Grief and Grandparenting

Posted on December 31, 2008
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Grief and Grandparenting Compliments Make Me Squirm
By Harriet Hodgson

The news of four family deaths within nine months spread quickly. So did the news of my husband and I becoming GRGs, grandparents raising our twin grandchildren. I’m often complimented on how I’m coping with multiple losses and my grandparenting approach. These compliments are supposed to be comforting, but they make me squirm. Some of the compliments I’ve received:

* “You’re doing a wonderful thing.”

* “I admire you; you’re so strong.”

* “You’re an angel.”

* “I think you’re a saint.”

* “Your grandchildren are lucky to have you.”

* “Your grandchildren are keeping you young.”

The compliments make squirm because they are not true. Though my grandchildren have adjusted to living with my husband and me, they wish their parents hadn’t died in separate car crashes. When I think about my grandchildren’s losses I could sob for a week. They have lost their mother, their father, their dog, their house, their neighborhood, and to some extent, their way of life.

C. Sue Miles, PhD Program Leader of the Family Development Program at the West Virginia University Extension Service, writes about the challenges GRGs face in “Grandparents Raising Grandchildren.”

“In the best of circumstances,” Miles says, “children who are being raised by their grandparents are going to experience loss and abandonment as well as other issues relating to their place in the family.”

Miles thinks grandparents can provide a calming influence, dependability, unconditional love, and the stability needed for personal growth. Despite all of the responsibilities that come with being a GRG, Miles says “raising a second generation has many joys and satisfactions.” Raising my grandchildren brings me constant joy and satisfaction.

Why does the compliment about being strong bother me? I’m a strong person, but strong people cry and regress like weak people. No one, not even my sweet and loving husband, can bear the grief burden for me. I work at staying strong for my grandchildren and myself. “Why do people say I’m strong?” I asked a friend. Her answer: “Everyone expected tragedy to crush you. It didn’t.”

As for being a saint and an angel, I am neither one. I’m a grandmother and any grandmother faced with a similar situation would raise their grandchildren. That’s what grandmothers do. We care for our grandchildren, protect them, teach them, cherish them and love them more each day. It is nice to know that grandmothers are still needed in a fast-paced world.

Friends are being kind when they tell me my grandchildren are keeping me young. I am not young and am aging at an accelerating rate. My grandchildren are not keeping me young, they are keeping me young in spirit. I live an active life for myself and them.

Anthropologist Margaret mead once said, “The closest friends I have made all through life have been people who also grew up close to a loved and loving grandmother or grandfather.”

We are our grandchildren’s only grandparents. Years from now, when my grandchildren think about this painful time in their lives, I hope they remember us as loving grandparents. I hope they tell funny stories about us and realize how hard we tried. My husband and I aren’t perfect grandparents, we are plain, ordinary, old-fashioned grandparents.

Some day our grandchildren will understand this and find comfort in it.

http://www.harriethodgson.com

Harriet Hodgson has been an independent journalist for 30 years. She is a member of the Association of Health Care Journalists and the Association for Death Education and Counseling. Her 24th book, “Smiling Through Your Tears: Anticipating Grief,” written with Lois Krahn, MD, is available from amazon

Centering Corporation in Omaha, NE — North America’s oldest and largest grief resource center — is publishing her 26th book, “Writing to Recover: The Journey from Loss and Grief to a New Life.” The company is also publishing the “Writing to Recover Journal” and the “Writing to Recover Affirmations Calendar.”

Please visit Harriet’s website and learn more about this busy author and grandmother.

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