I believe, but don't know that losing a child would be worse. The worse thing that could happen someone.

Are the coping strategies the same?

Having lost both I say we just turn this into a group to include. I don't know about adding all people who have suffered loses. There is nothing more painful than the loss of a child. Followed by the loss of a spouse. Though the grief is very different, in my case anyway, the pain is equal.

I have just recently lost my son, aged 41...it’s a different kind of loss, worse in some ways because it’s not something we ever expect to do. I haven’t voted, not really minding one way other whether you widen the group to include children.

If you do - you would make me a valid member.

Maybe immediate family members (they can be family by choice) maybe those grieving the loss of someone dear?

Another yes. They are differences, a spouse is a partner children are not. But the loss is severe and you likely need help that you might not have otherwise. Come on in.

Maybe the group should have been named "bereaved of family members".

In any case you already have added such a person -- me -- as I've lost both a spouse and a child. My son dropped dead a couple of years ago at age 30 in the breakroom of the fast food joint he was working at. I got the call from the emergency room at 10:30 pm that they were unable to resuscitate him. And yes it was at least as bad as losing my spouse, and worse in some ways -- although that subjective judgment depends on a lot of complicated factors. My wife and my son both suffered in life, and their loss was tempered by the fact they are now beyond the reach of suffering for which there was little hope of resolution in life. Absent the mercy of that, the loss of both would have been even worse.

The intensity of grief depends on a lot of factors -- how close you were / how much a part of your daily life involved them, the cost to them of living on vs the cost to you of losing them, the quality of the relationship, and a bunch of other factors. Not to mention your awareness and perception of these factors, and the kinds of expectations and hopes you still had. My present wife for example is a widow, but she was nursing a very ill husband from whom she would have otherwise been pursuing a divorce, and that's a different scenario than someone presiding over the demise of a vital marriage.

Still, pain and loss are pain and loss. Accepting and integrating my son's death has been a challenge for me and for my now-wife and our stepson who lives with us; they experienced me as a changed and different person, less emotionally available, less forbearing, and alarmingly sad at times, but the sadness cloaked as indifference and remoteness and grumpiness. I can see how marriages for example can break up over the death of a child. It's a tragedy for all concerned.

I still have my daughter and four grandhildren, one born since my son's death, so there's that. This, too, is a variable in the mix. If a loss represents the last person on earth who looked to you or needed you, that's a lot worse situation also.