The meaning of death is interpreted differently as a person grows older. Erikson's model of psychosocial development identifies three stages of adulthood: young adulthood, adulthood, and maturity.
Many issues of parental bereavement span the adult life cycle. They are present for 20-year-old parents, 40-year-old parents, and 80-year-old parents. To understand the nature of a particular parent's grief and the specific losses involved, both the parent's age and the child's age must be taken into account.
The death of a child places considerable stress on the marital relationship; thus, it is important to be aware of ways to minimize potential conflict between grieving parents and to promote positive interactions that aid in coping with the tragedy of a child's death.
Childbearing losses typically involve the additional stress of the parent's not having an opportunity to get to know the child as a person. This sense of "mourning an unlived life" is rarely recognized in the bereaved parent's social milieu, reinforcing the mourner’s perception that his or her loss is neither understood nor acknowledged.
Perinatal bereavement support can be very helpful to parents who experience such childbearing loss. Support programs of this kind typically offer a variety of mechanisms for recognizing and affirming the loss, thereby facilitating healthy coping by the bereaved parent.
When a young person's life is threatened by serious illness, it affects the whole fabric of family life. In families that deal openly with such a crisis, the parents tend not to derive their personal identity solely from the role of "being a parent."
A parent's death can have a lasting impact as the bereaved adult child mourns the loss of the special bond that had been shared with the deceased parent. The death of a parent can also evoke a "developmental push" as parentally bereaved adults no longer think of themselves as children.
Spousal bereavement often follows years of shared experience and mutual commitment; the death of a mate can disrupt the very meaning of the surviving partner's existence. The transition from being a couple to being single can be especially difficult when the surviving spouse is also a parent, because it involves the added burden of making a transition to single parenthood.
The death of a close friend is a significant loss that can evoke grief similar to that experienced following the death of a relative. For older adults, friendships are sometimes more important than family relationships. Yet there are few socially sanctioned opportunities to openly mourn the death of a friend.
In the later years of life, the processes of aging can result in a variety of debilitating conditions that are experienced as losses of various kinds. The older person may require assistance with many activities of daily life. The need for appropriate and economical care is a matter of concern not only to older people and their relatives, but to society as a whole.
