Narratives Of Parental Death Dying And Bereavement

This collection shows what happens when facing the inevitable and sometimes expected death of a parent, and how such an ordinary part of life as parental death might connect with the children left behind. In many ways, individual deaths are extraordinary and leave a unique legacy – a kind of haunting. The authors' accounts seek to make sense of death through witnessing its enactment and recording its detail. All the authors are experienced researchers in the field of death studies, and their collective expertise encompasses ethnography, psychology, sociology and anthropology. The individual descriptions of death and grief capture the everyday practicalities of managing death and dying, including, for example, the difficulties of caring responsibilities and the realities of dealing with strained family relationships. These accounts show the raw detail of death; they are deeply personal observations framed within critical theories. As established scholars and practitioners that have researched and worked in end-of-life and bereavement care, the authors in this anthology offer a unique perspective on how identity is shaped by a close bereavement. The book employs a strong editorial narrative that blends memoir with theoretical engagement, and will be of interest to death studies scholars, as well as practitioners involved in end-of-life care and bereavement care and anyone who has experienced the death of a parent.

Explores what couple and individual stories say and do not say about the child's dying and death and about parent grief. The author uses narratives as his tool for the introduction and exploration of the many facets of parental grief.

Bereavement is often treated as a psychological condition of the individual with both healthy and pathological forms. However, this empirically-grounded study argues that this is not always the best or only way to help the bereaved. In a radical departure, it emphasises normality and social and cultural diversity in grieving. Exploring the significance of the dying person’s final moments for those who are left behind, this book sheds new light on the variety of ways in which bereaved people maintain their relationship with dead loved ones and how the dead retain a significant social presence in the lives of the living. It draws practical conclusions for professionals in relation to the complex and social nature of grief and the value placed on the right to grieve in one’s own way – supporting and encouraging the bereaved person to articulate their own experience and find their own methods of coping. Based on new empirical research, Bereavement Narratives is an innovative and invaluable read for all students and researchers of death, dying and bereavement.

The death of a child has a tremendous and overwhelming impact on parents and siblings, completely altering the psychological landscape of the family. In the aftermath of such a tragedy, parents face the challenge of not only dealing with their own grief, but also that of their surviving children. How can someone attempt to cease parenting a deceased child while maintaining this role with his/her other children? Is it possible for a mother or father to effectively deal with feelings of grief and loss while simultaneously helping their surviving children? Parenting After the Death of a Child: A Practitioner’s Guide addresses this complex and daunting dilemma. Following on the heels of a qualitative research study that involved interviewing bereaved parents, both fathers and mothers, Buckle and Fleming have put together several different stories of loss and recovery to create an invaluable resource for clinicians, students, and grieving parents. The authors present the experience of losing a child and its subsequent impact on a family in a novel and effective way, demonstrating the strength and importance of their book for the counseling field.

This book describes how parents lose, find, or relocate spiritual anchors after the death of their child. It describes how ordinary people reconstruct their lives after their foundations have shifted, and how they make sense of their world after one of their centers of meaning has been removed. Klass grounds his descriptions of spirituality in his scholarly study of comparative religions, and in his two decades studying the lives of bereaved parents. He argues that continuing bonds with their dead children can give parents a new transcendent reality. Deceased children, like saints or bodhisattvas, can offer a bridge between the profane and sacred worlds, support parents as they find meaning in a world made forever poorer, and bind together a community adequate to parents' grief. The book reports Klass's clinical practice and his work as advisor to a bereaved parents self-help support group.

In First Person Mortal, Lucy Bregman and Sara Thiermann interpret the autobiographical narratives of C. S. Lewis, Simone de Beauvoir, Gilda Radnor, and many others as attempts by deeply thoughtful individuals to wrest meaning from situations that often seem to defy - even mock - human comprehension. The authors consider a variety of issues recurring in these narratives: theories of autobiography; patients' rights and medical ethics; modern society's emphasis on "expressive individualism"; the genderedness of mortal experience; the destruction of the body in a culture prizing physical beauty; the loss of the self and personal identity; and the ways people use religion or "spirituality" to interpret their experiences. Drs. Bregman and Thiermann conclude that in a society lacking a public, normative understanding of death and dying, the autobiographical genre is uniquely appropriate to our quest for meaning.

This book presents a sensitive account of the challenges faced by adult children when making difficult decisions about care for and with their ageing parents in later life. It offers new insights into the practical, emotional and physical effects that witnessing the ageing and death of parents has on those in late midlife and how these relationships are negotiated during this phase of the life course. The author uses a psychosocial approach to understand the complexity of the experience of having a parent transition to care and the ambiguous feelings that these decisions evoke.

This book provides a concise, yet comprehensive guide to effective work with bereaved parents, combining a broad overview of current research, theory, and practice with the authors' own extensive clinical experience. Transcripts of individual, couple, and group meetings illustrate the delicate subtleties of this work, giving the reader helpful insights into more effective clinical practice. The authors emphasize the importance of approaching each parent as a unique person, while also considering the socio-cultural context of the bereaved. This book helps clinicians approach work with bereaved parents with a less scripted format, suggesting an alternative role as expert companion to the bereaved, allowing for a more uplifting experience for both parties.