To the Editor:

Re “No Quick Fix for Childhood Grief” (Op-Ed, Aug. 26):

I read Hope Edelman’s article on losing a parent at a young age with the clarity of recognition. I lost my father to suicide when I was 14. During and after that tumultuous time in my life, there was no place for me to grieve. On the day of his funeral only one person asked, “How are you?”

There was always silence around his death. I watched my mother fall apart and often be blamed for his suicide. I felt that I needed to take care of her and not the other way around. It was only this past June that I learned of incomplete mourning while reading William Styron’s “Darkness Visible.” No therapist ever asked me about grief and mourning.

My life’s narrative was indeed derailed and, as Anderson Cooper is quoted as saying of his father’s death, “ changed the trajectory of my life. I am a different person than I feel like I was meant to be.”

I lost my father in 1956. Sixty-three years later, I still dwell on the consequences of that loss.

Sandra Allik

Cambridge, Mass.