Is it more traumatizing losing a very young child or during old age?

[ChicanaChick]

Here are two real life examples of a mother losing her child.

- A young mother lost her 15 month-old baby boy. He died getting ran over

https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2023/03/24/15-month-old-child-dies-after-being-run-over-by-car-police-say/

- An 102 year-old woman bids farefell to her dying 82 year-old son in a Colombia hospital.

Losing a young child or young adult

You're 100 (still alive) and your child dies in their 70's or early 80's

Makes no difference. You still lost a child regardless of age. Both are traumatic.

[Vesuvius87]

It doesn't matter how old the child was. That was still someone's beloved child. I would be equally devastated if I lost my son as a baby or many years later as a 50+ year-old man. My boy will always be my Sunshine no matter how old he is.

No parent should ever have to bury their child. That's traumatic regardless of age.

[MontBlanc]

There isn’t a simple hierarchy of grief , trauma doesn’t follow a clean scale like that.

For many parents, losing a very young child can feel especially devastating because it disrupts the natural expectation that a child will outlive them.

There’s often shock, shattered future dreams, and a sense of something profoundly “out of order.”

Losing someone in old age can still be deeply painful, but it’s sometimes experienced differently because it aligns more with the expected life cycle.

That doesn’t make it easy , just different.

Intensity of grief depends more on attachment, circumstances, suddenness, and personal meaning than on age alone.

[eagle1951]

both are just as bad i've been through both

[Vesuvius87]

I'm sorry to hear that. My condolences. I can never imagine ever losing my son, not even as an old woman. That pain never goes away.

[eagle1951]

@Vesuvius87 My latte Wife and I lost twin girls one was still born other died 4 days late and tomorrow 2/19/2018 will be 8 years since my late wife passed way after we were married 37 years

[Vesuvius87]

Oh dear I'm very sorry to hear that.