Thoughts on Loss

Guest post by Reina Ehrdmann

As a young child the most common loss to experience is the loss of a pet or the loss of a grandparent. Later in life comes the loss of parents. Uncles, aunts, others of this generation. After this comes the loss of siblings, friends, and spouse.

I have long been a proponent of not shielding children too strenuously from death. Allowing them to have some contact with death. The death of pets and grandparents, who although very close, are not as close as others in their lives, allow them to learn to grieve. Learning to grieve at this stage in life allows death to remain at a small distance and still have a close circle of comfort to retreat to when it becomes overwhelming.

We should purpose for our children to have a pet goldfish knowing it will meet its demise and be flushed down the toilet just as a learning experience for our children. We should not deceive them by sneaking in a duplicate pet or telling them it ran away. We should bring them to calling hours in an age appropriate amount as they grow older. We should call attention to our teenagers of deaths by overdose or car accidents of young people, which sadly abound.

A childhood friend of mine lived on a farm and raised pigs. She and her brother showed them through FFA. Every year they would lose several piglets in each litter. This seemed so horrible to me but they had learned to deal with it in a healthy way that I feel I never had an opportunity to develop. When they had to put their dog down I couldn't believe the maturity they possessed to deal with it.

I lost three of my grandparents at a relatively young age. The last one lived to her 90s and I was past being a young adult by the time this happened. During that period, it felt like I was closing the door on my childhood with finality. Then my parents and aunts and uncles began to age and there were a few bouts with illness and surgery. Slowly I began losing members of this generation too. It was like a tide coming in closer and closer. I remember one aunt on my husband's side had a very hard time dealing with death. She couldn't bring herself to go into the room at the funeral parlor with the rest of the family, but hung out by the guest book and peeked around the corner occasionally. I wonder if exposure gradually over the years would have helped ease her through to a better ability to handle these types of situations.

Of course there are tragic exceptions to this chronology. Small children lose parents. Parents lose children. And some are faced with their own imminent death. From my lifetime of observing, I feel as if a natural progression of exposure to death will prepare us for the ever-rising "tide" so that we develop healthy coping mechanisms in time. This will help us ourselves as well as allow us to be better supports for those that are forced to face these situations due to untimely circumstances.