Grieving an Estranged Parent

Dealing with the death of a parent is one of the most stressful events anyone will face. For some people the loss of a parent is stressful because they’ve lost the first person they would go to for support or advice. But for others, the loss is more confusing, because the relationship with Mom or Dad wasn’t close. Perhaps you can relate to Yana’s experience:

“My dad was really inconsistent. There were periods in my life where he was really present and then there were seasons where he wasn’t.” Years later, she was surprised by a phone call from her sister. “I got a phone call that dad was dead. I just remember going to the bathroom and just crying profusely. But I couldn’t really understand why I was so sad, because it’s not like he was someone who was an integral part of my life.” Yana

When an estranged parent dies, the grief can be more puzzling or conflicted than for others who were close to their parents. Let’s explore why that’s the case and how you might deal with the challenges so you might move forward in your life.

Why your grief is hard

Grief is always shaped by the type of relationship you had with the person who died. According to social worker Melissa Brown, “even if the relationship with that person has been complicated, it’s still a relationship. And there’s an element of attachment. After all, that person was still your parent.” 

Stacy describes this tension well: “How do you unpack the death of your mother, the woman who ushered you into this world? I’m not only grieving her loss, I’m grieving the relationship we didn’t have that I wished we had. What does that life look like? I couldn’t fathom it. Although our relationship was strained, I couldn’t fathom living without my mom here on earth.” 

Pastor Thabiti Anyabwile echoes the tension associated with the loss of a parent who wasn’t present that much: “I’m not surprised by the fact that I have moments of missing my dad. But sometimes the intensity of it surprises me, particularly because I spent the better part of a decade thinking, okay, this is what it is. I don’t really have a relationship with him. But that bond between a father and a son is not entirely defined by physical proximity. He’s still my dad, right?”

Emotional distance between you and your mom or dad introduces a number of factors that might be a part of grieving an estranged parent:

• Ongoing negative feelings: Not only was there a difficult past, but those difficulties continued to strain the relationship even in adulthood.
• Dashed hopes from childhood: In the past, some good times had generated hopes for better times. But the better times never came.
• Reminders of what you didn’t have with your parent: You observe that other people have closer relationships with their parents and you wonder, “Why not me?”

These factors affect emotional reactions to the death of an estranged parent. For example, there might be:

• Sadness, but that might be overshadowed by …
• Bitterness (residual anger over abuses or neglect or unnecessary fights), or … 
• Relief that conflict with your parent is no longer present, or …
• Indifference toward the loss

This complexity in your grief can make it even more difficult for you to move forward in your life. Among these emotional reactions, bitterness is particularly noteworthy, because its growth can be subtle and its damage surprising. Let’s consider how you loosen its hold on you.

Loosening the grip of bitterness

Bitterness (or resentment) is anger that is fueled by a persistent focus on some disappointment that you view as unjustified. The anger is usually associated with thinking, “I didn’t deserve that!” or “You had no right to do that!” Richard shares one example of such an experience: 

“On one particular Sunday, I went to my friend Brian’s house, and we hung out there. Then Sunday night we went back to church and my mother was not around. Brian’s mom was kind enough to drive me to my house. We got there and there was nobody home. Door was locked, and I didn’t have a key to get in. So I spent the next week at Brian’s house. We called my parents several times during the week. No answer. The next Sunday I went to church and she was there. I went home with her acting like nothing ever happened.” Richard

With these types of experiences, the anger feels natural and justified, so its persistence goes unchallenged. However, eventually there will be negative consequences, although they might seem to appear “out of nowhere.”

The subtleties of bitterness can make it difficult to recognize in yourself prior to its damaging effects. So, we’ll start with recognizing signs often associated with bitterness.

Recognize the signs of bitterness

If you’re bitter, you likely see these tendencies in your life:

• Discontented: You’re dissatisfied and easily bothered about life or relationships.
• Irritable: You snap at people who inconvenience you.
• Rights-focused: You tend to focus on not getting what you perceive to be your “rights.” 
• Easily discouraged: You are more likely than not to give up when you encounter obstacles in life.
• Envious: You’re resentful or suspicious of others who have what you don’t have.
• Vindictive: You draw some satisfaction from the hardship of others who’ve offended you. (This often includes thinking, “You got what was coming to you.”)

From this list of signs, it’s not hard to see how bitterness can slowly weaken your relationships. Being easily disgruntled and snapping at people won’t make it easy for others to spend time with you. And when it comes to dealing with grief, that’s a problem. We are designed to be social, and not having the support, encouragement, or accountability of others makes it tougher to move forward after loss.

In addition to eroding relationships, long-term bitterness can have a negative effect on your physical health. In research studies, it’s associated with high blood pressure, muscle tension, headaches, sleep disturbances, and a weakened immune system. Bitterness is a stressor for your body (as is grief itself), so it adds to the burden on your body at a time when you need all the energy you can muster.

Understand the benefit of forgiveness

Given the toll bitterness can take on you, it makes sense to ask: What’s the antidote to bitterness? In a word, it’s “forgiveness.” Notice the word is not “forgetting.” When you’ve been wronged by someone—especially someone you should be able to count on, like a parent—then it’s really hard to just look past the offense. That’s one reason bitterness can exist for so long and eventually cause the damage that it does. But it’s the damage that undermines efforts to move forward with life. Therefore, it’s worthwhile to consider the benefit of forgiveness.

But if forgiveness is not forgetting about an offense, what is it? Forgiveness actually starts with committing to a certain way of thinking about your parent’s offenses against you. If you’re bitter, the focus of your attention is on the hurt and the injustice in the past. Forgiving your parent means refocusing your attention; specifically, you can choose to focus on:

• Acknowledging what happened in the past: Not only the negative but also the positive. Recall any positive experiences you had with your parent, not just the negative ones. Talk to others who might have known your parent and can provide some background for better understanding your parent’s own struggles. That can enable you to process your parent’s behavior with you in its broader context.
• Assessing how the offense(s) affected you: Identify the ways you might have grown as fearful, angry, anxious, lonely, socially awkward, etc. If these are characteristic of you, then moving ahead in life will involve confronting them, rather than ignoring them. 
• Addressing the deficits that might have resulted from the offense(s): This might involve reading, taking classes, seeking counseling, etc.

In this way, you position yourself to move forward with your life by growing from pain you endured.

Get help for dealing with bitterness

Losing an estranged parent is a reminder that we live in a broken world. Parents should be loving and nurturing toward their children. When they aren’t, it creates turmoil for their children, which ripples throughout their lives and can complicate their grief. However, while bitterness toward such a parent feels natural and normal, it only adds to one’s pain and brokenness. Working toward forgiveness is the better path.

Fortunately, there is help for moving beyond bitterness to a forgiving and peaceful attitude. A counselor can assist you in understanding both what you’ve gone through and its impact on you now. But for the shift in perspective that overcoming bitterness requires, you’re likely to need more help. 

One person who knows a lot about unjust suffering and forgiveness is Jesus Christ. He is the perfect source for support and guidance in these matters. And through prayer and the Scripture, that assistance is available. One grief support program that builds on Jesus’ model, guidance, and strength is GriefShare. GriefShare has guided thousands of grievers on their grief journeys, including those who’ve needed to learn how to forgive. We encourage you to find a GriefShare group either meeting near you or online.