Customer Reviews

The Loss That Is Forever: The Lifelong Impact of the Early Death of a Mother or Father

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I was looking through books on death and dying, when I saw this book. I ignored it, but kept feeling drawn to it. The title seemed a bit extreme, yet I kept wanting to pick it up. When I started reading, I realized that one of the people it was about was me.

If you have lost a parent as a child, please read this book. It is not a self-help book - but it leads to healing by acknowledging that the loss of a parent is a major event in the life of a child, changing that child's view of the world and affecting his or her life into adulthood. Like attending a 12 step program, and feeling instantly at home, this book opens doors to a community of like-minded souls.

Our culture used to minimize the effects the death of a parent has on a child. While adults grieved in their own healthy or unhealthy ways, children were often ignored, sent off to relatives, cut off from one-side of the family and often introduced to a new, substitute parent and expected to never talk about the parent they lost.

My own father died a sudden, fairly publicized death when I was 17 and my sister was 11. I've been painfully aware that there was one life before he died, and another one after, as clean a break as you could make cutting a thick rope with a sharp knife. But no one else - aside from therapists - seemed willing to talk about it. With children, it is important that the grieving process not be ignored or minimized, for how they process their grief will have a lasting effect on how they live their own lives.

While reading the stories in this book, I felt deeply saddened and warmly comforted. The book validated what I have known to the core of my heart for a long time. The death of a parent makes a hole that lasts forever.

Now, that hole isn't dark and deep forever. It isn't a huge pit you fall into and can't get out of, though at times it might feel like that. Instead, it is a loss, or an absence, that is always there, sometimes small, sometimes large. It can be healed, to varying degrees. But it is there, and it will not go away. Ignoring it only seems to enlarge it.

Harris' book offers the comfort of knowing that the reactions we had to our parent's death -- and still have, as we procede through life without that parent -- are not abnormal. I realized that many of the things I did that weren't so good for my life were 'normal' reactions (and thank goodness I've learned from them all).

Better yet, some of the things I've done that have seemed a little odd to others are actually healthy and quite common. For example, in my personal pages I have a web page for my father -not a grieving memorial, but a place filled with photos and memories to share with my own children, who never met him, and with other family members. In the chapter entitled "Staying in Touch," Harris tells how some of us talk with our parent, years after they've died. Other cultures have rituals to remember a lost parent. It isn't morbid -- it is a way to grieve, heal and move on without trying to erase memories that need not go away.

She tells stories of over 60 individuals, each with a very different situation. The chapters cover the grown children's struggles to grow up without one -- sometimes two -- parents; to risk loss in love and other relationships; the changed relationship with the surviving parent; issues in parenting their own children; dealing with their own mortality.

This book is not a self-help book, but a book that anyone who has lost a parent before they were 18 should be aware of and read when they are ready. It is also an excellent book for the surviving parent who wants to be aware of their own child's needs.

For me, this was an excellent and helpful book.

There is no word describing people who lost a parent at an early age -- but this book makes clear that such a loss is truly forever. This will be reassuring for some. The authro describes the multiple impacts of such a loss. In general, because a child is totally unprepared for the death of a parent, and the parent represents the whole world to the child, this loss is far more grievous than losing a parent when one is an adult. Indeed, it can be compared to the loss of an entire family or community that is only suffered by persons who are victims of genocide or war. Yet others, who do not know of this type of loss, will never understand its magnitude. The message of the book is that one can be orphaned even if just oneparent dies, because frequently the other will be devastated, or will move away.

I lost my father in a car accident in 1981 when I was only 13 years old. He passed instantly at the scene in a very catastrophic auto/commercial truck pile up.

This book helped me understand that the emotional roller coaster that I had been on for years was totally normal.

My parents had me late in life when they were 42 and 43. I was extremely close to my father and in fact I completely worshiped him.

I grew up in a family that did not grieve heathily and it was difficult for me that at one moment we all (there were 4 siblings) had a wonderful father that we were all blessed to have had and the next moment he just wasn't talked about. It was like our whole family went into a shock and denial of the accident and of our loss. We still in 1998 don't talk about it much and I still miss him terribly. I have many fond memories as a child of vacations and trips that I took with my father that I will cherish forever. Thanks Maxine for such beautiful insight. I can not tell you what it has meant to me.

You, in fact have inspired me to write a book about my loss. I still think about it everyday. There is not a day that goes by that I do not think about the fact that I would give up everything I have, everything I am, everything I have accomplished to have him back in my life again.

I lost both parents to cancer - my mother when I was nine and my father just 2 years later.

I can tell you first hand that this book is an accurate reflection of what that experience was like for me.

It is not an academic book with theories and speculations by those who have not been there - rather, it is a book of interviews of adults describing their experiences as a child. Because of this, the feeling is undeniably authentic.

It will help spouses and others in relationships with orphans.

A must read!

Everyone knows that loosing a parent will cause life-long grief, this book enlightens the reader to the life long habits and thinking patterns that occur. It's a blueprint to understanding yourself if you've lost a parent as a child. I can't recommend it enough.
I thought I had self actualized and knew myself very well until I read this book. I lost my father when I was six.
Everything I have become and all of the choices I've made have had something to do with that. I had no idea.
Then I read this book that described me so well. I don't usually buy books, but I keep this one on the shelf, well dusted and frequently referred to.

I lost my father 14 years ago, when I was only 15 years of age. Over the years the pain has lessened, but has never disappeared. I find myself struggling many days to fathom how I've made it this far into adulthood without my father. This book puts so many of those feelings into perspective. I found myself relating to so many of the accounts from others who have experienced loss similar to my own. The book was comforting, but at the same time very emotionally jolting. I would recommend this book to anyone, and have even ordered extra copies since my purchase to send to friends who have lost a parent as well

This book was a life-saver for me some 10 years ago when my husband, at age 40, died from cancer. We had two children - ages 5-1/2 and 20 months at the time - and this book helped me empathize with their plight and grief at their daddy's death.
As hard as his death was for me personally, I understood after reading this book that the experience was at the time -- and would be in the future -- far harder for them. It let me shift focus away from myself and to something far more important -- helping guide their little hearts and minds into stable, secure and productive adulthoods.

After having experienced the loss of my father when I was 17, I found Harris' work to be quite descriptive of my own experiences. Harris tackles the deepest emotions and behavioral patterns of those living with loss with utmost sensitivity and respect. Harris aptly distinguishes between the different types of parental death, including impacts of the loss at various childhood ages, as well as the differing impacts of terminal illness, suicide, and sudden death upon a child. This book truly is a must-read for child survivors, their loved ones, and widowed parents as well.

My father died suddenly 44 years ago, shattering the illusion of security that nearly every other child takes for granted : the ongoing presence of a loved and caring parent.I was almost seven years old, but it has been the single most determining experience of my entire life. No other book I have ever read on the subject (and there are regrettably few) has offered as much illuminating information or insight into this under-researched,too-often- unacknowledged life changing loss.This author leaves no stone unturned, no question unanswered.She deftly gets out of the way of the 66 individuals
telling their poignant stories of early parental death and allows the details to emerge, vividly evoking both the internal and external realities of the event as well as its aftermath.Her interpretive narration provides more insightful observations and accurate conclusions than I have received from decades of psychotherapeutic intervention, all conveyed with a tone of deferential respect.

This book is a must-read not only for anyone who has endured the overwhelming trauma of losing a parent through death
in childhood, but also for those therapists who accompany them on their lifelong journeys of emotional healing. We need more informed professionals, who can recognize the particular
lifelong shockwaves that this kind of loss entails. Maxine Harris
has provided the most definitive and comprehensive resource available for adults who cannot imagine what it would be like for your parents to die and have no-one send you a sympathy card-
or even act as if anything significant had happened at all!A friend in her 40's called me to relate the recent death of her father and the funeral gathering, during which she was surrounded
by friends and family, consoling her as she scattered his ashes over a canyon near her childhood home. Then she sighed and remarked,"Öh, you know how it is...we're the age when our parents die..." I replied, "No, actually, I don't know how that is...but there is this book that will tell you what MY experience was like.It's called THE LOSS THAT IS FOREVER."

Touching, sentimental, yet full of scientific and psychological support. Maxine Harris captures the tremendous impact of early parent loss through both anecdotal and scientific support. This book is a tremendous asset to anyone who has experienced early parent loss. For women dealing specifically with mother loss, Harris' book works well in conjunction with Hope Edelman's "Motherless Daughters." I would say this is a must have for anyone who has lost a parent before they were 21 and are still trying to come to terms.