“I’m an orphan now too,” a 60 year old woman said as she laid her mother to rest. The deep sorrow one feels as they lose their remaining parent will envelope them for the rest of their life and cause them to feel great pain like they have never felt before. The grieving will begin and won’t let up for many years.
But please, do not belittle what a true orphan went through by referring to yourself as an orphan. When a young person becomes orphaned, grieving isn’t typically on the menu for a decade or so, survival is. The shock to the system and the immediate need for a legal guardian and to gather your life together and move on, whatever that means, does not allow any type of natural grieving process. As you fight off the child abusers and money grabbers, all disguised as someone who cares, you are struggling to make it to the next day. All of the normal emotions you should be feeling are pushed down very far casting a dark shadow over your soul. You won’t be visited by them again until your life is in some sort of order. And even then, when you feel a little bit settled, you can’t possibly allow yourself to relax because once you let your breath out, the next blow will come crashing down, and you only have yourself provide a safe landing.
There is no staying at mom and dad’s house after a break up, asking for help with a loan, knowing where to spend a holiday or even expecting something as simple as a birthday card. You have no idea who will walk you down the aisle or who will help you when you come home from the hospital with a baby.
Casual dinners or weekend visits will never happen nor will any type of celebration of any kind. Learning to cook is from a book and laundry secrets are googled. You will watch grandparents attend other children’s events, but not your kids’.
Eventually, after spending most of your life trying to figure it out, you will eventually come to a point where you can grieve. But the emotions have been snuffed out so long ago, it is a very painful process to pull them back up and begin to properly address them. Maybe, in your 40’s you might start to feel somewhat normal.
Then you are in your Motherless Daughter’s group on facebook and see 60 year old women saying they are “now an orphan.” It doesn’t work that way. When you have a lifetime with a parent and then they die, your words should be something like this: “I’m so blessed and grateful for a lifetime with my parents.”
NOTE: Me with my family 1977. My parents died at the hands of a drunk driver in 1979. If you want to belong to group of people that also lost both of their parents before they turned 22, find BELONG - Because every living orphan needs grounding on FACEBOOK.
Then you are in your Motherless Daughter’s group on facebook and see 60 year old women saying they are “now an orphan.” It doesn’t work that way. When you have a lifetime with a parent and then they die, your words should be something like this: “I’m so blessed and grateful for a lifetime with my parents.”
NOTE: Me with my family 1977. My parents died at the hands of a drunk driver in 1979. If you want to belong to group of people that also lost both of their parents before they turned 22, find BELONG - Because every living orphan needs grounding on FACEBOOK.
