Baby Boomers are in for a shock!!! We may think that we are prepared for the sadness that will accompany our parents’ death, if we haven’t suffered through it already. In fact we are usually totally unprepared for this life experience. To lose the people in your life who have always been there and known you best is a life-altering event.

I was sure that I understood the pain that would accompany the death of my mother. Professionally I was a nurse and involved in palliative care and bereavement counselling, so I was sure that I was prepared. I sure was wrong!!

I quickly realized that the experience could only be described as a total assault on my being. I became concerned about my friends who had not yet experienced this pain.

Our generation has had an enormous impact on many of our cultural and societal norms. How we handle the deaths of our parents will be no exception. Baby Boomers have had many advantages compared with previous generations but although we lived through the war in Vietnam, we really have limited experience with the consequences of events like world war and economic depression.

Grief causes physical and emotional pain. Baby Boomers have come to expect instant pain relief in this fast paced society.

Unfortunately Baby Boomers face this chapter in our lives in a culture that no longer gives grief the respect or validation it deserves. Grief is an emotion that society doesn’t want to discuss. It has become “off limits.”

Finding someone to listen to you again and again is a key element to get through this difficult time. It can be a friend or a counsellor – it really doesn’t matter. Talking about our feelings is key to coming to terms with our grief.

We have inherited the “stiff upper lip” of our parents’ generation and have been inundated with expressions like “get on with life” and “closure” and “getting back to normal.” None of these attitudes or expressions helps us when we’re stricken with grief.

Losing a parent is a significant loss that is difficult to describe to someone who hasn’t yet experienced it. The expectation of those around us to get “back to normal” takes an incredible amount of energy. It can be exhausting.

People don’t want to see others in pain. That’s why we sometimes try to rush them through a process that cannot be rushed; it must follow its own pace. It requires time that our culture finds difficult to give.

We will never be the same after this life experience but will eventually develop a new “normal” and learn to live in a world without our loved ones. But you’ll experience waves of grief even months later when you least expect it. It is part of the natural cycle of life. It takes time and patience from those who are close to us.

Hopefully the sheer numbers of Baby Boomers experiencing this life event will change the way our culture handles grief. It is not well understood. Without that understanding, it becomes harder to navigate through this inevitable and disturbing experience of death.

There are positive elements in the grief process. As you go through it, you can find that your priorities are different than before, and that there is an appreciation of life that perhaps wasn’t there in the past. Hopefully many Baby Boomers will experience some of these positive changes in their lives, and help to change the way our culture handles grief.

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Jane Galbraith”s book is available through the author directly at jane.galbraith@sympatico.ca or directly from Amazon.com. More information about the book can be found at www.boomergrief.blogspot.com.

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