“Love your parents and treat them with loving care, for you will only know their value when you see their empty chair” –Unknown. Currently in America, most children take their parents or guardians for granted. Most children presume their parents are “out to ruin their lives” and are awfully bothersome. However, it is extremely difficult for a child to imagine their lives without their parents. What if a child woke up one morning to find their parent to be gone forever? To have a parent die dramatically affects a child’s life and makes them come to the realization of the thoughtfulness and love in their parent’s words and actions. In a national poll of 531 American children and teenagers who had lost a parent, 62% of the 531 children said they would give a year of their life to spend one more day with the person who died (“National Poll”). When born, a child is copiously dependent on their parents for love and life. Yet in the midst of growing up, children soon become independent and find love in and from other things and believe they are capable of taking care of themselves. Once a child’s parent dies the child is now considered as a “bereaved child”. To be bereaved means to be deprived of a loved one through a profound absence, especially due to the loved one's death. After a parent’s death, many bereaved children can suffer from long-term mental illnesses such as depression if they do not participate in activities to help with the recovery process. In the same poll mentioned earlier, 66% of the 531 children say that the death of their family member was the worst thing to ever happen to them (“National Poll”). The death of a parent causes children to respond with changes in emotion, attitude and action and bereaved children of al...
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When dealing with loss, children need a stable environment because they might think what they have done caused the death ("When" 1). Children can be easily swayed, so they might formulate their own theory as to how their loved one died. Consequently, they might think of it to be their own fault; they have no one else to blame, so they drop it on themselves. Also, "children need help to cope with their grief when a parent dies" ("When" 1). Kids need someone to talk to about their loss.
A child’s destiny crucially and heavily relies on the parental figures in their lives. Without such beacons of authority children in these broken homes easily feel partial, mislaid and typically turn out to be errant. The novel “Father Cry” by William Wilson, beautifully covers both the ideas of spiritual parental figures and physical parental figures. Analyzing several different subjects such as heartbreak, love, hope and many more, this book is able to holistically cover the general subject of parenthood. This is an amazing book with many things that one can learn from. Many ideas and topics in this book opened my eyes, pushing me to the verge of tears in some parts. That being said, one subject in particular that most impacted me was the
At Ten P.m on September 23, 2006, my mother Kelli Elizabeth Dicks was hit by a car on Route 146 southbound trying to cross the high speed lane. She was being picked up by a friend. Instead of taking the exit and coming to the other side of the highway, her ride suggested she run across the street. The impact of the car caused her to be thrown 87 feet away from the original impact zone and land in a grassy patch of land, her shoes stayed where she was hit. She was immediately rushed to Rhode Island Hospital where she was treated for serious injuries. When she arrived at the hospital she was rushed into the operating room for an emergency surgery. The amount of injuries she sustained were unbelievable. She broke 18 different bones, lacerated her liver and her spleen, ruptured her bladder, and she collapsed both lungs. When she went in for her emergency operation, and had her
Death ultimately brings individuals together and the Bundren family is no exception. Each member of this chaotic family dealt with their mother Addie’s death quite differently. Throughout the novel, Cash is the silent, hard-working type who says next to nothing about his family’s crazy nature and how he exactly feels about their current situations. I believe that Cash making his mother’s coffin outside the window was not cruel or disrespectful; it shows his loyalty and commitment to his mother. Of all the Bundren children, Cash dealt with his mother’s death through physical emotion. He worked diligently on constructing the coffin and making sure it would not slant or move during the journey to Jefferson, however, readers know that everything did not go as planned. Darl, the most rational of the group, “goes off the deep end”, so to speak because of his mother’s death. While Darl and Jewel are away getting Tull’s horses, Addie dies and Darl can see what is going on back at home. His omniscent nature makes him a wonderful narrator becau...
There is a special bond between parents and children, but there is always uncertainty, whether it’s with the parents having to let go or the children, now adults, reminiscing on the times they had with their parents. The poem “To a Daughter Leaving Home” by Linda Pastan is a very emotional poem about what you can assume: a daughter leaving home. Then the poem “Alzheimer 's" by Kelly Cherry is about the poet’s father, a former professional musician who develops the disease. These are only two examples that show the ambivalence between the parents and the children.
When faced with a life altering situation although Molly’s characteristics and personality aid her in courageously defying them, the effects of facing this traumatic event will lead to long term psychological repercussions. When severe harm is inflicted on a person’s psyche, it is viewed as an emotional trauma (Levers, 2012). The emotional harm inflicted on Molly’s psyche originates from different dimensions; like her upbringing, her trauma is multidimensional too. As a child of the Indigenous community, whose ancestors and elders were killed violently in inter-group conflicts, and whose children were forcefully removed from families, Molly is would experience intergenerational trauma (Atkinson, 2002). Intergenerational trauma is trauma passed down from one generation to another; as a close knitted community group, the grief experienced by family members of losing their loved ones, would have been transferred across generations (Atkinson,
For most people, becoming a parent is one of the greatest moments in their lives. I never understood the true meaning of love until I became a father. Little did I know; I would also learn the tragedy of loss.
During the early seventeenth century, poets were able to mourn the loss of a child publicly by writing elegies, or poems to lament the deceased. Katherine Philips and Ben Jonson were two poets who wrote the popular poems “On the Death of My Dearest Child, Hector Philips”, “On My First Son”, and “On My First Daughter” respectively. Although Philips and Jonson’s elegies contain obvious similarities, the differences between “On the Death of My Dearest Child” and “On My First Son” specifically are pronounced. The emotions displayed in the elegies are very distinct when considering the sex of the poet. The grief shown by a mother and father is a major theme when comparing the approach of mourning in the two elegies.
“A wise mother knows: It is her state of consciousness that matters. Her gentleness and clarity command respect. Her love creates security” (Vimala McClure). Mothers play an important roll in a child’s life; shaping how a child will view things in the world, their religious beliefs, he way how they set up their values in life and etc. Every individual life is shaped by personal relationships they have with others. Toni Morrison’s Sula, tells the story of a black community in the fictional town Medallion, Ohio, where two girls grow up together, Sula and Nel, are formed by the influence of race, gender and society. Morrison describes the various stresses and sacrifices of motherhood and offers varied examples of motherhood. The female relationships and especially the mother-daughter relationship prove to be highly important for the identity development of the female characters in the novel. The women are faced with severe consequences due to racism. The double marginality the characters encounter influences the mother-daughter relationship and subsequently their identity development.
In life, many things can be taken for granted - especially the things that mean the most to you. You just might not realize it until you've lost it all. As I walk down the road finishing up my teenage days, I slowly have been finding a better understanding of my mother. The kind of bond that mothers and daughters have is beyond hard to describe. It's probably the biggest rollercoaster ride of emotions that I'll ever have the chance to live through in my lifetime. But, for those of us who are lucky enough to survive the ride in one piece, it's an amazing learning experience that will influence your entire future.
Research conducted regarding modern society’s motherless children stresses the importance of a motherly (or even parental) relationship throughout the developmental years of a child. Hope Edelman, a motherless child herself explains, “I can tell you, based on both personal experience and interviews with hundreds of motherless American women, that losing a mother at an early age is one of the most stressful life events a person can face. It completely rips apart the fabric of a child's life.” If a child experiences the death, abandonment or absence of a mother, they fail to receive an adequate substitution. This deficiency can generate long-term damage to his or her self-esteem, ability to relate to other people, overall feelings of security and ability to trust others. The absence of a mother in a child’s life limits their support network, discipline, and supervision (Amato). An immense variety of possible negative outcomes emerge from being orphaned or possessing a single pa...
Another hesitation caretakers showed in supporting their children was that they needed time to grieve for the child they had felt like they lost (Budge, Adelson, & Howard, 2013). This was a common theme that divided adolescents and caretakers, while children may have felt different for most of their life, and/or have been accepting of their identity for years, it may be news to the caretaker. The parents
My father was always there for me, whether I wanted him to be or not. Most of the time, as an adolescent trying to claim my independence, I saw this as a problem. Looking back I now realize it was a problem every child needs, having a loving father. As hard as I tried to fight it, my dad instilled in me the good values and work ethic to be an honest and responsible member of society. He taught me how to be a good husband. He taught me how to be a good father. He taught me how to be a man. It has been 18 years since my father’s death, and I am still learning from the memories I have of him.
Parents go through a wave of emotions when losing a child. They are not only in disbelief and denial, but also feel angry and guilty. Some parents find themselves wanting to talk about it, while others find it easier to talk about the death of friends or other family members rather than their child’s. When a child dies this disrupts the parent’s health and well-being during the hardest phase of bereavement and for long periods over the course of their lives (Hong, Floyd & Seltzer, 2010).
According to Beckstrand, Rawle, Callister, & Mandleco (2010) “Death of a child evokes deep feelings of tragedy, devastation, and painful confusion at the injustice of a life being ended prematurely.” (p. 544) These are the raw emotions that are prevalent when a child is dying. For the child and the family, these final fleeting m...