| Title | : | Surmonter Le Deuil De Ses Parents |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 2100488775 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9782100488773 |
| Format Type | : | Kindle , Hardcover , Paperback , Audiobook & More |
| Number of Pages | : | 180 |
| Publication | : | First published August 3, 1999 |
Surmonter Le Deuil De Ses Parents Reviews
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I was drawn to this book after a particular day where I was aching to talk to my parents. I lost my mom 9 years ago after a lengthy struggle with diabetes and my dad 20 months ago after a heart attack with no warning. I knew it was normal to still be missing my parents, of course, but the level at which I still miss them and the fact that I often find solace in books (a trait I inherited from my mom), made me wonder if there were any books out there for adults about losing your parents. I discovered this one and I did find it helpful. The author validated a lot of what I've felt over the years, that losing your parents can feel like a very lonely situation, and he explained why. Adults who haven't lost their parents can live in a world where there is still someone who will likely pass away before they do, another generation between them and death. When you lose both of your parents, your own mortality hits very close to home. You reach another level of adulthood, one where YOU are now the oldest generation in your family. You start to gauge your life by the age your parents were when they died. Will I make it past that age? You experience major life changes -- new responsibilities, new choices. Do you try to maintain family traditions or create new ones? You discover the areas of your life (for example, holiday traditions) that your parents were still holding together like glue, even though you were an adult. As the author says, "It is a very unique kind of loss. A subtle shift occurs in a person's identity, whether they know it or not. As long as their parents are alive, they're someone's child. And after their parents are gone, they aren't, and that's a pretty profound change in how you see yourself and how you understand the world to be."
Friends who haven't lost a parent are often wonderfully supportive in the early days or weeks after you lose a parent, but society as a whole tends to send the message that this is "the natural order of things" and that you should accept it as a part of life and move on fairly quickly. And if you haven't experienced it yet, you just don't know how much it rocks you to your core when you experience this loss. After all, our parents have been in our lives since day one. Even if you aren't close to your parents, a huge part of your identity is tied to them. And if you are close, that's even more likely to be the case. But yet, there is an awkwardness that comes with talking about it with those who haven't been there. As the author says, "Adult children feel they must keep their feelings to themselves and mourn in secret." He also talks about the shared comfort you experience when you discover someone else has lost one or both parents. I've definitely experienced that. When I find out someone else has been in my shoes, there's a feeling of "You get me" and a feeling that you aren't completely alone. I could very quickly rattle off the names of my friends who have lost one or both parents because the moment I discover that, it's filed in my brain as someone who can relate to where I am in my life. I am so very happy for my friends who still have both parents and my heart aches a little for them when I think that they still have to go through this experience someday. And I truly appreciate those who have been there and know what I'm feeling. It's human nature to want to feel like you "fit in", like you're not the outsider, and I think we all instinctively are drawn to sharing with those who have similar experiences.
Another comfort I took from the book was the author's insistence that the "conventional stages of grief" are really NOT typically experienced in any particular order or specific timeline and when people think they should be experiencing their grief in a certain way, it leads to feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt. I loved this quote: "Pretending that grief -- which really is a fundamental and primitive experience -- takes place in our minds or that it can be conceptually organized and 'understood' is to risk misrepresenting grief's chaotic power and to risk missing grief's point altogether."
I know I will always grieve for my parents. This book helped me realize that the fact I still grieve for them, and the ways and timelines in which I do that, are perfectly normal. And that even though our parents should technically go before us in the "natural order of things", it is still a profound loss that shakes up your world and your identity.
I recommend this book for anyone who has experienced parental loss. I think it would be really ideal for people to read shortly after losing a parent as perhaps it would assure them that there is no one "right way" to grieve and that all kinds of life changes are normal after the loss of your parents before they spend a long time pushing the grief away or thinking they aren't handling it the "right way". -
"Sisters, we are now orphans," is what my younger sister observed moments after we held our father in our arms as he took his last breath. It is hard to describe the heaviness that I feel, even two years after both of my parents died within a 12-week period. Sometimes I feel like I have PTSD, as I dread certain dates and can't control the panic attacks, flashbacks to certain moments, and general sadness that I feel on a daily basis. This book helped me to understand that I am not alone in my feelings. My two younger sisters have also read it, and I ordered a copy for our oldest sister, who was the executor of their will and perhaps the one most affected by their deaths.
I was particularly moved my some of the poems that were shared at the beginning of the chapters. I am a writer myself, but have found that I have not been able to write since I lost my parents. This book did inspire me to write a poem (below) about my mom. And maybe writing short pieces like this is a good way for me to work through some of my emotions and grief.
“Matching Purses”
Today I finally replaced
My old, tattered beige purse
Made of fake leather.
It was the same size and color
Of my mom’s purse
The last time we were together.
We busily ran our errands, taking advantage of my brief visit home.
She and I repeatedly reached for the wrong purse,
Then laughed as we clumsily exchanged them.
I somberly arrange the plastic cards,
Chapstick, and checkbook
Inside my new brown purse
With its shiny metal clasp.
Words and laughter
Echo through my mind: “Whoops! This one’s yours,”
as Mom and I switch bags.
My new purse joins the ever-growing collection
Of things that never knew her hands, her laugh,
The person that she was,
The woman who was my mother. -
This title came to me at a moment when I needed it rather desperately. My mom and dad both died over the summer of 2014 and, after an initial period of what I can only look back upon and describe as 'shocked numbness', I am now entering a difficult period where my grief is beginning to seep out of me in painful waves of tears, anxiety attacks, insomnia and vulnerabilities I was never aware that I had. In life, I have prided myself as a reasonable person, not drawn to the dramatics. It has always been my goal to keep my emotions under control and to push through the inevitable problems with a practical attitude of 'getting it over with'. This is the first 'problem' I have ever faced that cannot be addressed in my normal fashion. Death and bereavement is a lot messier than that.
I had my real wake up call recently when I took a cookie I had been hoarding into my living room. This cookie was one that my mom used to make and it was a childhood favorite of mine. Although the recipe had been lost for almost 30 years, I was able to dig it up out of the old Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper database a couple years ago. Before my mom passed away, she was able to confirm the recipe I located as the one she used to make my favorite cookie. I baked a batch this Christmas, and preparing and eating these cookies was like having a hug from my mom. It was a positive experience and I took some comfort in continuing this tradition. (The cookies were as delicious as I remember them to be!)
Before sitting down to savor it, I tasked myself with a bit of New Year's Resolution de-cluttering. I decided to finally take a few minutes to go through some old and unread magazines that have been piling up at our house for these past few busy years and recycle most of them. I went to a magazine rack and dug through the stack. When I got to the bottom, a piece of paper fell out of the stack. I came very close to just sticking it into the recycle stack and getting on to my cookie. However, the piece of paper seemed to contain handwriting and it looked familiar. I opened the folded page and, written there in my dad's handwriting, was a list of memories he had of my toddler days spent in our Cleveland area apartment building and also, over the summers, in a college town where we stayed while dad was doing some post graduate work. I had only the vaguest recollection of one or two of the places and events listed there. But the emotional reaction was quick and merciless. I was doubled over in grief, lying on my living room floor dissolved in the wracking sobs of my lost childhood. I lay there for awhile just overwhelmed. When I 'came to' I noticed that, as I cried, I was also mechanically devouring the now tasteless cookie...mindlessly eating and crying.
I have become what I vowed I would never be -- the sad middle aged woman eating for solace -- my youth and the protections of my happy childhood seemingly lost to me forever. I never wanted to be this woman whom I used to observe from the callow arrogance of my twenties. I would see women in their 40s and 50s who had 'let themselves go' -- 40 pounds overweight, careless with their appearance, haggard and always exhausted. Their lives revolved around the care of others -- children and aging parents; noble as I perceived this care giving role to be, I saw that it robbed these women of their individual personality, their joy, their style and their waning youth. Not I! I would be the mid-life woman with verve! I would maintain my appearance and carve out an artsy funkiness to my 'look'. I would care for everyone who needed me and I would do it Ginger Rogers style...backwards and in high heels.
Not so. That is mainly an illusion once you get to be my age and have the problems that people in my age have.
I had this book upstairs in my latest library pile. I picked myself up off the floor and decided to go look at it. I am so glad that I did.
Alexander Levy has written a book which I found to be almost uncanny in its message. Levy is a practicing pyschologist who has also lost both of his parents. The Orphaned Adult is filled with compassionate wisdom and it is beautifully written. I did not expect this lovely writing out of a book that I mainly went to for information. Levy weaves his life story with his Russian immigrant parents into his narrative of grief. Although Levy and I come from rather different backgrounds -- he is Jewish by origin but raised in a thoroughly secular home while I am Christian in origin but raised in a secular home -- I found his take on life to resonate deeply with my own. Many of the grief materials are too religious in nature for me and I either do not relate to them or I find them vaguely annoying. Levy is respectful toward religion and even curious about it, but he does not over emphasize it. Somehow I found his treatment of the subject of parental bereavement 'just right'.
I made so many notes while reading this book...and read so many passages aloud to my husband...that I feel that the rest of this review should mainly be excerpted sections. Levy has so many insightful and compassionate things to say to us, the orphaned adults. I hope that others who are reading reviews here and looking for that literary lifeline in their own time of greatest sorrow might take some comfort in these words and then go out and find this book. I really cannot recommend it enough. This is a five star read.
Levy on the initial attempt to process the death of his father: "I struggled to find some meaning in my rapid transformation from a man with a father who was slow moving and alert to a man with a guant and disoriented father to a man with a wasted and comatose father to a man with no father at all."
Levy on grief: "I think grief is an expression of our fundamental inability to comprehend, conceptually or any other way, that a loved one has died. Our brains don't work that way. We can't help it.
We are accustomed to a person coming back into the room after that person has left it. We cannot form
and affirmative mental image of someone who has always been there no longer being anywhere. We simply cannot imagine someone whom we once knew alive being not alive.
We cannot conceive of ourselves being without someone who is precious to us, and yet when someone important to us dies, even though we can't conceive it has happened, we strain to grasp their absence. That's the way our brain works. We can't help it.
And so, leaning forward to reach out and embrace the familiar image of someone who is no longer there, we fall into the abyss their absence has left behind. We tumble into endless emptiness, and we are enveloped by the dark and suffocating uncertainty of life's most confounding and distressing dilemmas: that despite comforting illusions of vigor and youthfulness, our lives are fragile, and we are attached to them by no more than the slender thread of fortune's whimsy; that regardless of how self sufficient, successful, and clever we may be, we are profoundly dependent on those we love; that no veneer of professional expertise, adult accomplishment, or social self-confidence can effectively camouflage our underlying and awesome terror of the unknown; and that no matter how much we know or how strong our faith, we stand powerless and helpless in the face of life's impenetrable mysteries."
Levy welcomes a newly orphaned adult into the fold with these words: "Welcome to the world of the bereft. This is not a diversion from your real life. This is not an exercise made up of a set of stages -- one, two, three, four, five -- that you have to go through before getting back to your real life. This IS your real life. You really have sustained that loss. You really are going to live your life without that precious person. Neither I nor anyone else can help you to 'get over it.' You don't need to. Grief is something you get through, and if you let it get through you as well, you will eventually find that you have enough room in yourself to contain it. And when you come out the other side of this terrible time, without needing to understand how it happened any more than you need to understand how you digest food and distribute nutrients throughout your body in order to be well fed, you will find that you are able to face, and conduct, your life in a new way."
Levy describes the strange and unsettling feeling an adult has when they realize that they are 'nobody's child anymore': "But there was no longer anyone who would ever again claim me as their child. No longer was anyone living who had been present at my birth, who had witnessed my first steps, heard my first words, walked me to my first day of school, or paced the floor nervously, the first time I borrowed the family car. No one knew the details of my life and my family's history. I was no longer anyone's child.
I didn't particularly 'feel like an orphan,' a phrase I'd heard people use when they are estranged from living parents. I didn't particularly feel 'like' anything at all. What I felt was afraid.
And that was puzzling. Why would I be frightened? Why would I feel so strangely unprotected? I had been on my own since my adolescence. My parents had neither provided for me nor protected me for many years. In fact, for the previous six or seven years, they had been dependent on me to help make decisions and arrangements. Nonetheless, I felt strangely and suddenly unprotected."
Levy ponders our entry into the final phase of adulthood; we finally 'grow up' when our last parent has died:
"Old people say that one never really grows up until one's parents have died. Maybe so. A piece of fruit is 'mature' when the stem, by which it has always been supported, nourished, and attached to its roots, withers. Perhaps that is how it is with people too. Perhaps only after parents have died can people find out what they are going to be when they grow up."
Levy counsels us to give ourselves a break and relax our expectations of how grief is handled:
"Perhaps, however, the most important break, the one that only you can provide, is to release yourself from any expectation that you get through this chaotic time with any grace. Expect to be clumsy. Expect to be undignified. Each of us must find out how we grieve, and just about all of us do it in an ungainly fashion. No one has ever told me that they looked back on a period of grief regretting that their performance was not preserved on film. Some of us not only cry, we wail. Some feel angry all the time and snap at strangers. Others get all dressed up in outlandish outfits; while others refuse to bathe for days. The ordinary expressions of grief cover a range of conduct so wide as to be virtually inclusive of every unattractive and undesirable trait imaginable.
Grief cannot be done skillfully, artfully, or beautifully. The bereft earn no points for style or difficulty; there is no concluding moment to grief, arms raised in triumph like an Olympic athlete awaiting a score.
The goal of grief is neither achievement nor excellence. The goal if grief is to get through it."
Fellow bereft, take some comfort in the knowledge that the Orphaned Adult Club is one that any of us who outlive our parents will join. This is a horrendous experience, yes. But it is also a universal one. We are designed to go through this and, difficult as it is to imagine when you are in the midst of the agony, we are usually also designed to survive it. You do not 'get over it'...you merely 'get used to it'. You do not 'move on with your life' without your lost loved ones. You move on carrying them with you each and every day in your heart and in your memory. Their absence and yet, also, their presence can give you wisdom and perspective that was lacking when you were more carefree and still innocent of this pain.
As for me, I have moved beyond the cookie and am in the midst of my annual January clean eating 'detox'. I am moving into the New Year one minute at a time. The piece of paper that I improbably found in that stack of old magazines is now tucked into my jewelry box so that I can take it out and reread it from time to time. It reminds me that I was loved and cherished once as a child and that this love and support followed me well into my adult years. This sort of love has to be strong enough to stay with me...even on the hardest days. When I am feeling sorry for myself, as I am so often these days...when I see other people with their parents...enjoying their praise and being fussed over about their health...when I see young kids with their grandparents and I am overwhelmed with jealous misery because my parents are no longer there...I will retrieve that scrap and reread it again and again. Sometimes the dead leave us messages in dreams and in improbable piles of clutter. Look for them. And time...give yourself the rest of your life to heal...one minute at a time.
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For some reason, I was under the impression that this book was for young adults who had lost their parents. Instead, it was more focused on middle-age and up, which isn't bad or anything, just unexpected.
Since it was geared towards middle age, some parts were hard for me to relate to. It wasn't all like that though, as some themes in grief are for any age. While I felt that some assumptions were too broad, I do understand that it is impossible to cover every angle and situation.
I'm the sort of person that likes to know everything about a situation, so that's why I'm reading all these books. I remember being told that grief can cause illness, but at the same time, I didn't really believe it, not really. It was helpful to read from a psychologist's perspective and understand the symptoms of grief. It certainly explains the pneumonia I had as well as other illnesses while mom was dying and since then.
Either way, this put me in the mindframe to keep exploring my own grief and to not suppress it as much as I do. -
A quick but spot-on read about the profound effects of the loss of one's parents. It's inevitable but the pain is just overwhelming. Again, this was helpful to read so that I feel understood and not like I'm losing my mind.
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This book... wasn't very helpful to me, personally. I would say that to my imagination, a suitable audience for this book would be upper to middle-class, middle-aged or older people, who have lost both their parents in a "normal" way (i.e. in old age, sicknesses, in hospitals, and from non-abusive, non-addict, fairly normally functioning families).
If you're not financially well-off, your parents died suddenly, violently, there was abuse, etc. or you're younger than 40ish? I'm not sure if this is an "ideal" book for helping to navigate life after losing your parents. To me, it felt really alienating and while that was maybe helpful in that I could project my negative feelings on this book, overall it just made me feel more alone and freakish for losing my parents the way I have. It's been a week and I'm actually still annoyed that I was so looking forward to this book and that it was such a letdown.
There were some helpful bits and obviously there are emotions and experiences that seem to be common regardless of death's particular circumstance. However, some of the points brought up were quite strangely hurtful if I'm being honest. For example, one part that stuck with me was "how common it is to feel like our dead parents are still intervening and taking care of us in our lives." The main story here was a woman who found roses (which her dad had always given to her) along with a card from some stranger's family and basically, she was so depressed after her dad died she couldn't work and therefore, couldn't afford to remodel her house and well! wouldn't you know that this letter she found was someone's mother telling them that they were going to help pay to remodel their son's home and here's some money "mom always loves you!". Well, after she finds this letter and the flowers, she goes home to find out her deceased father's stockbroker actually has like 10,000$ to give her!
I was seething with jealousy and feeling like an absolute failure and reject after that. It took me a day or two to recover just from reading that segment alone. Why didn't I feel like my parents were still around? Why haven't either of them "intervened" to help me since they've died?? Etc etc... needless stress, to be honest!!! And there were more than a few points and stories in this book that made me feel like this... inferior, abnormal, and like a failure even in the way I'm grieving the death of my parents.
Anyway, I got more helpful and reassuring information about being orphaned from google searches and blogposts than from reading this. I'm sure it's helpful for others, but if you're having a complicated grief experience I would say maybe be careful with this book because it could be a little harmful, at least it was for me. Like, it's nicely written and I'm sorry to be harsh! But yeah, actually thinking about this book and how alienated it made me feel is getting me upset again just rethinking about it. lol! SO weirdly hurtful. Please forgive me for being so harsh...it's really a 1-2.5 star book. If I were being less emotional and taking it personally, it's a three-star book because it's very, very average. -
I read this shortly after the death of my mom, and it was extremely illuminating and supportive. It validated a lot of what I was thinking, and it gave words to my grief experience.
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This book will be different for each person who reads it as each of us grieve differently. Like lots of others, I had absolutely wonderful parents that I loved deeply and was utterly shocked and devastated when both of my perfectly healthy parents passed away within 6 months of each other.
Even though I was a middle aged man with a wonderful family, I certainly knew that none of us are going to live forever. My father was only 67 and in good health and my mother was a bit older than him but she was healthy and easily looked 10 years younger than her chronological age. They both laughed and loved and lived life to the fullest. They loved our children like they were their own.
This book helped me understand the grief, emptiness, and loss that I have felt ever since my parents passed away. I think people just expect adults to move on with their lives once their parents are gone. I truly never understood the emptiness and my own mortality I had until I read this book. I would recommend this book to any adult that has lost a parent or parents, as well as any adults who still have their parents. While books have always taught me things and helped me relax, I can honestly say that this book was great therapy and answered lots of my questions and addressed feelings that I thought were unique to me. -
Very interesting and comforting book about various experiences with grief.
The author makes several thought-provoking points, and describes perfectly things we are processing without realizing it, regarding the loss of our parents…and other losses in our lives.
A couple quotes I liked:
“I think grief is an expression of our fundamental inability to comprehend conceptually or any other way that a loved ones has died. Our brains don’t work that way. We are accustomed to a person coming back into the room after that person has left it. We cannot form an affirmative mental image of someone who has always been there no longer being ANYWHERE.”
“It’s really like being out there without an umbrella when our parents are gone.” -
This ended up not being as specifically helpful as I would've liked, but I did appreciate the validation of grief we have for our parents, no matter how old we were when they may have died. I still have my mom, so it was interesting to see the author's perspective on this. However, his section on prayer wasn't very helpful to me (and I think he may have been using either outdated or nonrigorous studies), but I think I just liked having a book where someone talked about these things. I think I'm getting better after my dad passed away over 2 years ago, but I still feel like I can't talk about it much with friends or even some family members, so here I am just reading about it instead.
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Excellent book for adults working through the grief of losing a parent. The author clearly and succinctly describes almost every imaginable emotion, feeling, mood, and sensation felt by the bereft with sensitivity and genuine compassion. Not a stale, clinical read... it's helped and is helping me make sense of and process the inevitable (but nevertheless shocking) experience of living through the unique trauma that losing a parent brings about.
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I have read 7-8 books about death and greif so far and this one has been the best. It actually digs deep within and mentions things that make you think and wonder. I have lost my father to whom I was very close and reading this book made me reconsider a couple things.
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Gentle book (blurbed by Mr. Rogers!) about the experience of losing both parents (being an "orphaned" adult) and about grief and loss generally. Good stories as well as some practical advice and wisdom. I especially enjoyed the poems that begin every chapter.
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Incredibly helpful book while I navigate grief from the loss of my mom. Levy validates what I have been feeling and offers solace. Heartily recommended.
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This book is professional, kind and helpful. It gave words to my thoughts. I am better for reading it.
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A very touching narration and description of the phases and aspects of grieving a parent- a topic less often discussed or written about. The author has very much disclosed the unfamiliar world one is pushed to when one loses a parent. "Everything changes and things are simply not the same and will never be the same too. One can never get over it but can only learn how to live with it." The feelings one undergo (but as a commoner will be at a loss of words to explain) have been beautifully written and it feels like you are travelling with the author with one's own set of similar memories and anecdotes. My heart rejoiced when I time and again (because it re-assured me that I wasn't wrong in feeling so) read how insensitive and un-understanding people around can turn to be at this lowest phase of one's life.
I would say it can be found relatable only to people in such a transitional phase in life. Else, in all probability, it's going to be thought of as an over-rated topic and a book addressing the first-world issues. -
The Orphaned Adult helped me begin to process my grief over the recent passing of my dad. The realization that I am no one’s child is more complex than we realize. Dr. Levy explains how grief impacts our identity, our relationships, our God and how to navigate life with grief.
Some revelatory and important quotes for me: “whatever our relationship with them and, however well or poorly we get along, parents project an illusion of permanence, a constancy that suggests life to be knowable, reliable, trustworthy, and therefore feasible.”
“As we watch them vanish, slipping beyond our grasp, we feel a part of that innocent sense of safety and security, unwittingly based on a lifetime exposure to the appearance of parental permanence, vanishing as well. -
I picked this up because I don't know many people who have lost both parents and I felt like I needed to find something that would just help me know that there are other people who get it.
This book is a good overview of how our lives may continue when we no longer have parents. I didn't find it particularly helpful for me, though. It mostly made me think about how hard it can be for people who have not lost parents to relate to people who have and how frustrating that can be sometimes. I can see how this would be a helpful basic guide for someone who is having trouble navigating life during grief or helpful for others trying to understand the changes a friend is encountering. The main premise is true: you change, your perspective changes, and many other things in your life change when you become an orphan.
There are a few passages I highlighted. One is: "Our parents' deaths are most commonly our first exposure to profound personal loss. Thus, our parents end their lives as our teachers--the roles they have played since the beginning of our lives. From the time of our birth, they taught us about living. With their death, they teach us about dying."
I have been dreaming very often in some capacity about my parents or other people in my life who have died. In most cases, they are alive but I know they are going to die, or they have died but have come back for just a little while and I don't have enough time to be with them so I can't enjoy my time with them and I get overwhelmed, angry, and sad about it. Apparently, a lot of people have dreams like this: "The dreamer usually finds it confusing to encounter parents, who appear and sound younger and healthier than they remember them to be, in a dream while being simultaneously aware that they are dead."
Here's another quote I liked: "Parental loss is one of childhood's most fervent and adulthood's most abiding terrors. If our parents are still living, the simple fact that someone has lost a parent may make us a bit uncomfortable around them. They become different than we are, ever so slightly exotic. However, if our parents are also deceased, those who have lost parents become like neighbors toward whom we feel indulgent and welcoming impulses."
While I didn't find the book super enlightening, I'm glad I read it, and even more glad that it exists. -
Very Insightful Read
I really enjoyed reading this book because it helped me to put my feelings into perspective. My mama passed five months ago. So far, losing her has been the most painful experience of my life. I had been wanting to put my feelings down in a journal, but because my emotions were all over the place, I did not know how nor where to start. Dr. Levy expresses so much of what I am still feeling which has helped me to see that it's normal to feel this way. I recall an adult friend of mine who told me some years ago when her mom died that she was now an orphan. At the time, I did not understand why she felt like an orphan since she was no longer a child. Like me, her dad died many, many years before. Speaking for myself, my father's death (although it hurt) did not hurt like losing Mama did because he and I had never formed a close relationship. Losing the person who gave me life and had always been there for me made me feel like an orphan. I have learned from my experience that it doesn't matter what your age (child or adult), when you lose both of your parents, that's exactly how u feel--like an orphan. I recommend this book for anyone (male and female) who have become orphans during their adulthood. -
An invaluable book that helped me put into perspective what I'm feeling these days.
Some of the quotes that resonated with me -
Mourning is not a process but a transition.
Parents project an illusion of permanence, a constancy that suggests life to be knowable, reliable & trustworthy.
There is no experience quite as stunning as when there is nothing where something has always been.
Grief illuminates life's impermanence.
Once life-span awareness has formed, time starts being considered "time remaining".
He had never imagined going through something as difficult as this day without his parents' guidance.
I suspect that a midlife crisis is sometimes another manifestation of identity reorganization associated with parental death.
It's really like being out there without an umbrella, when our parents die.
When parents die, everyone in the family is going through the same transition at the same time. no one is standing clear of the fray, offering assistance. Everyone feels lost. No one is spared.
The remedy for grief is to grieve. -
A must read for anyone who has lost one, or especially both, of their parents. It won't make you any sadder than you already are, and may actually bring you some peace and perspective that will help you through the grieving process, and through your entire life post-parents.
Not only does it help reinforce and encourage the natural need for a grieving process, and acknowledge what a traumatic and challenging event the death of your parents can be (even if you don't think it will be, or should be); this book also provides much food for thought that will help you reflect on your parents' death in new and profound ways. I took notes throughout to help me remember some of the key points and ideas, and to remind me to take time to reflect further on them and how they apply to me personally. -
After four years of being my mother's fulltime caregiver in the loft we shared, she died in January 2019, following my father, who'd departed over 41 years before. I am an only child, my mother was my best friend and creative collaborator, and I was feeling far more alone than I imagined I would.
A dear friend I'd met several months after my father died had recently lost both of his parents within a few years of each other and, even though he has siblings, he knew how I was feeling. He sent me this book–a book his sister had sent to him for the same reason he decided I should have it.
I read the first 60 or so pages immediately, and was comforted by Levy's gentle and insightful understanding of my bereavement. I had rather naturally thought of myself as an orphan, even though the common definition of an orphan refers to a child. But, especially after performing the very adult duties of tending my mother's business and health for many years (even before she moved in with me), the fact that I was suddenly no longer charged with her care wasn't a feeling of freedom, but abandonment–like a little girl whose parents have inexplicably left her to fend for herself. Levy explained those feelings in a way that strengthened my compassion for myself.
Not halfway through, I set the book aside–perhaps I'd received what I needed in those first pages, or perhaps I wasn't yet ready to complete my grieving (actually, I think it was because I wasn't only mourning the loss of my mother, but recovering my life, and reinvigorating my career as a writer and book editor, and needed to focus on my work).
A few days before I had to isolate because of the pandemic, one of my oldest friends died. The virus didn't take her; she'd been ill for years, and her time had come. Then, less than a month after I'd gone into isolation, a man I'd known almost all my life, who had one time been my father's partner, died as the result of Covid-19; his wife died a week to the day later. I picked up the book again, reading a chapter a day (that was all my scattered concentration could bear), and received another layer of knowledge and comfort, addressing a fresh sadness for the loss of my friends, and a mourning we're all experiencing: the loss of life as we knew it.
For orphans like me, Levy's clear perspective shines a light into a dark heart. But he also provided consolation at a time when we're all coping with deep grief and profound change. -
I don’t think this book was intended for young adults losing their parents. This book is specifically for middle-aged adults with kids of their own, who have lost their parents and are grieving.
This book is also specifically for adults who have lost both parents, and not just one.
I am 24, and I lost my dad last year to Covid when I was 23 and he was 58. My mother is still alive, however, my dad was my true guardian and parent throughout my life.
It felt as if the author was almost discrediting my grief because I don’t know how it feels to lose “both” parents. Just because my mother is around, it doesn’t mean that I have the comfort of a parent around, and I wish the author didn’t try to emphasize that so much.
Also, there was a chapter about religion that made no sense. He talked about how some people turn to religion when a parent dies, and how some people turn away from religion. Then for the rest of the chapter, he only talked about people who had found spiritual belonging and how he recommends that everyone should pray because it’s helpful.
I’m an atheist, and this chapter wasn’t helpful for me at all.
I found that this book didn’t help me feel as if I could move forward. The only thing it did well was explain how scary the world is when all of our guidance has died along with our parents. But that was it, in the beginning 50% of the book.
Also this book had a section all about taking things one step at a time, like calling the funeral director etc. Sorry but my dad’s funeral was 14 months ago and this information isn’t helpful now. I’ve already been through all of those steps, I’m still struggling, I feel like an orphan, and this book told me to pray about it, thanks.
I don’t want to give this book a rating because I know it has helped some people, but personally for me I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone. -
This is the first book I've read on this topic (ever, and specifically since my Dad died six months ago). Some parts were very helpful/comforting. I read it as an ebook and have highlighted quite a few passages and sentences to come back to (if I had read a physical copy I probably would have made a few margin notes too). I don't think this book was entirely a good fit for me - this is (as the title does make fairly clear, but still) a book about having lost both parents. My Mum is still alive and so not all of the anecdotes and so on were relevant or relatable to me. However even more difficult for me was that this book is rather aimed towards people quite a bit older than myself. I realise that most people grieving one or both parents /are/ significantly older than me (I'm 25) but again, I just found a lot of the anecdotal stuff hard to relate to. I think the earlier chapters were more useful and I semi-skimmed some of the later ones. Neither of the factors I've mentioned make me regret reading it - it's not like I expected some sort of personalised grief handbook, and it's a short read broken into very manageable chapters - but I wanted to highlight these points in case the information is useful to anyone else starting out with this book.
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This book is helpful. I am not freshly grieving but became a bit stuck in my process, it was beneficial to read some of the author's insights about why it is so difficult when we become orphans as adults. A lot of what was discussed resonated with me and made me feel normal about my thought processes surrounding this. I am an only child, but the author's sharing of the sudden death of his sister also brought me comfort as it was the exact same circumstances as my mother, it was almost like reading my own story, it made me feel less alone. The only issue I had was at the end there was a lot of talk of prayer and to pray or ask others to do so even if you are a non believer. I am happy for people who have a faith but the loneliest time of my life was when my mother died and I did not have the comforts believers have. The author acknowledges in his own experience we often follow what our parents taught us, mine always gave me the right to choose. Sadly I cannot suddenly choose to be a believer just for solace. That is my only criticism, other than that I recommend this well written and insightful book.
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Two weeks ago my precious Dad passed away. So I wanted to read something about grieving when your second parent has passed away. After reading various online articles, I came across this book.
It has been very timely and helpful. With grief raw, it was painful at times too reading it but not in a negative way. In fact there was much assurance and conpassion without there being any shallow sentiment in the writing. It is honest and thoughtful, drawing on people's experiences and relevant research papers.
I am sure I will return to it again in the months ahead. Have written various excerpts in my journal to reflect on further.
The writer is a psychologist so has a lot of insight through this. But he also has experienced both his parents passing away. So it does not read like detached theory at all.
Grateful to have read this. It helps with my grieving, even as I take comfort that Dad is in a better place where there are no lockdowns! -
When I was young, I would fantasize about being Little Orphan Annie. I would watch the movie several times a day. It’s not that I didn’t love my parents and siblings (I adored them), but I longed for the heartache experience in that of an orphan: the paralyzing fear of parental abandonment. It was the antithesis of my reality. I had a loving, safe, two-parent home with an older sister and brother. Now in my 40s, I’ve experienced the agonizing heartache of parental abandonment for almost two years. First my Dad, then my Mom, 147 days later. I wonder, did my childhood self, obsessed with the lives of orphans, somehow understand I would become one in middle age?
I read this book in just a few hours, sobbing in parts. My emotional reaction to this book is too complex to write out, but I wholeheartedly endorse it as a book worth reading. I plan on ordering a copy now for my brother and sister. -
I lost my father to suicide. I was 26. I was clueless and it shook me to the core.
There is nothing that can prepare you for that as well as what comes after that. The emotions one feels at the loss of a parent are so rarely discussed in contemporary media, that they seem to almost be avoided.
I loved reading this book which is inter-oven with the personal experiences from the author's profession as a psychologist as well as with explanations for what happens and why. There is a gentle range which covers all possible aspects of one's personal experiences.
A reminder of what other people experience is useful - to understand that other people go through it as well.
There are a few guide posts towards the end of the book as to how to pass and clear this great valley in one's life. It is possible and I am grateful I read this book when I did.
