Becoming an Adult Orphan
Reading or talking about death, one’s own or that of someone close, isn’t too many people’s idea of a good time.
That might explain why it comes as such an earth-shattering shock and utterly isolating experience when we lose someone.
And eventually we all lose someone.
As a child, the loss may be a family pet. Next, we lose a grandparent.
As we get older, we get closer to the inevitable day when our parents, too, will die.
I cannot even begin to imagine the trauma of becoming an orphan as a young child or young adult, losing a mother or father or both when they should still have a long life ahead of them with their families.
It seems more “natural” to lose parents when they have reached old age. And, because that seems like the natural timing, people who lose their parents in mid-life or later are generally expected to pass through this transition as we handle our other adult responsibilities.
But losing your parents is not just another passage of adulthood.
My dad died 20 years ago at the age of 79. My mom died in February this year at the age 90. Both deaths threw me into a black hole of soul-crushing heartache. I felt like the ground had given way, like my reality, the only reality I had known since the day I was born, was pulled away, leaving me alone and vulnerable in the universe. I lost the only two people in the world who I knew with absolute confidence would love me and care about me unconditionally, no matter what trouble I got into, whether or not they disagreed with my choices, even if we were angry with each other and couldn’t be in the same room. I lost the two people who knew me the longest and loved me anyway.
I felt orphaned after my dad’s death, but after my mom died, I literally became an orphan. I sought out a counsellor. I listened to caring friends and family members, and I accepted their help and support. I also discovered a book called The Orphaned Adult by Alexander Levy. In this beautiful gem of a book, Levy accompanied me in the early weeks of my grief journey. What makes this book so precious is the way he validates the disorienting experience of becoming parentless as an adult.
When my dad died, I felt a pain unlike anything I had experienced up to that point in my 28 years. I wondered how it was possible that people had survived such pain, but they had, from the beginning of time. That was hardly any comfort. I couldn’t imagine ever feeling happy again. But eventually, I did. Levy describes that process so eloquently and advises to keep things simple while you’re waiting for that morning when you wake up, and your first waking thought isn’t grief:
Until that morning, keep it small and simple. If you need to struggle with something big and incomprehensible, ponder the sun, the moon, and the millions of stars that nightly arrive and depart, and then next night arrive again, in a tempo as familiar as the rise and fall of our own abdomens as we inhale and exhale. Reliable, trustworthy enigmas, they are as unknowable as the secrets that wound and heal our breakable and infinitely renewable hearts (175).
I am not suggesting that any one book can magically get you through the journey of grieving the loss of one or both of your parents. But if you are looking for an understanding friend to hold your hand and walk you a good part of the way, Alexander Levy’s book will be waiting for you.
