F E AT U R E
F E AT U R E
DEAD PARENTS SOCIETY: Finding Community in Grief Uncovering spaces where open conversations about loss can bloom on campus | MEG GLADIEUX
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“I just don’t know how to talk to my friends about this thing that I’m missing. It’s not that I’m sad—it’s just that there’s something that isn’t there, something missing that just makes everything a little harder."
t’s the club that no one asked to join. The only requirement for membership: having a dead parent. I’ve been a member since I was eight–and–a–half, when my dad died. We don’t have meetings, and there’s no official indoctrination, but those of us who have experienced the loss of a parent at a young age have an implicit bond that allows us to connect in a way that others just can’t understand. And once you’re a member of the club, you’re a member for life. I didn’t think my father’s death would follow me to college. I thought I could leave my father’s death out of my identity, back in my hometown. Instead, I realized how integral this childhood experience was to every part of my life, especially as I entered adulthood. I found that the subject of parents and family were topics I constantly avoided, a part of my identity I didn’t quite know how to express without sending conversations in still–nascent friendships into devastatingly uncomfortable spirals. It’s estimated that 1 in 14 children will lose a parent or sibling by the time they’re 18; having a dead parent is a more common experience than many think. Yet I struggled to find people I could relate to—after all, social conventions render grief taboo in public spaces. As a result, members of the club hide in plain sight. The death of a close family member is an experience that puts a barrier between you and everyone around you, something you carry that just can’t be articulated to those who haven’t gone through the same thing.
BEN KAPLAN Stephen Mack (C ’23) and I bond over our dead dads in the back of the Starbucks at 39th and Walnut. His dad died when he was 12. “There’s a lot of trauma, not just my father passing, but everything that came after,” says Stephen. “That’s hard to express
or explain to people, because it's a trauma that most people here [at Penn] are fortunate enough not to have had.” Stephen has been able to share his story with friends, but even so, what he’s experienced creates a degree of separation from the background of the typical Penn student. Some of the details of his father’s death aren’t things he feels totally comfortable sharing. Most people in Stephen’s life know that his father passed away, but everything else that comes with that loss is more difficult to express, especially when he doesn’t know people with similar experiences. “We carry these things with us to Penn, and it’s good because we have [physical] distance from them, but that distance isn’t necessarily there emotionally,” he says. Ben Kaplan’s (C ’22) loss is slightly more recent than Stephen’s or my own; his mother passed away in the spring of his senior year of high school from breast cancer. He tells me the whole story on a bench at 40th and Locust, from her diagnosis in elementary school, to remission, to her re–diagnosis during his junior year of high school, to nights praying in her hospital room, to the strangeness of the mourning period, to his family’s pilgrimage to Israel to bury her. “There are just certain things in life that are harder because a parent isn’t there,” says Ben. In high school, his mom had been his central source of motivation and encouragement. When he started college, he was missing an entire support system he had known for
most of his life. While his friends call their parents to talk about exams or their job search, Ben is forced to be more self–reliant as he enters into the adult world. “I just don’t know how to talk to my friends about this thing that I’m missing," he says. "It’s not that I’m sad—it’s just that there’s something that isn’t there, something missing that just makes everything a little harder." The experience of having a dead parent isn’t just the sense of loss; it also shapes the way we interact with the people around us, especially on campus. “It comes up more often than you think,” says Stephen. “People ask, ‘What do your parents do?’ and then it just becomes an awkward conversation.” Ben has experienced something similar. “I usually just say ‘doctors,’ he says. “And if they ask about my mom specifically—well, I just don’t know how to respond. It’s not always the right time to go there.” I can relate to their discomfort—when people ask me what my father does for a living, I have a dialogue with myself, a certain internal crisis: Should I lie or change the subject? I always eventually tell the truth, but saying, “He’s dead,” is usually a pretty good conversation killer. Ben, Stephen, and I have very different experiences of grieving our parents, but I can relate to almost everything they say. All of us have coped with the deaths of our parents, but the impact of the loss never goes away. “That’s one thing that people don’t understand, there’s repercussions that last years—decades, even—
"That’s one thing that people don’t understand. There’s repercussions that last years—decades, even—after a parent's death. It follows you.”
STEPHEN MACK
Photo Courtesy of Stephen Mack 12 34TH STREET MAGAZINE
SEPTEMBER 21, 2021
SEPTEMBER 21, 2021 34TH STREET MAGAZINE
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