Understanding Loss Over Time: What Teenage Grief Looks Like in Adulthood

Last year on my birthday, as I sipped wine and gazed out at the beautiful Texas hill country, a wave of tears sprang up, seemingly out of nowhere. One second I was happily turning 35, and the next I was a sobbing mess. A friend I hadn’t thought about in years jumped to my mind. Suddenly, I was 16 again.

At 16, my understanding of death was like that of most teens-I knew it was permanent. Yet still I didn’t believe the phone call from another friend to inform me she was gone. How could someone who had just launched a rocket to second base from her spot as catcher one day be gone the next? I didn’t believe it was her in the casket carried up the aisle by her father. I replayed her death, wishing and praying for it to be reversed. I began to question the meaning of life. If she could die suddenly out of nowhere, that meant anyone could. Not wanting to concern my parents, I kept this questioning and thoughts about death to myself. Same with my classmates-I didn’t want to seem out of place or different with my fear and sorrow and so I kept my head down. My friend had attended a different school, so it was easy to pretend nothing had changed for me.

While some grieving teenagers may tend towards taking more risks than they did before a death loss, or lose motivation and fall into depression, others head towards perfectionism. That’s precisely the direction I took. I dove into my studies and every school activity possible. I didn’t speak of her after her funeral. Avoidance was my tactic to numb the shock and pain of her death. I shoved my feelings into a tiny box and buried them deep down where they remained for another ten years. There they stayed until I interned in grief for grad school and could suppress my feelings no longer.

As an adult, I have a new understanding of what dying at such a young age means. Each passing year and milestone is another she won’t get to see. I don’t carry the survivor’s guilt I held as a teen, but I do have sadness for the life she didn’t get to experience.

Like I did as a teen, I still have questions about her death that will never be answered. I have memory flashbacks and tendencies towards caregiving that sprang up after her death. But I also have hard earned wisdom about grief and a great amount of gratitude for each year I get to live.

 If you or a teen you love is needing to process grief from a death loss, don’t hesitate to reach out to me for individual or family counseling. If you’re interested in a grief group for yourself or teen to be around others who “get it” check out the Christi Center here.