Boomers Challenged by Double Hit of Grief… Theirs and Their Remaining Parent’s

By Adele DelSavio

It has finally happened. One of your parents has died. It could have been suddenly or slowly, expected or not. Your remaining parent is clearly suffering — from grief, and maybe from physical or emotional problems — and so are you.

“But,” to paraphrase Harry Chapin, “There are planes to catch, and bills to pay …” You put your grief on hold while you deal with the funeral, the insurance, the paperwork.

You’re a Baby Boomer, a member of the sandwich generation. Boomers’ parents are living longer and their children are staying home longer. “We still have family obligations and jobs of our own. How and when do we deal with our own grief?” asks Anne Costa, a social worker from Baldwinsville.

Costa’s father died in April and her mother lives nearby. “I really want to be there for my mother and help her through this difficult time, but I am still in the early stages of grief myself and sometimes it’s hard to find the energy or focus to help either one of us,” she said.

Children with siblings might envy the autonomy of only children; only children might wish they had the help of siblings. Costa, an only child, sees value in being just one. “There are no disputes with sisters or brothers. There’s just one person to make the decisions,” she said.

Heidi Buda, a youth minister from Mexico, N.Y., needed her sister to make decisions when their father died in Germany. She is still comforted by some of those decisions.

Her mother and sister, who live in Germany, postponed the cremation so that she could say goodbye, and then appointed her to take her father’s urn to his grave and bury him. “My dad had always told me that when I was a baby I had a lot of stomach problems and he carried me around all night. I was so fortunate to be able to carry my dad,” she said.

Buda still counts on her sister to take care of their mother’s day-to-day needs. She talks to her mother once a week, and her sister sends her a picture of their father’s grave every time she plants new flowers. She also sends updates on their mother – actions, Buda says, that help her deal long-distance with her grief for her father and concern for her mother.

But sometimes family and friends are not enough. Donna Lupien of Oswego lost her father in 1972 to a heart attack eight months after her 9-year-old son died in an accident.

“My mom lost her husband and her grandson. I wasn’t much help because I was in such terrible grief too,” she remembered. “Also, my mother needed someone to take care of, and I’m not a person to be taken care of,” she added.

Other family deaths followed, and she became depressed. Then the anger started. “I wasn’t used to anger, as we were not allowed to show it when we were younger. I didn’t know how to yell, hit or kick anything. That just wasn’t me,” she said.

Then her mother died. A cousin put Lupien in touch with a friend who was a psychologist. Two years after starting treatment, she spent a full day crying to the point where her bones ached and her throat was raw. “I was finally able to grieve,” she said.

Lupien has been facilitating bereavement support groups in Oswego and Fulton for the past 13 years. She has seen parents come reluctantly with their grown children and then open up. “People of that generation didn’t believe in support groups. They thought you were weak if you got help. Kids need to understand that,” she said. “Go to a bereavement group and pick up some literature, then encourage your parent to come with you. Tell them that it will help you if they come,” she said.

Costa agrees that that stoicism is a major obstacle to helping an older mother or father. “Our parents don’t go to counselors or take medication. They just buck up,” she said.

Parents’ personalities play into the challenges their children face, too. While Lupien’s mother wanted someone to nurture, Costa’s mother needs a great deal of nurturing. “Part of it is the division of labor in our parents’ marriages. My mom is faced with learning everything from how to use the weedeater, to how to adjust the digital thermostat,” Costa noted.

Parents, already weakened by grief, can panic when faced with even a simple chore that engenders feelings of helplessness and reminds them that the lost spouse will not return. The calls from Mom or Dad can do damage.

“Make sure your family understands you need more sleep. Let your employer know what you’re going through,” Costa advised. She said she goes for regular massages for physical relaxation. A Catholic, she looks to her faith for spiritual solace. “But don’t look to spirituality for an easy out on your grief trip,” she said. “There are no pat answers to explain the mystery of life and death.”

“Take advantage of remembrance events,” she added. These are held by churches, hospices, hospitals, and bereavement organizations. She said she and her mother both found comfort at a Memorial Day service at Hope for Bereaved’s Butterfly Garden in Syracuse.

However, people grieve differently, Lupien warns, and what might bring comfort to one family member might confuse or turn off another. So might the duration of grieving, or the feelings that seem to come from nowhere. “People need to know that these differences are normal,” she said.

The support groups Lupien facilitates are supervised by Nancy Devine of the Office of Family Life Education of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse. Devine was in her mid-30s when her father died more than 40 years ago. Unlike Lupien’s and Costa’s mothers, her mother didn’t force or demand much nurturing.

“I still lived at home and we were more like best friends. She made it very easy for me to help her with her grief and deal with my own,” said Devine, who lives in Skaneateles.

Devine was elected the first female president of Syracuse’s Onondaga Ski Club within a couple of months of her father’s death. “I was very involved with activities and she didn’t try to prevent this. She had an independent personality and, although I knew she was lonely at times, she didn’t feel comfortable showing it,” she said.

Devine showed her concern in non-threatening ways like dinner out every Sunday. “People should remember that every situation and person is different,” she said.

Regardless of the needs of the remaining parent, and the way a child chooses to meet them, it is important to remain true to your conscience and values, says Donna Kalb of Syracuse

Kalb is a grief counselor and community outreach worker for Hope for Bereaved in Syracuse. Her mother was in her 80s when Kalb’s father died, and for six years she and her husband helped her stay in her own home in Syracuse.

“My husband was close to retirement and it was getting harder to keep up two houses,” she said. They welcomed her mother into their home, where she lived until her death seven years later.

“Things were fine until my mother broke her hip. That changed everything,” Kalb remembered.

With her mother no longer able to climb stairs, they turned their dining room into a bedroom. As her mother’s health deteriorated and her physical care became more demanding, Kalb cut back on her hours at work. “Your life isn’t your own anymore. It’s almost like having an infant. The roles are reversed,” she said. “It’s hard to take care of yourself. I woke up tired and I went to bed tired.”

She persevered because her personal code of ethics did not include a nursing home. Now that her mother is gone, she is glad she kept her mother home. “It’s just the way I felt, and now I feel it was a blessing to take care of her,” she said.

When her mother was still in good health, Kalb and her husband included her in all of their activities – not because she demanded it, but because they wanted to be there for her. Still, it took its toll.

“There was no time for us,” Kalb noted. The change in traditions deepened her grief, too. “Things we used to do at their house, like Thanksgiving, were now at our house,” she said.

Another challenge was anger at her siblings. One of four children, she was the only one who didn’t live out-of-state and she feels they could have done more. “They’re far but they’re not that far. It’s still hard to get over the resentment,” she said.

The anger Lupien and Kalb experienced are part of a constellation of reactions that Julie Hall, author of “The Boomer Burden: Dealing with your Parents’ Lifetime Accumulation of Stuff” (2007, Thomas Nelson Publishers), calls “ticking time bombs.”

“They can explode,” she writes, “into everything from arguments to physical illness.” Some examples she gives are guilt over not meeting the needs of children or parents; anger at a spouse, child, parent, doctor or health care professional; depression; fatigue; loneliness; illness from lack of sleep, poor diet, or stress; and fear, for example, about dealing with the parent’s debt, or of making a wrong decision as executor of the estate.

“I call these time bombs because we never know when they will hit … Out of the blue you might snap at your spouse,” she writes.

Spending time with spouse and children can help. “Those who study the effects of stress on marriages report that the death of a parent can put a great strain on a good marriage, so pay particular attention to your spouse. Go on at least one date, and try not to focus on the events surrounding your parent’s death. Your spouse may not fully understand what you are going through, but whatever help he or she tries to give will be done with the best of intentions, so receive it graciously,” Hall advises.

And, although it’s tempting to go on autopilot, Costa advises against it. “Try hard to feel, and honor your feelings,” she said.

One thing that surprised Costa — who has a daughter — was the difference between losing her father and other losses she’d experienced, including three miscarriages and the loss of friends to accident and suicide.
She said, “Your time as a child is ending and mortality is in your face. The family tree has changed; one of the roots has been cut off. I was just a child walking with my dad and now I’m looking at my own child. I want to make the most of the time with my mom.”

Other thoughts bedevil the middle-aged child. She or he is old enough to anticipate their own widowhood.

“My mom and I get home from an outing and my dad’s not there. She knew my dad since she was 14. I can’t even imagine … Now I worry about losing my husband,” Costa said.

“When your child dies eventually you can take their bed down, but when a spouse dies that is a bed you shared together and a remembrance of your emptiness each night,” was Lupien’s realization after her father died.