Joy and Stan: A Couple's Grief for Their Dead Five-Year-Old

Paul C. Rosenblatt, PhD, University of Minnesota

This is a vignette of the grief experiences of a couple I interviewed together and separately about the death of their five-year-old daughter, who was killed instantly in an automobile accident. The issues I hope to talk about include the couple's framing of their grief in terms of popular bereavement literature and their theology, their struggles to put words to feelings, their processes of dealing with blame issues, their grief feelings, grief and energy, God and heaven, working to reunite in heaven with their daughter, his grief versus hers, grieving together and separately, hanging on to memories, sexuality and grief, having other children, numbness, music and grieving, premonitions of the death, hugging and holding.