Chris' story | Lindy's story | Ed's story

As Chris Schaadt tore around the corner in his black Ford F-150, he saw police cars and ambulances lining the street at his home in Lenexa. Their lights were off.

Schaadt sensed the magnitude of the situation when his dad called and said his mom had a medical emergency. He needed to come home immediately. He’d never heard his dad cry before.

Schaadt’s mother, Dana, died Nov. 5, 2008 at age 40.

An hour before this scene, Schaadt’s life was normal. An 18-year-old KU freshman at the time, he and his buddies were watching a movie in his Ellsworth Hall room and drinking beer. He had spent the day before with his mom. It was Election Day 2008 — monumental because the first African-American president was elected — but he remembers it for a different reason. It was the last time he would see his mom alive.

Lindy Anderson was finishing a shift at Lawrence Athletic Club when a flurry of calls lit up her cell phone, several from her aunt. That’s when she learned her father was dead.

Anderson’s father, Gary, died Oct. 5, 2009 at age 64.

She felt especially alone when she drove home to Lenexa and walked into an empty house. Her parents had divorced years before and her mother and stepfather were away at Branson, Mo.

Stricken with grief and facing midterm exams, she had another heavy burden she never anticipated as a 19-year-old: She, the daughter, the kid, would arrange the funeral, tell family and friends, decide on the disposition of the body and hire an attorney to handle the estate.

Ed Schroer walked into a Topeka hospital room to see nurses circling his dad’s body on a gurney. He had gotten news that his dad’s heart was failing and he needed to come home immediately. When he saw his father, his chest was badly bruised after nearly two hours of nurses performing chest compressions.

Once a prominent lawyer in Topeka, Schroer’s father, Gene, died December 11, 2010 at age 83.

After a year of his dad being in and out of the hospital, Schroer knew he would have to deal with his elderly dad’s death sooner than most children. That didn’t make it easier when the call finally came from his mom.

Many college students like Schaadt, Anderson and Schroer are preparing for independence by educating themselves for future careers while still depending on parents for help with tuition, health and car insurance and transportation. They are exploring relationships with potential partners, while celebrating holidays and family milestones with mom and dad. They are living on their own in dorms, fraternities and sororities and apartments, yet often thinking of their parents’ house where they grew up as “home.”

They are responsible for clothing and feeding themselves, while sometimes hauling laundry bags full of dirty clothes home to mom and dad and appreciating their home-cooked meals. In short, the leap from dependent child to independent adult is more daunting for any college student without the help of a parent who has been there before and is now — suddenly — gone.

According to the American Sociological Review, one in 10 children lose a parent before they reach the age 25.

Debra Umberson, a professor of sociology at the University of Texas and author of Death of a Parent: A Transition to a New Adult Identity, said there is little research conducted on college students and the death of a parent. The effect of losing a parent is devastating at any age and marks a turning point in a person’s life, she said.

“For people in college, one of the big issues for them is that it’s premature,” she said. “You’re supposed to have your parent at that age.”

Umberson said adult children who experience the death of a parent show increased psychological distress and depression, increased alcohol use, a decline in health and a decline in the quality of relationships. She said these effects can be apparent for up to three years after the death of the parent.

“Most of us are sort of in denial of death and this is one of those things that pierces that denial,” she said.

College students who lose a parent are affected emotionally, psychologically, physically, academically and financially. At the very time they are about to launch independent lives, they lose the people they rely on most for direction.

Anderson wonders who will walk her down the aisle when she gets married; Schaadt’s grief led to depression, alcohol abuse and bad grades; the fact that Schroer lived in Topeka and commuted to the University means he will only now move to Lawrence and learn how “to be a real college kid.”

Chris' story | Lindy's story | Ed's story

— Edited by Joel Petterson