The loss of a mother: how to cope with grief, despite age
It doesn’t matter what age someone is. The death of a parent, and particularly the loss of a mother, is an overwhelming grief. For some people it is such a dark time it seems impossible to overcome. Yet death is an essential part of life. Why then is it so difficult to recover after such a loss?
A healthy relationship between parents and children
No matter how old parents may be, it is never easy to say goodbye. Mother figure, in particular, represents a point of reference. It defines who we are, our measure of judgment, our ambitions, our idea of love. To be without it is to drop our role as children once and for all and become adults even though, biographically speaking, we have been adults for a long time.
Be careful, however, this is a privilege. After all, to suffer immensely for the loss of your mother means to have enjoyed that her presence until her last breath. And unfortunately, this does not happen in all families. Love and understanding are feelings that come only from a healthy relationship between parents and children. That is why for some, lucky ones, losing their mother seems to be an unbearable pain. But then, how to overcome it?
How to overcome the pain of losing your mother
The only way to overcome the pain of losing a mother is to experience it. This sounds like a trivial horoscope cliché. Instead, in a society like our own, which has completely removed the very idea of death from our daily lives, it is a real revolution. If he or she really loved us, a good parent also taught us how to do without him or her. When he or she passes away, we don’t know it yet and we feel lost. Only by going through that grief tunnel, taking our time, will we find his or her heritage. We will discover that we have the strength and skills to live without his or her earthly presence.
The age we are when we lose our parents does not affect the amount of grief we can experience. Even if we rationally know that they will be gone at some point, even if we have now become parents ourselves, the sense of loss can be terrifying. That is why it is good not to isolate ourselves. Sharing our grief with other people is one way to speed up the normalization process.
If up until then the point of reference was the father and mother, we can look for that sense of protection and care in others, in our partners, our friends, a brother or sister, a relative. This is a healthy process of healing, which will lead you to discover and rediscover the strength needed to overcome the grief deep within you.
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