Suspension bridge over pain
All content is checked by medical journalists.Pain, anger, and guilt: When parents die, children begin a long journey through grief. On their way they need consolation and help - and sometimes a pair of boxing gloves.
“Do you even know death?” Asks Raphael * the psychologist. The blond, slim boy is a child with two faces: on the one hand humorous, direct, polite, friendly - on the other hand wild and provocative - a time bomb on two legs. Raphael is bright. He hits the sore spots of schoolmates and teachers with precision. Little by little he becomes a loner who does not make friends.
The eleven-year-old has a lot behind him: When he was one year old, his father contracted lymphatic cancer. A life-threatening disease - the boy has known that for as long as he can remember. Ten years later, the father is considered cured. But then the cancer breaks out again. The father dies - and Raphael meets death for the first time.
“Do you even know death? - I had to think about the question first, ”says Hans-Werner Saloga. Even for him, the trained child and youth therapist, the answer is not easy. In his work with children whose parents are terminally ill or dying, he is repeatedly confronted with existential questions.
Guilt, anger and sadness
Raphael is not only sad, he is also angry. “Completely normal,” says Sologa. Some children fear that they are to blame for their parents' deaths because they were not good enough. With others, like Raphael, anger prevails: anger at the father because he has left him alone. But the boy believes: You shouldn't be angry with the dead. Raphael suppresses his feelings at home as best he can. Instead, the smoldering fire in the soul causes it to boil over again and again at school. Saloga finally offers him an outlet. When Raphael comes to him angry, he provokes him. "Then I give him a pair of boxing gloves and we fight," says the psychologist.
In therapy, Raphael learns that he can feel and say anything. He learns that it is normal and healthy to be sad, screaming and angry in extreme situations. Saloga's light-flooded practice directly under the roof structure becomes a protected space in which Raphael can let everything out.
Left alone with grief
Up until the 1980s, it was believed that children could not understand death and dying. One wanted to spare them pain, kept them away from the places and rituals of mourning. They were rarely guests at funerals. “By now we've learned how wrong that was,” says Saloga. If children are prevented from saying goodbye, talking about what has happened and mourning, they remain alone in their need. “Children can also mourn deeply,” the therapist knows. They just deal with the subject of death differently than adults.
Bridge without railings
When a parent dies, children like Raphael find themselves on a long, bumpy road. It connects life before illness, dying and death with life afterwards. “The children have to walk over a suspension bridge without a handrail. There are deep abysses to the right and left, ”says the Munich psychologist. As a therapist, he has to go along the shaky path.“I can't tell the child: 'You go over there' and stay on safe ground yourself.” When he talks to a child about death and dying, he cannot distance himself. Death comes very close to him.
For him as a companion, therapy also means suffering with the children. "If I can endure their feelings and their abandonment, gives them confidence, courage and consolation". This enables the child to take the first step on the bridge.
“Do you even know death?” Raphael asked him. That was a couple of years ago. With the help of his therapist, he did it: He has both feet firmly on the ground. Raphael becomes an engineer - just like his father once did. Maybe one day he will build bridges himself.
* The name has been changed by the editorial team.
