Terminal Illness & the Stages of Grieving

For millions of American families, the agony of facing a parent's death is a life changing event. Faced with not only the emotional issues of a parent's death but also the financial aspect, many adult children struggle to overcome the overwhelming grief whether the death is by a sudden occurrence or attributed to a terminal illness.

Part of this grieving process is especially evident when a parent is diagnosed with a terminal illness. For many, a progressive deterioration in health, due to terminal illness, is often described as more emotionally difficult to face than a sudden death of a parent. For an adult child, caring for a parent with a terminal illness, the impact of facing both the physical and emotional aspects of the dying process, in addition to the grieving process in the loss of the parent, is often overwhelming to such an extent that the adult child is often unable to cope with issues of his or her own daily living. For this reason, understanding what to expect during this emotional time may help to improve the emotional well being of the adult child as they transist through this chapter of their lives.

Much like the stages of dying, described by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, there are also states of grieving. For many adult children, moving through these stages will vary depending on the emotional position of the adult child coupled with the status of the parent's terminal illness.

Shock is usually the first emotion and is often exhibited by a lack of emotional, almost a feeling of numbness. This is the first of three periods in the recovery process when the adult child faces the first challenge of getting their head around the fact the parent may only be living for a short period of time.