one of them to go home, look like my house, tell me in my room and tell me to the people. People.

“Fortunately, some friends approached. But the one who stood out the most was so unexpected. The week after my father died and my mother had shared the news with everyone, I was climbing the spiral staircase in our church, addressing our group of weekly young people. With each step, I felt that anxiety grew more in my chest. Will everyone see me now as the girl whose dad died? Will people act weird? But once I got to the top of the stairs, I heard a brilliant, ‘Jannelle-and !!!’ And I saw my friend Chloe running down the hall. She picked me up in a big and warm hug, and gave me a piece of paper. In him there were two smiling stick figures with triangular dresses with straw -shaped hair. They were taken hand in hand. Everything I wanted during that time was a friend to take my hand, and there it was, manifested on paper. ”

Natalie Greenberg, who lost her mother at age 23

“After my mother died, my friends really didn’t know how to be there for me. They would say vague and open things, like ‘Hey, how are you?’ or ‘I am here if you need something’.

“A gesture that meant a lot happened years after my mother’s death. A friend had saved the anniversary date of mom’s death on her phone, and that day she sent me a really sweet text message and then asked: ‘Do you want to go to ice cream tonight?’ The way he approached and acknowledged that my mother’s loss was so attentive.

“Now as a mother, I want to teach my son how to be empathic when a friend is afflicted and register. And not only register once, but periodically, weeks, months and years later. Talking about the death of a father is not a unique conversation, because I think it is where stigma accumulates and becomes this dark and scary type. All.”

Did you lose a loved one when you were younger? What did people say or that brought you comfort?

PS: How to talk to children about death and how do you think about death?