A's mother died of cancer when he was fifteen. He was close to her and missed her. He got angry at the world, got in fights, got suspended from school. He bounced from one bad idea to another for ten years before being sent to therapy, where he has done well.
B's mother died of cancer when he was fourteen. He got depressed and didn't function very well. His grades dropped and he barely graduated. Then he stayed in his room playing video games until he was nineteen when he came to see me. He is now at least working part-time.
C's mother died of a brain tumor when he was fourteen. He turned to study and thought. Now he is a priest and consoles people who are dying.
D's mother died when she was fifteen. She took over the household chores and took care of everything for her father. Her father married another woman seven years later. That woman threw D out of the house.
E's mother died of a drug overdose when he was eleven. He is now thirty-one and just out of rehab for the third time.
F's mother died of a drug overdose when he was twelve. He is being raised by his grandmother. He is second in his high school class.
Having your mother die in early adolescence always has a profound effect, but what that effect is going to be clearly depends on many other factors. the most important of which is who else is around.
3 comments:
The death of a mother does seem to strike a kid a lot harder than that of a father.
My mother didn't die, but she abandoned me when I was 16, which had a similar effect in some ways.
My father was nuts as a hatter, and really didn't know much about housekeeping, but I was in luck. He was a lot better in the mothering business than her.
I agree and disagree with you therapist... My mother died when I was 8, five months after my father died. I was shipped off to (what turned out to be) an abusive foster home where the mother began drinking before 10 AM and got off on punishing the slighest infraction.
She taught me what kind of parent I didn't want to be when I grew up so in that respect I did become what I am today because of who I was around.
Since I was seventeen I have worked and payed taxes (lots of taxes) and raised three really great children that are (now)also paying taxes (I use this only as one gage of being a productive member of society).
My baby brother (four years younger), being in the same environment, took a different path and spent the majority of his life on the streets fighting drug and alcohol abuse, dying of liver failure at age forty.
This makes me think there must be some internal factor/programing that plays a role in the life choices one makes.
i agree with both therapist *and* patty. who is around definitely has an impact on the outcomes. so do innate tendencies. sometimes all that is needed to doom someone is a bad mismatch between a relatively good upbringing and a person's innate personality.
also important is whether or not there has been anyone around who has offered, even briefly, some hope. even if it takes years and lots of falling down, that glimmer can make the difference.
seeing you, therapist, doesn't indicate that all has been lost. actually it might be an indication that things are on the way up. you gotta know you have a problem and then identify it somehow before you can figure out how to work on it. you gotta know there are other possibilities out there before you can know that your way isn't the best for you.
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