“Writing About the Loss of Parents”
A lot of characters grow up having lost parents - typically because it’s plot convenient and makes for great emotional backstory.
As someone who actually grew up without my parents in real life, though, I know from firsthand experience that a lot of writers have a difficult time getting it right with characters, and simply don’t understand how to go about this process.
I remember one time in a discussion about Harry Potter, someone said that it was “ridiculous” that Harry would be so attached to the memory of his mother and father considering that he never knew them, and that he would mourn their loss. This was the silliest thing that I had ever heard!
I never knew my mother. She passed away when I was four months old, but I’ve mourned her loss throughout my life. I’m twenty-eight years old now, and it still pains me to think about what I missed out on because of her death.
I’ve lost others, like the grandmother who raised me. It’s not the same kind of loss. The sense of loss that you feel is the loss of potential.
When Harry Potter is staring into the Mirror of Erised, he’s mourning the family that he’ll never have the chance to experience. He’s mourning the fact that he’ll never have a mother and father to welcome him home, to celebrate his accomplishments, or to scold him when he gets into trouble.
Another very common emotion for children who are left behind when their parents dies is guilt, especially when the people around them are still mourning the loss of the parent. This is something that I experienced a lot as a child, especially since my mother was very young when she passed away. (I’ve seen this discussed a lot in connection with the Steven Universe fandom, though I haven’t actually seen the show myself - sorry I can’t discuss that in more detail!)
Guilt in connection with a parent’s death can be a powerful feeling for a young child, and can lead to a lot of anxiety. It can make a child or young adult feel anxious about the fact that they were “left behind” and they may worry that they’re not “good enough,” especially if they’re subjected to a lot of discussion about how great their deceased parent was (which is common when people are still in mourning for the deceased parent).
Another important thing to talk about is the fact that a child who has lost a parent can have extreme difficulty when it comes to separation anxiety. Even if the loss occurs very young, they will typically have strong feelings of anxiety when it comes to thinking about any kind of separation from an adult figure they have an attachment to.
They may worry more about the death of the adult figures in their life, especially if those adult figures are older (as may happen if they’re being raised by a grandparent). I was very worried about my grandmother and great-grandmother and wouldn’t participate in sleepovers because I couldn’t deal with separation, for example.
And finally, as was already mentioned, a child who has lost parents at a young age has been exposed to death earlier than most children and, as such, may have a bit of a preoccupation with the idea of death that other children won’t. This could give them anxiety, or even a “morbid” outlook. They may be more “mature” than other children.
They may worry about being hurt or killed themselves. They may be in need of reassurance from the adults in their life that they’re safe and nothing bad will happen to them. (Take into account the way their parent died especially when it comes to the source of the child’s anxiety - I had a big hangup when it came to cars and driving as a child).
If your child is in a religious environment, they may think more about religion than other children, or even have anxiety surrounding their religion. They may worry more about whether religion is real or not - or, conversely, religion may be a big source of comfort for them because it means their parent is watching over them (if this is the sort of religion they believe in).
Ultimately, just remember that a child who has lost a parent is going to have a lot of complicated emotions to deal with. If they don’t have a strong and supportive adult figure in their life to help them out, then they are likely to be a little bit emotionally damaged by the time they reach adolescence, and you’re going to need to deal with that as a writer.
Some of the things that you might need to work out include how they’ve dealt with their feelings of loss, how they’ve dealt with feeling “different” from their peers, and how they cope without strong parental figures if they don’t have them.
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