When I was in training to be a psychologist, I never imagined that my work would come to focus so often on helping teenagers who are facing grievous loss. But death intrudes on adolescence far more than one might expect and while some of the difficulties these teenagers confront can be readily anticipated, others are so specific to the experience of being a teenager that adults can easily overlook them.
Almost any widow can attest that within a year after her spouse’s death, a surprising number of acquaintances start acting as if she were never married at all. Like adults, adolescents tend to move on quickly from other people’s losses, but time moves faster for teenagers. When I’m talking with a grieving teenager, perhaps one whose mother died only three months ago, I’ve stopped assuming that her weary eyes and hard-set jaw are the outward signs of pure sadness. I know that can also be the look of a teenager gearing up to tell me about the misery and aggravation of sitting through an entire lunch period listening to her friends gripe about their own mothers. Three months ago hardly appears in even the kindest teenager’s rear view mirror.
Though the reality of death sinks in slowly for anyone who is bereaved, it also unfolds differently for adolescents. I was a rookie psychologist, fresh out of graduate school, when a senior colleague encouraged me to work with the assumption that all teenagers secretly fear that they’re crazy. The comment surprised me at the time, but I’ve come to believe that it’s true. Parents aren’t alone in wondering how their rational fifth grader evolved into an eighth grader who easily becomes unglued. Teenagers notice their own instability and worry about what it means.
Like grieving adults, bereaved teenagers can find themselves reaching for the phone to call or text someone who has recently died. For grown-ups, these are painful, poignant moments. For teenagers, these moments are also painful and poignant. But they can be scary too. When I’m with teenagers who are in mourning, I look for openings — the confession of numbness, or disbelief that the death has really happened — to point out the good health in their distortions and help them recognize and appreciate their adaptive psychological defenses. I say: “This is your mind doing its job to protect you, to keep you from becoming overwhelmed. A brilliant, invisible system allows you to be in touch with your loss for as long as you can manage, then sets it aside and saves it for later. You can count on your instincts to get you through this.” Done right, such comments can help grieving teenagers feel better, not worse, about the hidden workings of their minds.
Grief is isolating for everyone, but especially so for teenagers. At 45, I can turn to my mother for comfort when I learn of a friend’s death. At 16, the same impulse would have run against my need to hold her at a distance. Had I given in, let my adolescent self seek my mother’s support, I certainly would have pushed her away before the moment became more babyish than I could stand . I would have told her that I was fine, told her to leave me alone, even if I was still miles from feeling O.K.
And grieving teenagers can’t always lean on their friends, either. When teenagers mourn in groups over the loss of one of their own, they can have a hard time being gentle and generous with one another. Unlike adults, most teenagers are still figuring out how they fit into their social systems, and questions of who was closest to the late friend, who has the right to be upset and to what degree, sometimes get in the way of their ability to give and take support. Similar questions may arise when adults lose a friend or colleague, but the answers are often more clear cut and there is almost always less at stake personally and socially.
Facing grievous loss as a teenager is no worse, or better, than bereavement at any other time of life. But it’s different, shaped in its own way. As a clinician who supports teenagers, I’m always grateful for the adults — the family friends, teachers, clergy and others — who gracefully step in, and keep checking in, with a teenager who loses someone close. And, so often, I stand in awe of adolescents as they integrate the work of mourning, or the charge of comforting grieving friends, and even the call to care for the dying, into the already taxing project of being a teenager.