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Death at a young age compounds the intensity of grief

A kind reader has reminded me that in a recent column when I gave examples of sad losses, I did not mention the loss of a child. She was right. I didn't, although I have written about the death of a child in the past. I suppose it was not on my mind because we aren't supposed to lose our children, not before us. I've corrected this in recent columns.

But as I thought about it, I know it happens more often than we'd like to think about. In just the last few months, several readers have written to me about their grief over the premature death of grown children in their 30s or 40s - one from the flu, which was particularly bad this year. Another was from a car accident, but it could have been a motorcycle crash, opioids, a heart attack, cancer - or war, mass shootings, anything that causes young deaths.

It feels both tragic and all backward when someone loses a child, no matter what age, whether young or adult. With our heightened expectation that life expectancy here in the U.S. is quite long, most of think we will live to be real old, and that modern medicine can cure just about everything.

Many of us are baby boomers, where we feel we will live just about "forever," even though we really know life is finite. So a young or middle age death just doesn't fit. We are truly caught off guard. It just seems wrong.

Recently a friend mentioned she was still "trying to get her head around" the sudden death of a 30-year-old friend. One reader who lost a 45-year-old son explained that part of the grief is the loss of family legacy, and all the bright future and promise of their lost son. It's heartbreaking.

It also happens that people sometimes lose their spouse in their 40s or 50s, left not only alone but often with young children to raise as a single parent. This means somewhere there are also parents grieving over that death; the spouse was their grown child. So any death at a young age very much compounds the intensity of grief.

Some people have lost another young adult they were close to - a friend, a neighbor, a niece or nephew. To the bereaved, these young people could be so close they seem a lot like their own children. And to complicate matters further, such grief may be pretty much "invisible" because most people think intense grief is reserved for immediate family members.

Another type of invisible grief is over a miscarriage or infant death. This is virtually never mentioned in conversations, even among close friends and family. And if someone says something, it can be hurting or inappropriate rather than comforting, such as "there will be other babies," or some similar unthinking comment.

So the point is: There are many people out there suffering because they have lost a child, and many have lost adult children. They need our support. One's child is always our child, no matter what age. And some of this grief is rather "invisible" for several reasons - sometimes people just do not realize how heavily the death is weighing on their friends or relatives. They just don't understand.

Some of it is long-term grief that will never go away. I don't believe we need to dwell on grief all the time, but do try to be as supportive and as understanding as you can, even though it's not something people usually discuss in everyday conversation.

• Susan Anderson-Khleif of Sleepy Hollow has a doctorate in family sociology from Harvard, taught at Wellesley College and is a retired Motorola executive. Contact her at sakhleif@comcast.net or see her blog longtermgrief.tumblr.com. See previous columns at www.dailyherald.com/topics/Anderson-Kleif-Susan.

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