What is an orphan? (See details.)
An acquaintance on Facebook said her mother died in April, leaving her an orphan. She is 40 something years old and has 2 or 3 teenaged children.
Is she actually an orphan or is an orphan only a child who is too small to take care of themselves whose parents die?
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also a minor without parents, biological or adoptive.
If both of her parents are dead, then she is an orphan, no matter what age.
Calling yourself a orphan in that situation is like saying you got raped when your dog humped your leg.
I see an “orphan” as a child who is not mature enough to take care of themselves without an adult guiding the way.
A minor child with no parents.
It means to be deprived of parents, derived from the word orphanus, which means bereaved.
It can also be an unanswered question here on this site, apparently.
After consulting two dictionaries, I concur with @Patty_Melt and @Pied Pfeffer.
@kritiper I agree. You never stop being their child and they don’t stop being your parents, no matter how old you all get. I’m over 50, and I don’t mind admitting I’m still a daddy’s girl.
Well, I guess that makes me an orphan too. Now I feel sorry for myself.
In my country, we have a specific name for people that don’t have a dad, or a mom, or both. In general, it’s when you’re lacking a single parental figure that you’ll considered as an orphan, regardless of whether or not you’re a minor.
@Dutchess_III So now that you feel that you qualify for the the label of “orphan”, you feel sorry for yourself? Aren’t you in your 50’s? How long did you expect your parents to live a happy and healthy life?
As much as we loved our parents, we recognized that our father’s early death at 68 was good for him as he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and sent home. He died before suffering any pain. As much as of a shock it was, we eventually realized that it was better for him this way.
Mom was a different story. She lost her eyesight, hearing, and starting having mini-strokes. Her quality of of life was nothing. As hard as it was, we were thankful when she finally passed away, for her sake, not ours.
That left three of us orphans. All adults.
It happens to most of us. As weird as it is, classifying ourselves as an orphan, it doesn’t deserve pity. That should be reserved for the young.
What is wrong with you @Pied_Pfeffer? You’re taking everything so damn seriously lately.
Of course it happens to every single one of us, unless we die before our parents which usually doesn’t happen.
@Pied_Pfeffer I took @Dutchess_III comment as a snide remark about her Facebook friend’s comment. Like she was accusing her friend of a ‘Sympathy crave’ post. If someone is actually grieving, I don’t think the correct response is ‘That’s just feeling sorry for yourself, ” regardless how they are expressing that grief. It didn’t sound funny. It sounded like a passive aggressive snipe.
I could turn this into an example of my own circumstance. I’m not allowed to call myself a widow by societal standards, but I am. If I decided to start referring to myself as such, it wouldn’t be a ‘sympathy fishing trip’ but more of a recognition of my relationship and what the loss to me actually was. Orphans, widows, widowers… it’s about loss and grief. My friend, when her son was going through chemo for the second time got mad at the fact that there is no term for a parent who has lost a child. Not long after that, I discovered the actual word for it. Vilomahed. Here is the explanation. https://today.duke.edu/2009/05/holloway_oped.html For one reason or another, we need words to help us explain and identify our loss, and it’s important we do. It’s part of healthy grieving.
No, that’s not how it was meant either @ScienceChick. It wasn’t meant to refer to anything, except that usually people feel very sorry for children who are orphans. The very word “orphan,” just sounds really sad because of our normal association with it.
Different people react to their parent’s death differently. The FB friend was, apparently, good friends with her mother. It just came out of the blue and it it hit her very, very hard.
The death of my ex’s mother hit him really hard, which I don’t understand. He never spoke to her. We only saw her one time in the 10 years we were together. They weren’t very close. But it leveled him to the point that it ended up being part of the cause for our divorcing.
I wasn’t that close to my father, mainly due to his being distant, so his death was very sad, but it wasn’t devastating. He lived 2000 mile away and I rarely saw him.
My Mom was physically absent for most of my adult life. In the end poor Mom suffered from dementia and her final months were just tragic. Those final months were so, so horrible that they leveled me, tore my heart out. Her death was almost a relief…in fact, she hastened it. The last year she couldn’t move or talk or communicate. Then one morning she clenched her teeth when they tried to feed her. She refused to let them feed her.
Hospice called. Their suggestion was just continue to to try once in a while, in case she changes her mind, but other than that, respect her wishes and let her go.
It’s different for everyone.
How many orphan children do you you know or have known?
Me personally, none. I have known children who lost a parent through divorce and witnessed that pain, though. I would think being orphaned would be much like that, only worse. Even children who are abused look to their parents for protection, whether they get it or not.
Everyone who outlives their parents is an orphan. It is the subject of a hilarious sequence
in the Pirates of Penzance.
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