Understanding the Bereavement Process: Voices of Bereaved Parents

Analysis of in-depth qualitative interviews with 20 bereaved parents and 11 service providers revealed a more holistic conceptualization of the bereavement process for parents who have lost a child. Holistic “states” included: “helplessness prior to the death,” “fog,” “turmoil,” “transition,” “new beginnings,” and “stability.” Findings showed that loss and restorative processes are characteristic of more than one state, the bereavement narrative starts prior to the death, there is often a downturn after the bereaved parent seemingly is doing better, and the process never ends but may include a continuing bond with the deceased and reoccurring moments of extreme grief. Recommendations for direct practice, program development, and future research are presented.

ReMember

ReMember is an interactive installation that provides bereaved pet owners with a sense of presence and connection to their deceased companion animals. Many pet owners suffer from bereavement and grief upon the loss of companion animals, and rituals and memorialization can help their grieving process. In this installation, the authors integrate audiovisual effects of the heartbeat recordings of companion animals and cremation stones made for pet memorialization. The audience's responses to ReMember show that interactivity and physiological signals augment the physical object of remembrance and elicit strong emotions. ReMember suggests that digitalized physiological signals and biological data can be a new form of the legacy of animal companionships and that the careful curation of digital, biological, and physical artifacts can support continuing bond expressions in pet loss.

Exploring Cause of Death in Social Convoy Membership: The Case of Pauline

People receive support from a fluid convoy of individuals. Historically, convoy membership has been limited to meaningful, living persons. However, research incorporating the continuing bonds model suggests that individuals who have died can also be convoy members as relationships can be preserved through pictures, memories, and after death communication experiences. Building on this idea, this presentation uses a qualitative case study to explore whether (and if so, how) continuing bond relationships are influenced by the way that individuals die. Pauline, a 67 year-old widow, compares the “natural” deaths of her sister and father-in-law to the suicide of her husband. Careful readings of her interview transcript reveal that the unexpected way that her husband died became a salient part of her identity and the way she connects with others. Consequently, this case study provides insights for researchers who may consider cause of death as a potential contributing factor to convoy membership.

Rural Perinatal Loss: A Needs Assessment

The purpose of this research was to ascertain the availability and depth of services of bereavement care for mothers who live rurally. The specific focus is on those who experienced early losses including pregnancy, stillbirth, neonatal, and young children who were born with fetal anomalies or neonatal disease that resulted in death. The convenience (nonprobability) sample originated from a population of mothers who lived in rural east central Minnesota. Participants were interviewed in a 60-minute interval. All data were coded confidential. Common themes, incidence of resources, or lack of bereavement resources for the participants’ lived experiences were considered using a descriptive phenomenological approach. Our appreciation of the continuing bond between mother and child compels us to believe that there is an ethical obligation to reduce and remove these barriers and inequalities in bereavement support services for those who live rurally and have experienced perinatal and infant loss. Results of this study indicate the need for further study and establishment of bereavement resources in rural outreach for perinatal and early childhood loss.

Comforting Versus Distressing Dreams of the Deceased: Relations to Grief, Trauma, Attachment, Continuing Bonds, and Post-Dream Reactions

Why are some dreams of the deceased experienced as comforting, while others are distressing? We propose that there are different types of dreams serving diverse functions. In particular, we considered three: processing trauma, maintaining a continuing bond, and regulating emotion. We also examined the impact of post-dream reactions on the bereaved’s experience of their dreams. Participants were 216 individuals whose romantic partner or spouse had died. They provided reports of dreams of the deceased that were content analyzed and completed measures of grief intensity, posttraumatic symptoms, attachment style, internalized versus externalized continuing bonds, as well as questions about the death, and ratings of how they experienced the dream after awakening. Support was found for the three proposed functions, suggesting dreams of the deceased can actively facilitate adjustment to bereavement. In addition, there was evidence that post-dream reactions can impact both the perception of the dream and grief.