This post is dedicated to every young person who is living away from family and navigating grief.
My dad died mid-way through my junior year of college.
At that point in my life I had lost two grandparents and my beloved cocker spaniel, but nothing came close to the pain of losing my dad. It took me a long time, not until my sister died 13 years later, to fully understand how difficult it was to be grieving as a young adult while away at school.
To begin, losing someone important at any age is hard. I am not here to proclaim that being a bereaved college student is the worst possible situation. All the situations are terrible, but I would like to highlight the unique challenges to this demographic.
I'll also say that I graduated from school in 2005. There most definitely has been an improved societal awareness of mental health since then, so things could be different.
But...they're probably not much different.
Logistics
My dad died in the early morning hours, and I wasn't home until late that evening. Getting home wasn't logistically difficult (I got a ride to the Syracuse* airport, took a plane, and got a ride home from the airport from someone who worked with my parents). But it was very difficult to execute the plan.
I traveled alone. And I remember how surreal it felt to be moving through crowds when my life was in such tumult. While waiting for my plane to board, I found a spot along the wall opposite the gate and just lay on the floor. Flat out.
The person who picked me up at the airport asked me if we were going to the hospital where my dad had been for the past few weeks. Upon realizing that he didn't know that my dad was dead, I just told him I needed to go home. I couldn't bear to speak the words.
Students often don't have cars. Some colleges are in major metropolitan areas, others are in the middle of nowhere. Emergencies are always hard—but navigating one solo as a grieving student is something else entirely
This Hidden Grief cartoon highlights how a family tries to shield their student from reality. Click here to see it in its entirety.
Lack of Privacy
One enormous factor about grieving is the emotional processing. Your brain is cloudy because it's constantly trying to understand an impossible reality.
Sometimes that processing is sadness. Sometimes it's rage. Sometimes it is a vegetative state. Whatever it is, there are times, like almost always, that you want do it in private.
Dorm life doesn't lend itself well to privacy. The chances that you'll have a private room, or a private place to use the bathroom or shower are very low. The semester my dad died I lived in a single with a communal bathroom shared between 14 people. I vividly remember having to leave my room and try to get to the bathroom and back without being noticed. A harder task than trying to make it to the end of the Hidden Temple.
Almost everything in college is for public viewing. Not only public viewing, but it felt like I was on display in a way I've never felt since. Maybe it was the age, maybe it was the fact that our Hogwarts-like dining hall required you to pass all the tables to get to the serve your own cereal station, maybe, actually, no one was paying any attention to me (most likely the case), but it felt terrible.
My college's dining hall, and the two "cat walks" you had to traverse to get your food (through the little door at the end). Photo courtesy of Hamilton College.
Lack of Support
I had one professor who had lost his own father 3 years earlier to me who sent me a very kind email and was accommodating with my testing schedule for the rest of the semester (including letting me delay taking my invertebrate biology final that was scheduled for my first birthday, 3 months and 7 days after my dad died!). I don't remember anyone else checking in. No dean of students, no counselors, where was everybody?
Of course there was a counseling center on campus that I could have frequented. If early 40s-year-old me was a newly bereaved student, I'd have the wherewithal to get myself help. 20-year-old me had no clue what was going on and could've used some explicit guidance from a kindly counselor (who was hopefully wearing a flowy scarf and baggy linen pants).
Isolation & Alienation
After my dad died, I quickly came to the realization that none of what I was doing was particularly important. The reading, the lab work, the papers...it all felt so trivial (cough, it was trivial, cough).
What felt extra trivial was the life of a college student. I had never partied, and before my dad died, my idea of a good weekend was going to the Olive Garden and watching Gilmore Girls with my roommate (Hi, Chuckie! I know you're reading this!).
I now watched peers primp for themed parties, stress about their grades, complain about their parents, or enthusiastically cheer for our D3 hockey team through foreign eyes. Not only was it unrelatable, but it further alienated me from my peers.
I sorta love this very staged photo of a college party. Staged or not, you never would have found me here.
What I had Going for Me
I do want to mention that I had a many advantages during this time that I imagine many others do not. The two big things were that my mom could still afford my tuition bills even though I was down a parent, and I had close friends who cared about me (including my now husband).
What to Do
If I could go back, I would know that actually there were several other students going through the same thing (and my school had only 1700 students), but because we didn't talk about it, I had no clue.
My favorite form of grief support is connecting with people who know the pain. If I could go back, I would find these people. I would've sought out the counseling center. Or, when a classmate offhandedly mentioned that someone's mom died, I would send this person an awkward email that I know they would warmly receive because no one understands the nature of awkwardness like a bereaved person.
If you or someone you care about is away at school and grieving, here are some ideas for support. Keep in mind that nearly all colleges have a counseling center that will be free/low cost to students. I wish I had reached out to mine.
- The Dinner Party
- Experience Camp (which is mostly for kids and could be an amazing volunteer opportunity, and they also have sessions for people 21+!).
- The Jed Foundation
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Actively Moving Forward
*After the Syracuse (NY) airport went through a major renovation in the 90s, me and my family landed for a trip to visit my grandma and were greeted with a ghost town. It was funny to see a bright, shiny airport and NO people. My dad made the joke, "Welcome to Syracorpse — you don't have to be dead to live here, but it sure helps!". Since he was from the area, he has a pass to make fun of his hometown. I love that joke.
