The Sucky Club

After my father passed away from stage IV colon cancer, I joined a grief support group for young adults who had lost parents. The eight-week closed group focused on processing the mourning and grief we all felt after our parents had been taken from us too soon.

We named our WhatsApp group the "Sucky Club."

The first time I truly encountered death was when I was sixteen years old and my grandfather passed away. I remember watching my mom for signs of how she was coping now that she no longer had a father. She was sad, but she also seemed to accept that his death was in the normal course of things. He was in his eighties and had suffered Legionnaires' disease ten years earlier, which landed him in the hospital, though he made a miraculous recovery.

I mourned him in the way one mourns a grandfather who is both a big and small part of one's daily life. From that moment on, death became real, and I realized that someday I would be in my mom's shoes, mourning a parent.

The thing about the Sucky Club was that although we knew our parents weren't immortal, we also expected to have a lot more time with them. None of us expected to be in our late twenties or early thirties mourning the death of a parent. We expected them to be there for engagements, weddings, first children, first homes, and the million other milestones that come along with growing up.

We were shocked that all these life milestones would happen without them and mad when people attempted to empathize with us after losing a parent in their eighties or nineties. But you got thirty or forty more years with them! We wanted to shout. They walked you down the aisle! They met their grandchildren!

Now, in my therapy practice, I am drawn to working with people who are experiencing grief and loss. I am honored to walk alongside people as they navigate mourning a loved one.

The worst part of grief is that it feels insurmountable. There is a true heartbreak that comes with beginning to accept that your loved one is no longer here in the physical world. My clients experience intense anxiety, sadness, fear, anger, and physical pain.

They want to feel better and dread the moment they do.

There is often a feeling that as long as they are in pain, they haven't forgotten the person. The memories haven't faded. The love is still so real.

That is the thing about mourning. You know that eventually time will continue to pass without the person you love. What I remind my clients is that what they are experiencing is normal and that their love for the person remains with them always.

Perhaps that is what grief asks of us: not to let go, but to learn how to carry both the love and the loss.