Citation

Kenny K, Broom A, Kirby E, Ridge D. Health (London) 2019; 23(1): 58-75.

Affiliation

University of Westminster, UK.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1363459317724854

PMID

28795597

Abstract

This article explores the experience and meaning of time from the perspective of caregivers who have recently been bereaved following the death of a family member. The study is situated within the broader cultural tendency to understand bereavement within the logic of stages, including the perception of bereavement as a somewhat predictable and certainly time-delimited ascent from a nadir in death to a 'new normal' once loss is accepted. Drawing on qualitative data from interviews with 15 bereaved family caregivers we challenge bereavement as a linear, temporally bound process, examining the multiple ways bereavement is experienced and how it variously resists ideas about the timeliness, desirability and even possibility of 'recovery'. We posit, on the basis of these accounts, that the lived experience of bereavement offers considerable challenges to normative understandings of the social ties between the living and the dead and requires a broader reconceptualization of bereavement as an enduring affective state.

Language: en

Keywords

bereavement; death; dying; recovery; temporality