Death

[ailbhe]

Linnea's friends' grandparents have started to die, one by one. Of old-people stuff, mainly.

That is also to say that my friends have begun to lose their parents to age-related illnesses.

I'm not even thirty yet. My mother's not even seventy, and I'm her fourth child with a long gap before me. Surely we're all too young for this? What's life expectancy nowadays?

Comments

[richtermom.livejournal.com]

I'm somehow hoping and thinking that you're not going to need to be faced by this for a while, hopefully a very long one, but it always makes me stop to think about my K, who was born when I turned 38. Was that fair? She'll be my age when I'm around the average death age. I'm not really ready to lose either of my parents, and she won't be when she's my age either.

We never really are.

My parents had me when they were a little younger but they lived hard and I can't imagine them hanging around 10 full years longer, especially not active or independent.... The husband's parents are also in the same category.

Yes, I've seen a few of my friends lose a parent, and it's very sad. My family tended to have kids young and despite lots of poor lifestyle choices, it seems my recent ancestors hung on into their mid-80s or late 70s. I had 3 great-grandparents when I was born; K had none missing them all by less than 11 years, but she does have all 4 active and shopping grandparents so she's a lucky lucky girl. I hope her -- our --luck holds on a while longer.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

galagan's parents are both dead - they had him when they were older, and they both died around age 70. This means Elena only has one set of living grandparents. I'm sure we'll get lots of questions about them as she realizes that most people have more "grands" around than she does. I try to mention them when I can - specifically, her "other" grandmother (which always seems like such weird awful phrasing, but I don't know how else to say it). I never knew her other grandfather who died before I met galagan.

Both of my grandmothers were living when she was born, but they both died that summer..... One met her, the other did not. They were both 87. I come from a long-living family.

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

My grandparents all died before I was the age of 10. My mother's parents died before I was born, and my grandparents of my father's side died at 6 & 9 respectively.

My mother's father died when she was 5. My grandmother died when my mother was 32 or so. My mother was 35 when had me (my age now), but my grandmother was 42 when she had my mother. So. You know.

My paternal grandfather was in his 50s when died I think - but he'd been battling cancer for 9 years at that point. My Nana was about 60 or so when she passed, but she also died of cancer.

I think about this a lot actually.

We're hoping ot have a child next year. I expect that my father (72, in bad health) will die in the next couple of years. After that it is a crapshoot. My mother is 70 and in very good health. midnightstation's parents are 74 & 78, but in very good health and I think will live at least another 10 years each. I think my mother will have at least 10 years, if not 20, due to recent advances in medicine and the fact that she has had a breast reduction that reduces her chances of breast cancer (most of the women on that side die of breast cancer and heart disease - and she has not got either).

It's hard to say. My parents have lived a very different life than their parents.

I say any time with a grandparent is valuable. I'm always shocked when I meet people past the age of 20 who have living grandparents.

N.

[richtermom.livejournal.com]

I was stupenously blessed. I had 3 until i was over 30, and I tell K about them all the time. I tell her the story about how her great grandparents met and fell in love, and I tell her about how her great grandpa came over from Lithuania, and about how her great grandma loved roses and cooking, and about her other great grandparents too. I'm doing all of K's genealogy, and I encourage her other grandparents to tell her stories -- it's important to me that she know not just her own history -- maybe where she gets her love of language or sense of humor -- but it's also an incredible tie-in to general history, in our case American and European, including Ireland.

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

My family has done a very good job of keeping the stories of all these various relatives alive, and I know my family history front and back, as well as anecdotes from the childhoods of the various granparents. Even if I never met them.

N.

[caerleon.livejournal.com]

Everybody dies eventually.. it's one of those things that's hard to explain to children.. I recommend taking them to as many funerals as you can.. they have to learn that life is a finite resource.. the earlier they learn of their own mortality the better AFAIC.. we are all going to die..

[gloriap.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't suggest taking them to funerals, but I would tell them when someone they know dies. I went to lots of funerals when I was a kid and they didn't teach me a thing except that some survivors used to get very emotional. It wasn't something I'd want my kids to experience.

I was 28 when my parents died. They were 64 and 68. My FIL died that year, too. He was 64. (Cancer, heart attack, heart attack.) My MIL lived to almost 90, her second husband was 94.

As far as life expectancy, it's only an average. You never know. That's why it doesn't pay to hold grudges in families. You never know when someone will get hit by a bus and you'll regret not having made peace. Of course that doesn't apply to--name withheld's--mother who is a real b!tch.
;-)

[flybabydizzy.livejournal.com]

I think there are 2 separate issues here. You and your parents; the girls and their grandparents. Although they're the same people, the relationships are different.
My paternal grandmother died in a house fire in her 30s, along with her daughter. That's all I know of them. Paternal grandfather was a nasty piece of work even before then. All I remember of him was having to be on my best behaviour to a bigoted deaf old man and his hard faced second wife. (They were cruel to my mother)
Maternal grandparents were rarely visited - about 3 times a year - again, all best behaviour, and ooh, hasn't she grown. He died while I was a kid, she died about 91, I was about 29. They were there, they were talked about, but they weren't part of MY life.

My dad died age 55 when I was 14, mum at 71 when I was 31, when our eldest was a few months old. Father in law died aged 69, before I had a chance to meet him, mil about 74, when my kids were 11 and 14 (18 year age gap between p-i-l)
So my kids only knew one grandparent, and that again was just about half a dozen day visits a year - she wouldn't come to stay with us.
An older friend of mine offered to be Nain (Welsh grandmother)to my children, and although they haven't seen that much of her since we moved south, they keep in touch, talk about her and feel close to her, so sometimes, grandparents can be adopted. While you have them, the most important thing is the quality of time that is spent with them. Make memories, and talk about them.
As for losing one's parents, I think that once you are an adult, the older it happens, the worse it is, as you have a greater realisation of the loss. My daughter's boyfriend, age 30, has just lost his grandmother, and was 'playing it' a bit, my daughter reckoned. She grounded him a bit by saying that by the time her mum was 6 months older than him, I'd lost all grandparents, both parents and my first child. It is, however, all relative. (no apology)

As gloriap says, you never know when someone will be hit by a bus, never mind about age related deaths. There are books for children about this, of course. It may be worth investigating one to discuss with the girls, so you get your views across, rather than their first discussion being with someone who says (gets on personal soapbox) Nana Jones has fallen asleep with the angels, or has become another star in the sky, etc etc. (shuts up now before she offends someone)

[tiggsybabes.livejournal.com]

My 98 year old Grandma is very ill, so Kate will need to deal with this issue shortly (it will just flow over Holly)

[nitoda]

I only ever knew one of my grandparents and she died when I was 15. It was the first significant death in my family apart from an uncle when I was about 7 but I barely remember that. My parents died when I was ... around 30 for my dad? and around 45 my Mum? M's parents only died within the last couple of years (she's in her 50's, like me).
She had 3 out of 4 of her grandparents alive when we married (aged 19 and 21). I think there is still an influence of the 1940's at work in our lives. Both M's and my parents were of the generation caught up in the war. They married later than many because the war introduced inevitable delays into courtship and marriage and child rearing for them. I've been surprised to find I had friends of similar ages to myself whose parents were *much* younger.

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

I still have 4 grandparents (I'm 32, they're aged between 84 and 94) but no mother. She died when she was 60 and I was 28. I have about half a dozen friends my own age who've lost parents, though perhaps not of "old person" stuff - breast cancer, heart failure and so on.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

But if you've two parents, one can die at 69 and the other at 86 and you've still got a mean age of 77. I don't think any of my peers have lost two parents yet, but several have lost one parent.

My parents are both 63, and I've realised that I'm sort of working on the assumption that I've got about another 12-15 years left with my dad, and another 20-30 with my mum.

[supermouse.livejournal.com]

Seventy-two for men and seventy-eight for women living in the UK.

I'm thirty-three and all of my grandparents are now dead.

[hilarityallen.livejournal.com]

If someone close to Linnea dies, I'd recommend taking her to the funeral. It's an important ritual for saying goodbye, and an intelligent child will feel very left out when she's old enough to realise what happened. (I was 8 when my granny was taken seriously ill and my mother made a midnight dash to Wales with my father, leaving me with the neighbours. I had no idea what was wrong, which was far more traumatic than anything else. Though they did let me go to the funeral.)

I'm 30, and all of my grandparents are dead. They died in 1987 (two of them, when I was 7/8 and they were 74 and 71), 2006 aged 91) and 2008 (98). My parents are now past sixty, and unless they die in a car crash, I fully anticipate them making it into their 80s or 90s. But my mother wasn't yet forty when her parents died.

[(Anonymous)]

I only had one grandmother. She died, aged 82, when I was six. My grandfather on my mother's side died in his '60's, long before I was born. My mother died in 1994 aged 83.

However, the person who really screws all the statistics was my father. He was born in 1881. He was 69 when I was born. He died, aged 75, in a car crash!

Elaine

[nicnacpaddywac.livejournal.com]

My paternal grandfather died 4 years before i was born, and i think was in his early sixties. My maternal grandmother is frail, but going strong at 87, although is starting to get a bit "doddery".

My maternal grandfather died when i was seven, which was my first experience of death. We weren't taken to the funeral, and i remember feeling very scared and confused. Now i really wish we had been allowed got go, and would definately take a child at that age, and probably significantly younger. My maternal grandmother died in her late seventies when i was 22.

My dad died when i was 18, at the age of 48. His funeral was the first i'd attended, and among my grief i remember feeling scared that i didn't really know exactly what a funeral involved. I am so sad that my son wasn't born until 7 years after his death. My mum is now rather frail, although only in her mid-fifties. The thought of her dying absolutely terrifies me, and although i realise i will probably never be ready for it, i feel far too young at 27 to be an "orphan".