Personal Loss for senior citizens

 

Grieving personal loss

In one’s life, there is always personal loss, like a grandparent or an older relative who succumbed to cancer or heart disease. And it's sad, but you still had friends and probably your parents. But when you get older, the loss seems to be frequent, and the loss of folks that you are closest to.

Since my parents were older than most of my friend's parents, I seemed to spend more than my share of time in funeral homes. All my grandparents were deceased by the time I was thirteen, and I had lost many aunts and uncles from my mother’s family. I almost grew numb at all the funerals we attended.

But I was a kid, young, and I knew that time somehow stood still when you were younger. Of course, it didn’t, but it seemed that way.

As I moved on in my life and had a family of my own, death was sad but not devastating. My wife moved on after her father died of cancer at a young age. Then, her grandmother passed away. The emotional impact of loss gave my wife great sorrow, but she finally came to grips with it.

The years went by, and my mother passed when I was 52, and then a year later, my mother-in-law passed away from cancer.

My way of thinking about personal loss took a dramatic change. Both my parents were gone, and my wife’s parents were gone as well. The crowd was thinning out, and we felt we were on a slow path to our demise even though we were in our fifties.

Navigating through grief

 I keep telling myself that thinking about death and the loss of friends and close relatives brings no one back to life. You have to keep moving forward, no matter how difficult.

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I know it's easy to say all that. Missing parents and friends can still be sorrowful, but it shouldn’t be something that you dwell on.

Best

David