Life after Loss - Surviving the Death of a Parent
by Ann Hardie
Children expect parents to always be there. But one-fifth of American children under the age of 15 lose a parent. Some experience death through prolonged illness. For others, loss comes suddenly and shockingly by car wreck, suicide, heart attack, and now, war-related deaths. As with most things, children grieve differently from adults, even differently from each other, depending on their age and developmental stage. They may continue to play video games or Barbie with their friends, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t hurting.
“Kids don’t tend to show their feelings as openly as adults,” says Jana Glass Camerin, program director of Kate’s Club, an Atlanta support group for children who have lost parents or siblings. “They usually show grief only occasionally and briefly because they have an inability to experience intense emotion over a long period of time. In reality, a kid’s grief lasts longer than an adult’s in duration because it comes in spurts. They will need to address it again and again and again as they get older.”
Four metro families talked to Atlanta Parent about their journeys since losing a father or mother. In each case, the surviving spouse is carrying on as a single parent. Their children all have persevered, even thrived, through their parent’s love, devotion, and even mistakes.
Jennifer Bush Otte and
daughter Kathryn  On Halloween, Kathryn Otte goes through her stash of candy with her mother, separating out the Reese’s, Snickers, Almond Joys, anything with nuts. Kathryn, who has a peanut allergy, remembers doing this with her father, Fred Otte, who died of cancer shortly before she turned 5. Kathryn and her mom then take “Daddy’s pile” of candy bars, put them in a basket tied to balloons, and send them soaring. “I’m not really sure they get to him, but I like doing it anyway,” says Kathryn 10, a fifth-grader at Cliff Valley School. The ritual, along with aging family photos around the house and stories of their brief time together, ensure that Kathryn’s father remains very much a part of her life.
“Sometimes the stories upset me. But sometimes, when I’m in a good mood, I love hearing about him.” Kathryn’s father, a professor at Georgia State University, died three-and-a-half years after being diagnosed with a rare and terminal form of lymphoma. During that time, her mother, Jennifer Bush Otte, who owns a consulting business for philanthropic and nonprofit organizations, struggled with the prospect of losing her husband as well as battling her own illness – a curable form of cancer. Still, Otte had the foresight to reach out to a psychologist, her pediatrician and other experts for advice on how to help her daughter.
Parents instinctively want to protect children from the painful parts of life. But since trust is so fragile with children, grief experts say that parents need to tackle death straight on. And they need to answer their children’s questions in simple, concrete terms, not with medical jargon or avoidance. “A lot of people said, ‘She is only 4. How does she understand?’ She got it,” Otte says. “I tried to be realistic and reassuring. She often asked me, ‘Is Daddy going to die? Are you going to die, Mommy?’ I’d say, ‘Yes, Daddy is going to die someday. I’m not going to die for a long, long time.’” Otte stressed to her daughter that she was in no way at fault for her father’s illness. Many young children believe that their bad behavior or thoughts are somehow to blame for a parent’s death.
Even very young children grieve, experts say. Research indicates that all children tend to heal more quickly when they have the opportunity to say goodbye. Attending and even helping to plan the funeral can help kids whose parents die suddenly. “Funerals are for the living – rituals designed to help people move to the next phase,” Camerin says.
Fred Otte spent his final days at Hospice Atlanta’s Buckhead facility. Kathryn asked her mom if she could go see him. She climbed on his bed and the two cuddled and said their goodbyes. “At first I was mad at him. It took a little bit for me to understand that he did not want to go but that he had to,” Kathryn said.
Immediately following her husband’s death, Otte describes her grief as overpowering. “My husband was the love of my life. I am pretty strong, but his death stopped me cold,” she says. “If I was so upset that I couldn’t take care of Kathryn – I knew my limits and I got help. It helped too that parents, teachers and administrators kept an eye on her in school. And I always told her, and still do, that she is a very talented, capable kid who has a lot to live for.”
Today, Kathryn loves horseback riding, playing with her dogs and rabbit, and spending time in the woods with a grown half-brother who shares their father’s love of camping. “I think you have to remember to keep living,” Kathryn says. “I know my dad would have wanted that.”
Tammy McCloud and
daughter Tahjé Robinson
In most ways, Tahjé Robinson, a bubbly eighth-grader with a mouthful of braces, is your typical 14-year-old. She obsesses over her hair, but her room could use a little more attention. She loves music, texting and hanging out with her friends from Mabry Middle School in Marietta.
 But she is different from most kids in a profound way. Seven years ago, her then-28-year-old father, Driek Robinson, died in a car wreck. At first, Tahjé seemed to take his death in stride. Her parents had separated but she had remained close to her father. “She never talked about it. She never cried,” says her mother, Tammy McCloud, an administrative assistant with a public insurance adjusting company. Then came the outbursts and anger, often directed at McCloud.
Most young children learn about death through children’s stories or cartoons, where characters can come back to life. They expect their mom or dad to return, too. As a result, a child’s grief can suddenly kick in one or two years later, when they begin to grasp the finality of death. Many children will try to act as if everything is fine. “By not dealing with the pain you are suppressing the grief,” says Frank McDonald, a grief expert who retired in April as staff chaplain at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. “It can get to the point where it becomes overwhelming and creates physiological problems.” With some children, their grades will drop or they will have trouble sleeping. They may start throwing tantrums.
Searching for a way to help her daughter, McCloud heard an ad on the radio for a summer camp offered by Kate’s Club, at the time a new support group for children ages 5 to 18 founded by a woman who was a child when her own mother died. The nonprofit, which has served 330 children in its seven years, operates on donations so it can offer its program free of charge. Children work through their grief through art projects, fun outings and, most importantly, by being around each other.
McCloud signed Tahjé up for the camp, and she has been attending monthly meetings ever since. “Just to be around kids who have lost someone is, well, it is not a good thing because they have lost someone, but it is not a bad thing either,” Tahjé says. She would not say what she and her Kate’s Club friends talk about. “We call it the Las Vegas rule – whatever happens in Kate’s Club stays in Kate’s Club,” she laughs.
In March, Kate’s Club honored Tahjé at its annual dinner for her ability to deal with her grief and for her generosity in helping other children deal with theirs. “To be able to help other people is an awesome feeling,” Tahjé says. “I’ve learned that losing someone is hard, but you can find good ways to deal with it.”
Michael Ethridge and
sons Brett and Daniel
With some nails, wood or just about any other material, Michael Ethridge can make something from it. After his teenage sons, Brett and Daniel, moved in following the death of his ex-wife two years ago, Ethridge had to figure out how to build a family. Even though he had shared custody, it seemed at times as if he were starting from scratch. “I was happy because I wanted the kids, but I was overwhelmed,” says Ethridge, an independent contractor. “Let’s just say we’ve had a lot of hard days, a lot of long nights.”
Sitting around the kitchen table of their northeast Atlanta home, father and sons discuss their struggles over a veggie pizza. The talk is serious but not so serious that the boys can’t tease their dad about the Mickey Mouse sweatshirt he has on. As the conversation unfolds, it underscores a key point: Since every child’s relationship with a parent is different, every child will respond differently when his mother or father dies.
Brett, a reserved, analytical 15-year-old, was stoic about the news of his mother’s death. Molly Ethridge had died of kidney failure. “It affected me, but it didn’t affect me as much as I thought it would,” Brett says. But it undoubtedly upended his life. He did not want to move from Canton where his mother lived and where he attended middle school. “I never liked coming here. I had no friends,” says Brett, now a sophomore at Druid Hills High School. After he moved, he fought constantly with his father and brother.
On the other hand, Daniel, a self-described lighthearted, good-natured kid, thought he would never stop crying when he heard about his mother. “I never felt like I would get anywhere,” says the 13-year-old. His former teachers at Atlanta’s Briar Vista Elementary helped him move forward.
As for their father, Ethridge says he made mistakes. While the boys describe their mother as permissive, especially when it came to computer use and video games, their father put the hammer down, prohibiting electronics altogether. Brett especially felt cut off from the world and rebelled. “Look, in the beginning, I was overbearing,” Ethridge admits. “I also had trouble controlling my anger – I’m a screamer.”
“You are getting better,” Brett generously jumps in. They laugh as they explain that now, during times of high tension, they turn on each other with squirt bottles, not words. Overall, they all are getting better, they say. Healing comes with time. The boys also seem to recognize that their father is working hard to give them a secure and stable home.
Brett says his father “does a very good job of being stable and unstable at the same time.” Exactly what that means is hard to say, but it does seem to be working. Brett is thriving academically. Once an overweight kid, he has trimmed down through wrestling and cutting out the junk food. He is growing herbs in a greenhouse he started in his bedroom and is in the school drama club. “It took until the beginning of the year to feel like I might not be stuck in a hole without a shovel,” he says.
His dad not only has eased up on the computer, he now has one of his own. His sons are bringing him into the information age. Daniel, who plays baseball and the clarinet in the Shamrock Middle School band, is feeling like his happy self again. “It was like we are in a boat and the boat had a hole in it,” Daniel says. “We are now just finding the right material to patch it.”
Vernon Singleton
and son Xavier
Understandably, when a mother or father dies, the surviving parent instinctively wants to make sure that their children are OK. The survivors too often forget to take care of themselves. They need to, however, not only for their sake but also for their children. “Children take all their cues from the adults in their lives,” says Denise Greenberger, a pediatric social worker with Hospice Atlanta’s Children’s Program. “When parents take care of their emotional well-being, they are modeling that for their children.” And when a parent dies, children begin to worry about the mother or father left behind. “They want to make sure the parent who is still alive, still caring for them, is safe and well,” Greenberger says. In some cases, you will see where children will try in their own way to parent their surviving mother or father so they will be there for the long haul.”
After Xavier Singleton’s mother died unexpectedly last July from a heart attack, the 7-year-old wanted to know where he would live should his dad die, too. His father told him to visualize the family tree Xavier made at Flat Rock Elementary in Lithonia. “You see that big family. You would live with one of them,” Vernon Singleton told his son. Xavier seemed reassured but not happy. “Daddy, I don’t want you to die,” he said.
With that in mind, Singleton now approaches life as he would an oxygen mask on an airplane – he has to take care of himself first so that he can help his child. That has not been easy. Even though his 43-year-old wife, Shelley, died of a heart attack brought on by complications of lung disease, her death still came as a shock because she ate only healthy food and exercised daily so she could be around for her son.
“In the beginning, I was pretty angry. I was angry at everybody,” Singleton says. “No one expects to become a single parent. You get this overwhelming feeling that it is just too much to handle.” He said the depression that followed was even worse. Singleton sought out counseling. His counselor advised him to leave his wife’s voice on the answering machine. Xavier likes to call it and leave messages for his mother. “He likes to hear her voice,” Singleton says. “To tell you the truth, I like hearing it, too.”
Xavier has had to deal with his own anger and sadness. He would get mad at his friends at school and shut down. “I would tell him, ‘When you shut down, you can’t let anything good in,’” says Singleton, who has his son in counseling, too. Both father and son have attended Hospice Atlanta’s bereavement camps.
Singleton, who works long hours as a showroom manager for an Indian rug manufacturer, wishes he had more time to spend with Xavier. But he still tries to find what he calls “my bubble bath time.” Xavier spends one weekend a month with a babysitter. Singleton’s mother often comes down from New York so he can get a break. “It’s not that I want to get rid of Xavier, and I do feel guilty about it, to tell you the truth. But I do need to recharge my battery,” Singleton says. “If you don’t take care of yourself, you are not going to have what you need to take care of them.”
He and Xavier still have so much mourning to do. On April 9, Xavier threw a party at his mother’s graveside for what would have been her 44th birthday. There were balloons and songs. Xavier gave her one of his favorite teddy bears.
“I let Xavier know when I am depressed. I share my feelings with him, which allows him to share his feelings with me,” Singleton says. “We will get through this. We are never going to get over it. But we will get through it.”
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