There isn’t much information out there on how to mark the 20th anniversary of your mother’s death. It’s not something we generally talk about openly.
Plus, I’m 36, and it’s not an experience my similarly aged friends know. And my father isn’t around to share his memories of her, because he died just three years after she did. For most of my life now, I’ve been that fairy tale character, the orphan, and I’ve not met anyone else who also lost both their parents before their 20th birthday.
On the anniversary itself, January 22, I didn’t expect anyone to remember the date’s significance, or to think of saying something to me. Some comfort was available in digital form. I posted my favourite #TBT picture of my mom to Instagram, a snap my dad took of her at the seaside in the 1970s.
She’s younger than I am now, and she smiles sweetly. She’s wearing a patterned sari, and her hair is long and curled away from her face. I’ve somehow not managed to scan this photo into a digital version in all of the 20 years it’s been mine rather than hers, so it’s a picture of a picture. The likes rolled in, then the comments, mostly from people who have known me so long that they knew her too.
Unfortunately, Instagram validation is ultimately shallow and short-lived, especially when it comes to deep grief. That’s not to insult my friends who liked and commented on that Instagram post; but they can’t really comprehend the enormity of this moment, and that understanding is just what I need. For that, I turned to the Young Orphans WhatsApp group chat.
The chat was created by 25-year-old charity worker Katharine Horgan in early December 2019. Like me, she is based in London. Her mother died when she was seven, and her father has terminal cancer. “I set the group up after seeing a Griefcast tweet asking for resources for 'young orphans' who aren't children, then seeing lots of people replying saying, 'I wish there was!'” she tells me. “I found myself thinking that I wish there was, too.” Creating the group chat on WhatsApp seemed like a no-brainer, because it’s private and most people know how to use it.
I saw the Griefcast tweet and ensuing Twitter thread, then Horgan’s tweet about the group.
She invites people to direct message her with their phone number and a summary of their family situation, to ensure that it’s only young orphans joining. I wanted to be in the group because I was intrigued by what it would be like to attend a gathering of orphans, even just virtually. There were fewer than 10 members when I joined, but now there are over 60, mainly from the U.K., Europe, and the U.S. The group is predominantly female.
Not everyone has a profile picture and a name visible to other members. Some have a blank for both, with only their phone number visible, as is mandatory on WhatsApp; some have a photo of a pet or object, and only a first name. I have a snap of my face and my recognizable first name as my username. I have a feeling that the willingness to fully identify yourself in the chat correlates with how far from the loved one’s death you are.
It is tough to accept being an orphan. I remember rejecting the term when, after my father’s death in 2003, a staff member at my university wrote me a personal letter using that word to refer to me. If that version of me had been able to join the WhatsApp group, I would have anonymized my name for sure. I hadn’t yet adjusted to the huge change in my circumstances. At 19 years old, there was no one left alive to call me their daughter. I wasn’t ready to face that fully.
On the evening before the 20th anniversary of my mom’s death, I confessed to the group that I didn’t know how the next day would affect me. A few sent encouraging messages, while others shared how they approached milestone anniversaries. The actual day was a strange one. I was busy and running all over town for work. When I finally sat down, alone, my thoughts turned to the two decades that had gone by since I’d had a mother. I was a 16-year-old schoolgirl when she died in January 2000. The internet was then so new that my mom never had an email address.
I had never shared these feelings outside of a therapy session.
An insistent little voice in my head started telling me that I had wallowed in grief too long, that I hadn’t really achieved anything in that time. I don’t actually believe that. However, in a world so uncomfortable with conversations about grief, it’s easy to fear that my complex feelings aren’t normal, that they shouldn’t be shown on the outside. The weight of the anniversary was getting to me, now that I had time to think. I went to the support group in my pocket, where a few people had left messages asking how I was. I told them. I had never shared these feelings outside of a therapy session. These emotions tend to scare even partners and close friends.
Immediately, messages of support popped up onscreen. A woman named Laura wrote, “Well done for getting through the day and I’m sure you have achieved a huge amount, just surviving is an achievement in itself at times.” Another member, Alison, added, “Just seen your last message @Suchandrika, it must be so hard but don’t berate yourself for what you still find challenging and give yourself credit for how far you have come.” A third member of the chat, Maria, said, “We all need to believe that we are worth it and that our grief and emotions are valid.”
After receiving such helpful responses, I felt seen, understood, and comforted by a bunch of strangers spread out across the globe. I’d never imagined that a texting app on my phone could provide such a supportive background chorus to the strangest of milestones. What’s so remarkable about the group chat is the way that we treat each other with a sense of responsibility, because we all know how lonely and vulnerable it feels to lose our parents too soon. We rush to answer questions and reassure each other, trying to deliver the best care we can to others just entering the tunnel of double grief.
“The anonymity makes it a very safe space for people,” Horgan says. “I think my favorite thing about the group is that it isn't always just about being sad, and then getting better day by day, being a strong old soul, etc. It's also about making incredibly dark jokes about death. Admitting that there's some perks to the situation. The annoyance of death admin. What happens to your sex drive. And all the things that you just can't know until you experience it.”
Grief will happen to everyone eventually, pretty much. What is so specific to the experience of young orphanhood that we need this WhatsApp chat? Group member Frances Everard, a New York–based human rights lawyer originally from New Zealand, gave me one of the best descriptions I’ve ever heard of what it’s like when your parents die far too soon. Frances lost her father at 13, and her mother at 25. She’s now 31.
Every moment of celebration is shot through with loss, like water tinged with blood.
“Being orphaned as a young adult is a deeply life-changing experience that nothing can prepare you for,” she says. “As a child, your parents are the first and primary people you rely on for your emotional well-being, security, and sense of identity. Losing both parents at a young age changes everything. You're prematurely cast adrift as the safety net you always instinctively relied on isn't there anymore. It's terrifying, anxiety-inducing, and exhausting.”
The secondary losses of young orphanhood reverberate throughout life. There’s the primary loss when the loved one dies, then the pain of their continuing absence at every important occasion; the empty air where love and encouragement was once given. This quote from a 2011 Dear Sugar column — written by the novelist Cheryl Strayed, who lost her mother at 22 — captures some of that feeling:
“I’m talking about what goes on inside, the words unspoken, the shaky quake at the body’s core. There was no mother at our college graduations. There was no mother at our weddings. There was no mother when we sold our first books. There was no mother when our children were born. There was no mother, ever, at any turn, for either one of us in our entire adult lives, and there never will be.”
Now multiply everything Strayed says by two: that’s young orphanhood. Every moment of celebration is shot through with loss, like water tinged with blood. Before I had lived through 20 years of this, I wouldn’t have been able to imagine it; but I have, and I can. I know that the only other people who are going to understand the distant echoes of “the shaky quake” are those who have been moved by it too.
One evening, a group member posted a simple, devastating question in the WhatsApp group chat: “Does it ever get better?” That plea was so familiar to me. She was clearly new to grief, and I didn’t want her to sit alone with it. There was already one thoughtful, beautiful answer in there from Horgan, referencing the ball and the box metaphor for grief. Still, I rushed to gather my thoughts and provide my own reply. “In my lowest, loneliest moments, I tried to hold on to this,” I wrote. “To grieve this hard, you must have loved so deeply. Grief is the process of taking that love between two people and somehow fitting it inside one person. Because of this painful process, they'll be with you always.”
“To grieve this hard, you must have loved so deeply.”
The woman who had posted the original question replied, “I love that so much.” Another group member, Sara, said, “Two people’s love in one person. What a great image. Thanks @Suchandrika.” A third, Alex, added, “So true.” I realized that what I have always seen as a great weakness — the time I had taken to deal with double bereavement — has become the source of my wisdom. There aren’t many moments in life when I can apply those lessons, but my times on the WhatsApp group chat are among them.
I have found support in messages written by people I might never meet, and I have dived deep into my own pain to find the right pearl to offer a stranger whose grief is devastatingly new. Our stories are neither pure tragedies nor simple triumphs over adversity — because we are still writing them, one WhatsApp message at a time.
