Grappling With Grief When a Grandchild Dies

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There’s plenty of grief to go around when a young person dies. ​

Parents, siblings and grandparents are devastated. Hopefully, friends and family rally around to provide support, but there are times that grandparent grief doesn’t get the attention it

deserves.​

“The focus goes to the parents, so sometimes the grandparents end up ‘the forgotten mourners,’ ” says Alan Wolfelt, founder and director of the Center for Loss and Life Transition in Fort

Collins, Colorado. “And it’s an out-of-order death, which adds complications.”​

Actor Robert De Niro, 79, is experiencing that kind of bereavement. He recently lost his 19-year-old grandson, Leandro De Niro Rodriguez, to what Leandro’s mother told media were pills laced

with fentanyl. De Niro attended his grandson’s funeral on July 8 and a 20-year-old woman was recently arrested in connection with the death. ​

One complicating factor of grief can be how close grandparents are with their grandchildren. Some may have had a distant relationship (which may fill grandparents with regret). Others may

see each other regularly — even daily. In fact, in the U.S., one in 10 children lived with at least one grandparent in 2020, according to research by North Dakota State University. Both

COVID-19 and the opioid epidemic have increased that number in recent years, as some children have been left without parents and are being raised by grandparents. ​

Doris Lapporte, 75, describes the loss of her 26-year-old granddaughter, Allie Kurtz — who died in a tragic California boat fire in 2019 — as something more than she can comprehend.​

“I’m not the same person I was before,” says Lapporte, of Skokie, Illinois. “Do I cry all day? No. But there isn’t a day where I’m not hurting, where I’m not thinking about her or talking to

her.”​

When a grandchild dies, grandparents often can’t focus fully on their own grief because their hearts are so broken over watching their child suffer.​

Feeling powerless to take away that hurt can feel almost “intolerable,” Wolfelt says.​