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Life After a Death: The Experience of Bereavement in South Wales

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2008

Susan Pickard
Susan Pickard
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of Salford, Salford M54WT, U.K.
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Abstract

This paper looks at the experience of bereavement in old age in a South Wales locality and traces the immediate and long-term effects it has on the bereaved. It examines various categories of bereavement – death of spouse, death of the mother, death of a child, siblings and friends, with death of spouse as specially significant. In each category it closely relates the experience of bereavement to the nature of the relationship formerly maintained, arguing that the significance of bereavement can only be appreciated within the context of social structure which defines the meaning of these relationships. It suggests that the special position occupied by female networks in the social structure enables old women to cope with the effects of bereavement more successfully than old men. For both old men and old women however, the special position they occupy with respect to contemporary society gives death a particular and unique resonance.

Keywords

Bereavementsocial structurediscontinuitydesolationtie-breaking ritualsintegrationlonelinessreligious beliefs
Type
Research Article
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , June 1994 , pp. 191 - 217
Copyright
Copyright Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

NOTES

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