Nature of the relationship

The duration, depth and quality of a relationship will have a significant impact on the grief response of any individual.

The loss through death of someone who has been a long-standing and important part of a person’s life will be deeply felt. However, the quality of a relationship is not based on the passage of time, and it is important that assumptions are never made about the depth of someone's grief on that basis.

When a baby dies during pregnancy or around the time of birth, the impact on that baby's parents can never be assumed to be insignificant. Often, it is felt that somehow a little amount of life equates with a little amount of loss. For most families, nothing could be further from the truth. The relationship with that unborn child, with all the hopes, dreams and fears that may encompass, begins from the time a pregnancy is confirmed. Parents will grieve for a whole future that will never be fulfilled.

When a child dies, not only will its parents have a shared relationship with that child as a couple, but each parent will have had their own, individual, unique relationship with that child, and will inevitably experience the loss of that child in different ways.

Where a relationship with the person who has died has been a difficult one, it is important never to assume that grief will somehow be less. The loss of the potential for that relationship ever to be different in the future will add another dimension to the grief. It can also be hard to voice ambivalent or negative feelings about someone who has died, especially when the death is of a close family member. It is helpful in such circumstances to view the grief as different in its complexity, rather than in terms of being more or less.