Aging parents losing an adult child is a subject that I wrote about a few days ago and it has received a lot of attention.

I think that’s because it is an emotional subject, even for those of us who do not have children of our own.

I was shocked as I read some readers’ comments on a newspaper’s site as people responded to the story of the older couple who had lost their son in his 50′s. Some did not have words of sympathy for the loss of a child.

That loss was just as devastating to the aging couple as it would be for anyone losing a child. Your love is just as strong as you grow older as it was when you and your children were younger. Why some readers would think age would somehow negate that is beyond my understanding.

But I started writing on our community site about this, and I got carried away because I started telling the story of my next door neighbors losing one of their two children in a plane crash.

I talked a lot about my shock and I’m only their neighbor. I don’t want to sound too sentimental but there are afternoons when I walk along the fence and imagine the two little red headed boys playing there in the bright sunlight. Has it been almost four years? How old would he be now?

I went on to also tell about another classmate who was with him being killed also. They had to arrange both funerals within several hours of each other so the whole school could attend.

And there had been yet another death of a 9th grader just a week or two before. The headmaster said they had never experienced anything like it in the history of the school (over 100 years).

Why am I going into such detail?

Because I am hurt by some people’s attitudes that you are supposed to get over it. That older people, especially should get over it.

You never get over the death of any child.
Here’s a quote from another of the newspaper’s readers.

“I have lost a child and I don’t fake being sentimental about it. The loss is unnatural and disturbing and something you never get over.”
Go over to Aging Parents Community site and tell us what you think.

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