A Grief Expert Replies:

Dear Charley,

Thanks for your note and question.

While we never, ever compare losses, the fact is that it is very common to hear people report—as you do—that the death of their spouse seemed to affect them emotionally more, or for much longer time than the deaths of their parents.

There is a kind of logic to that even though emotions can’t really be measured in logical or rational terms.

In long-term marital relationships you have chosen to be with your partner every day for many years, perhaps 40, 50, 60 or more. The effect of that amount of time with another person is almost like joining two people together, and when one of them dies, it can literally feel like losing a piece of your body.

On the other hand, as we get older, we also have very long-term relationships with our living parents, and those relationships are as many years as we’ve been alive. If you’re 60, you have a 60 year relationship with your 85 year old mother. Here’s one of the differences between your relationship with a parent and the one with your spouse. Most of us move out of our parent’s homes after high school or college and go off to build our careers and our marriages. So even though we may have a 60 year long relationship with our parent, we usually only lived with them for the first 18-22 years of our lives. But with our long-term spouses, we have spent nearly every day for 50 or 60 years with that person, and the bond—even with a spouse we may have bickered with for much of the 50 years—is incredibly strong. In addition, since the nature of marriage is very different from relationships between parents and children, the emotional intensity is differently powerful.

None of that is said to diminish or minimize the amount of love and other feelings you might have for a parent. It comes back to what we said in our second sentience above, we never, ever compare losses.

All of our relationships are unique, and our reactions to each loss are also unique,

From our hearts to yours,

Russell And John