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68 of 69 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Companion for Adult "Children", July 10, 2000
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.
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