15 minute read
FEATURE
from 09.22.21
DEAD PARENTS SOCIETY: Finding Community in Grief
Uncovering spaces where open conversations about loss can bloom on campus | MEG GLADIEUX
BEN KAPLAN
It’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.
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
after a parent's death. It follows you,” says Stephen.
“It’s weird—the people I speak to most now have no idea who my mom was,” says Ben. “No matter how long they’re in your life, your parents are such a crucial part of who you are. I just don’t even know how to open up about it.”
Ben has a kippah that his mother crocheted for him before she died. It’s tattered, and the colors change shades in places because she ran out of yarn while making it, but he wears it every Sabbath anyway, even if he feels like others don’t understand why he has something so worn. “I don’t want to explain it. It’s just too awkward,” he says.
There aren’t words to explain how you hold onto someone you lost or the seemingly strange ways you remember them. Ben holds his grief with his kippah and in the speeches he gives to remember his mother on the anniversary of her death. We don’t all have the same experience of loss, but what we have in common bonds us.
Some write essays and poems. Others start nonprofits or run marathons. And for Jamie–Lee Josselyn (C ’05)—associate director for recruitment at the Kelly Writers House, instructor for Penn’s Creative Writing Program, and a member of the club since her mom’s death when she was twelve years old—expressing grief involved a podcast.
The topic of dead parents has been a conversation around the Kelly Writers House for years. Students and staff at the Writers House, a center and home base for writers and community art programs, found an informal community by talking about their parents’ deaths, which for many was also a subject of their writing. Year after year, friendships grew over the shared experience of loss, often over cups of tea in the shared kitchen. This community calls themselves the Dead Parents Society.
In fact, these conversations happened so often that Jamie–Lee Josselyn decided to turn them into an actual podcast, also called Dead Parents Society. Now, it’s created a platform for grieving people and students to come together both on Penn’s campus and beyond.
It all started when Jamie–Lee won the Beltran Family Teaching Award in 2017, which allowed her to host a live event at the Writers House. She had an idea: What if Dead Parents Society became an official, live event? In the spring of 2018, writers gathered and read pieces about losing a parent in front of an audience: Dead Parents Society, live at Kelly Writers House.
Then, Jamie–Lee received the Bassini Apprenticeship through the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, which allowed her to work with students on a longer–term project of choice. It was the perfect opportunity to make Dead Parents Society into something more official—to transform it into a true fixture at the Writers House and translate late–night kitchen conversations into a public practice of writing about and recording grief.
Jamie–Lee is an avid podcast listener. “It’s very intimate, in a way,” she says. “I like to pretend I’m friends with the people who host the podcasts.” And because she considered every person with whom she had conversations about their dead parents to be her friends, it felt like the perfect formula. Thus, the Dead Parents Society podcast was born.
The Dead Parents Society podcast isn’t a support group, nor is the community from which it originated. For grieving students at Penn, CAPS has “Living with Loss,” a grief support group for students coping with the death of a significant person in their lives. But, unlike a support group, Dead Parents Society is not just about coming together to talk about the trauma of a parent dying or coping with loss. It’s about finding community around everything that comes after the death of a parent, about having intentional conversations on how that loss shapes the way you view the world.
“I think it’s something people want to connect over, but don’t always have the opportunity,” says Jamie–Lee. “We’re the grieving friends you always wanted.”
In a post–COVID–19 world where more and more people are grieving, where conversations about mental health are becoming less stigmatized, the Dead Parents Society podcast might be the perfect platform for more open conversations about how death, loss, and grief shape the world we inhabit.
Since the pandemic, Jamie–Lee has brought non–Penn students on the podcast to talk about grief more generally. Writers, teachers, and even fellow podcast hosts come together to talk about how loss, particularly loss of close loved ones like parents, shapes the way we live our lives.
“I think that the conversations I was hoping to start back in 2018 are easier for people to have, not because of my podcast, but just because of what’s been going on,” says Jamie–Lee.
Despite Jamie–Lee’s conversations on the podcast, having a dead parent is still isolating, especially as a young adult.
“We don’t talk about it. Who knows how many people have gone through it here?”
says Ben. He’s right—it's hard to know how many students at Penn are navigating life with a dead parent, and when conversations about loss are so difficult to have, it’s a challenge to find others with that shared experience.
But when you do encounter a fellow member of the club, it’s easy to feel an automatic sort of affinity with them. “I think it's nice to have someone that, whether or not the story is even anything near similar to mine, the loss and the experience is similar to some extent,” says Ben.
Jamie–Lee hopes that the Dead Parents Society podcast might help people feel more comfortable having conversations about death and grief. “I hope for the students, [the podcast] can be an outlet. We don't always feel like we can bring this stuff up, even though it's quite often on our minds,” says Jamie–Lee.
“The reason we tell these stories and write these stories and talk about these stories on the podcast is not only for our own benefit. It’s for the benefit of other people, for people who have experienced the same things as us—a parent dying—but also people who haven’t,” says Jamie–Lee. It’s not just a podcast for people with dead parents, but an invitation to talk about death more openly. She hopes that the podcast can provide a space where people can find catharsis and community in conversations about death, even if they haven’t personally experienced such a loss.
“It’s easy to minimize grief,” she says, “but I think by knowing that people are listening and feeling connected—possibly even people who share these stories but aren’t quite yet up for telling them—that’s a real service.”
Somewhere down the line, Jamie–Lee envisions a Dead Parents Society anthology book that collects the stories of people who have written about the loss of parents and interweaves commentary from other writers with shared experiences. What began as quiet conversations among people with shared trauma has bloomed into a collection of voices and community of grievers. The important thing is keeping the dialogue around grief and loss alive for members of the Dead Parents Society everywhere.
At the end of my conversation with Ben, I thank him for sharing so much of his story. He shrugs and says, “When someone’s a member of the club, it’s chill to say anything, you know?”
We laugh. “Yeah, I know,” I say, because I do.
JAMIE-LEE JOSSELYN
Photo Courtesy of Jamie-Lee Josselyn
Penn GenEq Offers a Home for First–Year Students
Photo courtesy of PAGE board Penn’s new pre–orientation program, Penn GenEq, provides a new affinity space for first–year students interested in gender equity work. | REMA BHAT
Content Warning: Mentions of Sexual Violence on Campuses
Right before the beginning of the semester, Penn hosts several pre–orientation programs Coordinator at PAGE, says that Penn GenEq has been in the works for a long time. They were a freshman in PAGE aimed at acclimating students to Penn’s campus and organizations before first–year move in. This year, Penn GenEq was a new pre–orientation program that joined the other programs: PennCORP, PENNacle, PennQuest, PennGreen, and PennArts.
Penn GenEq is pioneered by the Penn Association for Gender Equity (PAGE), an organization focused on gender and social justice. The pre–orientation program is centered around building an affinity space for first–year students interested in gender equity work. Right before the beginning of the semester, Penn hosts several pre–orientation programs aimed at acclimating students to Penn’s campus and organizations before first–year move in. This year, Penn GenEq was a new pre–orientation program that joined the other programs: PennCORP, PENNacle, PennQuest, PennGreen, and PennArts.
Penn GenEq is pioneered by the Penn Association for Gender Equity (PAGE), an organization focused on gender and social justice. The pre–orientation program is centered around building an affinity space for first–year students interested in gender equity work.
Serena Martinez (C '22), First Year when discussions of founding GenEq first began. “One of the main reasons that I wanted to run for First Year Coordinator, which is one of the jobs that I have with my co–worker, is because I wanted to try and make Penn GenEq a thing after three years of hoping it would happen. It was definitely a team effort of everyone involved,” says Serena. According to Serena, affinity groups are imperative for giving marginalized students a space to “flesh out” the topics they may not have been able to talk about in high school. They also highlighted the importance of first–year programs for educating other first years about sexual violence on campuses. “In addition to making space for people to explore their own identities and connecting them to other groups on campus where they can continue to do that, throughout their time at Penn... [The Orientation Program] was also about educating on sexual violence, how to support friends,” says Serena. This is because NSO is what's called a “red zone.” According to Inside Higher Ed, the first six to eight weeks of the semester are the time period when more sexual assaults take place than any other time of the year. Penn GenEq’s curriculum includes a presentation from PAVE (Penn Anti–Violence Educators) on bystander intervention and a presentation on sexual violence at Penn. In addition to these presentations, GennEq’s curriculum is diverse and varied in its lecture contents. Lectures include Transformative Justice & Pod Mapping by Pablo Cerdera, Who Does Feminism Serve? Identity Politics & Intersectionality, Capitalism & Class, and Trans 101 by PennNonCis.
Penn GenEQ was a phenomenal experience for those who attended, and Street spoke with three first–years who participated in the program.
According to Lex Gilbert (C '25), Penn GenEq was a place where they met their new friend group and got to learn about topics that interested them. “Going into PennGenEq, I did not know how lucky I'd be, but I found my crowd and those people have become my entire friend group. While there, I got to learn about things I had never thought of before, for example, transformative justice, healing, and pod mapping” says Lex.
Clara Nolan (C '25), another GenEq participant, was drawn toward Penn GenEq because of its focus on social justice. “The fact that GenEq was just starting this year, it was like a pilot, and the whole premise of it was talking about intersectionality issues relating to feminism and gender equity. I thought that would be most aligned with my interests” says Clara.
First–year student Lila DiMasi (C '25) says that Penn GenEq was a nice continuation of her organizing work in high school as the president of her school’s Women’s Empowerment Club. She also said that her favorite part of the experience was the lasting connections she was able to make. “The most valuable part of it was the deep bonding that got to happen with everybody else . . . Every day we were talking about these, like, soul–deep topics” says DiMasi.
Samantha Pancoe (C '22), the chair of PAGE, says that she hopes Penn GenEq can exist in perpetuity. “Our goals are to have PennGenEq recognized as a University Life Pre–Orientation Program, ensuring that it is able to run every year, and to welcome our new class of First–Year Fellows in the fall.” Pancoe hopes that PAGE will “keep pushing the boundaries of feminism through programming during Body Reclamation Week, Trans Day of Remembrance, and GenEq Week.”
If you’re interested in beginning your journey into gender equity work, Serena recommends looking at a bunch of classes, clubs, affinity groups, and exploring advocacy and activism on campus.
