Interviewing My Mom About My Grandpa's (Her Father's) Death

Trigger Warning: mentions of death and loss

For my class on Death & Loss, I wanted to share this interview that I conducted with my mom.

Introduction:

            I interviewed my mother about the death of her father, who was also my grandfather.

Description of the loss:

            On December 2, 2021, my mom’s dad died. My mom described how even saying those words still brings tears to her eyes nearly 4 years later. She talked about how good of a dad he was, saying he “was the very best dad.” Growing up, they were very close. He worked long hours to support their family, and never missed a single family, school, or sport event. My mom detailed how he even coached her teams when she was younger. She went on to say that as she grew older, she continued to have a strong bond with her father even as adults. He was there for her through her education and when having a family of her own. She said, “He was my rock.” She described him as “a wonderful grandpa” as well.

            My mom said that her dad entered the Sparrow hospital in Lansing on November 24, 2021, one day before his birthday and Thanksgiving, celebrations he so badly wanted to attend. She said she had no idea he wouldn’t be leaving. He had some health issues during the last year of his life, but none that were life threatening. When he was admitted to the hospital for the last time, my mom expected it to be temporary, for him to get better. But he contracted sepsis and died unexpectedly. He died during COVID-19, so only immediate family was able to say goodbye. My mom and other immediate family had to made the decision to have him removed from the ventilator, knowing it meant they had less than an hour to say goodbye. His sepsis had taken away his ability to know who my mom was, which was hard for her.

            My mom’s first reaction to the loss was to cry because of the shock. Then she whispered to him that she loved him and thanked him for everything he’d did for her over the course of her life. The night he passed, she and our extended family, including all 11 of his siblings, all gathered to share the sadness of the day. Her dad was Italian, and in the true Italian family fashion, they ate lasagnas, casseroles and bread together. My mom recalled thinking how much her dad would’ve loved to be there.

            While my mom did report that the social support at the funeral was helpful in her coping, she said that she struggled after the funeral when everyone left. She recalled thinking, “How can the world keep moving forward without my dad?” It’s been four years, and my mom still misses him. Some reminders of him are painful, and some help her cope, such as happy memories and doing things that would make him proud. My mom concluded with saying that she disagrees with the comforting proverb, “Time will heal,” and said that as time passes, she just misses him more because it’s been even longer since she’s been able to talk with him.

Analysis of grief process: 

            The category of complicated grief that fits best with my mom’s experience is unanticipated grief. Unanticipated grief is when a loss is seen as inexplicable and unbelievable. One’s worldview is violated. There is a persistence of physical and emotional shock and a difficulty accepting the implications of loss and that it happened. It may evoke a need to control and behaviors to prevent further loss. My mom emphasized several times while I was interviewing her that my grandpa’s death was a shock to her. She was planning what to do for his birthday, assuming he would be getting discharged. She was so confident that she hadn’t even called me to come to the hospital. She thought it was just a visit like the rest. She was extremely blindsided when she heard the news of the sepsis, and this led to physical and emotional shock that persisted well after his passing. She had a hard time accepting he was gone, which is evidenced by her not being able to move on at the same pace that everyone else was. In addition, one behavior I noticed in my mom was she began to take her health more seriously. She decided to get a bypass surgery due to her high blood pressure, saying that she “needed to be around long enough for the kids.” It seemed her worldview was shattered of assuming her loved ones would live longer. My grandpa died at 70 which didn’t fit with the age she thought he would live to, and she then did behaviors to try to prevent us from having to go through what she did, trying to guarantee us that she would be around longer than he was.

            Dr. Pauline Boss’s research on ambiguous grief also applies. Just before my grandpa died, he lost memory of those around him. He didn’t recognize my mom and even asked my brother if he was a doctor. My mom felt this psychological loss before he physically died, because her last moments of him, he wasn’t psychologically there. He wasn’t fully present when she was saying her goodbyes to him, which made her wonder whether he truly heard her.

            In class, we also talked about how technology has prolonged life and the importance of making sure that people are able to make their own decisions. My mom got to make the decision to have the ventilator removed, which helped her in that she knew he wouldn’t have to be in pain anymore, but it also complicated her grief in that she had to be the one to do it, to let him go.

            Applying Worden’s four tasks of mourning, my mom had a hard time accepting reality of the loss due to the shock, and crying was her way of processing the pain. When it came to adjusting to life without the deceased, it took my mom about a year but eventually she and my grandma worked together to have an auction where they sold all my grandpa’s tools. He loved fixing things, and the garage was hoarded with all his stuff, so doing that on his behalf was how she helped adjust. Roles that were hard to fulfill were when something in our house got broke and we didn’t have him anymore to help. He would come over every time we had a leak or a hole in the wall, and now my mom had to call and order an actual plumber or handyman to do it for her. She couldn’t even fulfill the role herself since she didn’t have the knack for fixing that he did, so that was hard for her. Getting to the task of calling someone else was when I knew she had adjusted. My mom described her journey of continuing connection while embarking on a new life. She is able to look back on memories of him and laugh now, and she’s able to go to work and go back to her life. Right away, his death had stopped her life. She hadn’t been able to focus on anything, but now she’s able to.

            As for the seven mediators, kinship is the big one. My mom losing her father is a huge loss as he has been with her her entire life. Also, for nature of attachment, they were very close so it made grief harder for her. In addition, because he died so suddenly and unexpectedly (“How they died”), it was harder to grieve than if she had seen it coming. Finally, social variables applies here because while my mom had social support right after his death and up to the funeral, once the funeral was over, that social support faded and she didn’t have that anymore. She felt alone and needed that support to continue for longer.

Your experience, learning and application

            I interviewed my mom because the loss of my grandpa has been hard for me to grieve, and I wanted to analyze how her grieving process is different from mine, from her perspective of being his daughter. After interviewing her, I realized the grief process is a lot different for a daughter than it is for a granddaughter.

            I did relate to her grief a lot, especially the suddenness of it and being so close with him. Just like he did with her, he always attended all my events growing up. There are unique things though that separate my experiences from her. I went through a phase of loving history and my grandpa took me to this super cool history reenactment and we had that to bond over. He also read some of my novel and supported me with that. It’s not to say either of our grief processes were harder than the other, they were just different. We had different memories to process. She knew him as a dad, and I knew him as a grandpa.

            I will admit that during the interview, I felt a little bit upset. A part of my grief process that differed from my mom’s is that she got to see him. I didn’t. She never called me to come to the hospital. It was sudden and she didn’t call me until he was already dead. I remember being in my dorm room, balling, feeling so guilty that I was doing schoolwork when I could’ve been there. I missed out on getting together with family at the hospital and getting that extended family support too. After interviewing her, I understand her shock maybe prevented her from calling me, maybe she had hope and calling me would’ve meant having to accept it. But it was hard to hear about the moments she got with him that I didn’t get. It made me cry, hearing her talk about it. I also felt guilty for feeling grateful I didn’t have to see him in that psychologically absent state, that the last moment I had with him he did know me.

            I also feel like interviewing my mom made the mortality of my own parents seem closer, and it scared me. Hearing what my mom has gone through, I don’t want to go through that. It was hard doing the interview, having to see my mom get emotional. It made me emotional too. There was some comfort in knowing we both had gone through losing him and had that shared experience, but the thought that I would one day lose my mom was something I was thinking about. I see my mom as that support that she described her dad as, and I don’t know what I’d do without it. I feel like my mom was sad throughout, but by the end, it felt therapeutic for her to be able to get it out and share it with me. I learned grief can look different for different family members grieving the same person and I think it’s so important to use cultural humility when asking a client about their grief; it’s best to let them be the expert and describe it because no grief is the same.

Affirmation Statement and Self-Evaluation:

            I completed an interview with my mother on 7/6/25 at 2 PM via phone. I would self-evaluate myself to be at the superior level because I put a lot of effort into the interview and applying it, and ultimately I feel like I took advantage of all the opportunities there were to learn with this assignment.