Language Matters: Seniors Experiencing Grief and Loss

Paula Span at The New Old Age blog writes about the different losses experienced by seniors, not only the death of friends and family members, but the loss of companionship as people move. She addresses how our expectations of how older people should grieve may be inappropriate.

When old people lose their friends, she added: “We think, ‘You should be able to manage this. This is what happens. You should be used to it.’ Because if we ask what it’s like, we may hear what it’s like. We fear opening the floodgates of sadness.”

But we wouldn’t tell a 55-year-old friend who had attended three funerals in two months to just buck up, would we?

“When there’s been loss, to expect happiness is just denying the truth,” Ms. Moscowitz continued. “It opens up a divide between older people who then deal with the sorrow privately, knowing nobody wants to hear about it, and younger people who want them to be cheerful all the time.”

For more resources on caregiving and loss, see HFA's section on professional resources for caregiving.