HOW THE DEATH OF SONS OR DAUGHTERS INFLUENCE IN THE RELATION BETWEEN COUPLES.

When one commences a mourning  process, confused negative feelings, like guilt, impotence  and resentment, appear.  These feelings give the couple a sensation of not being understood by their family or by society in general.

These feelings are felt by each parent in his or her particular way, and often, they do not coincide.

Confronted with this situation, the couple resort to silence, hostility, reproaches, and miscommunication.  They, then will seek to solve their mourning process, by growing apart from each other, more and more.

Often, false feelings of “loyalty” towards their absent son or daughter, will make them enjoy each other less. They might even anul the habitual  pleasures as a couple, making their pain and sorrow much deeper.

This way, the distance between them as parents and as a couple, will be felt, and the bonding between them will commence to disappear.

These situations are evident in the statistics that tell us about a growth in the separation between parents whose children have died.  (* *)

When we examine this situation, we notice that the characteristics that existed before the death of their children is fundamental in the evolution of their behavior, after their death.

Those that before the tragedy, didn’t have a “good” relation, are those that give credit to the statistics, since the death of  their son or daughter, is the reason for them to expose all their conflict that  till the moment of the tragedy, they had denied.

A separation might have been evaded if, both parents recognized and assumed their own personal conflict.

Going for outside help ( be it spiritual or therapeutic ), might not add to the pain of being bereaved parents, a rupture in their marriage.

On the other hand, a well integrated couple will share their pain, each one shall be the others best listener for his or her mourning.  They shall seek help together, comfort each other, find explanations, and together  walk the same difficult path.

There shall be no silences, they shall remember their  son  or daughter, with a tear, other times with a smile, and their relation shall be strengthened by  their shared experiences.

Some final suggestions to those parents who are going through this  type of situation;

-Be able to listen to the demands and the needs of the other.

-Be able to identify with the feelings of the other.

-Break the pact of silence with reference to the mourning process.

- Remember the son or daughter each time that one needs to, in an intimate way, without the presence of others, who are not always willing to participate in these kinds of reminiscences.

- Never postpone a dialogue for fear of a conflict.

- Include Tolerance and Concessions in the relation.

- Renew the lost roles that have been weakened in the couple.

If you can put into practice these suggestions, you might unite the parallel individual feelings of the couple that are suffering a mourning process.  In this way, they might share and benefit together their process.

Although it refers to the death of his dear wife, and not of a son or a daughter, the following lines, hold the feeling that invade a parent when he or she suffers such a loss.

( LOVE HAS GONE ) :  While it lasted,

                                  everything it did was

                                     Pleasure,

                                  When it left me,

                                    It left nothing´

                                      But Pain.

(**)  I have met several bereaved couples who have been separated, long before their children died, and, feeling united by their Pain, have reached out to each other and have gone back to living together, as a couple.

                                                      Dr. Carlos J.  Bianchi