Death, Bereavement, and Mourning by Samuel C. Heilman

Author:Samuel C. Heilman [Heilman, Samuel C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General, Death & Dying
ISBN: 9781351322065
Google: AvdKDwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 7737386
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2005-06-30T00:00:00+00:00

Family Gaps Left by the Person Who Died

A death in the family can leave gaps of many kinds. The person who died provided a million things, obvious and not obvious, to surviving family members. With the person gone, who will buy the groceries, pick up the child at the daycare center, mow the lawn, keep the tax records, hold me, turn out the light at night, give me someone to come home to, warm my feet on a cold night, etc.? The person who died may well have been central for some family members in defining and maintaining definitions of self and reality (Lofland 1982). With the person gone, who will help me figure out what happened? Who will sustain my reality? Who will support me in being me? Whose life will sustain my assumed future life? Just when this sudden, tragic, unanticipated death has occurred is when one might most need the other who has died to define what is going on, but the other isn’t there to do it. The person who died was a “role partner” with others in the family (Lofland 1982). How can one enact roles and maintain identity as, say, parent or spouse, with the role partner who enabled one to be in that role no longer there?

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