ABSTRACT
Looking back on this massive project, with its compilation of nearly 100 distinctive practices in the field of grief therapy, affords a chance to close with a few observations about the nature of bereavement care as practiced in the early 21st century, and to hazard a guess—or perhaps a hope—about further developments to follow. As readers themselves will have perused those chapters that call to them, I will resist the temptation to reiterate the content of the foregoing chapters, and instead simply underscore a few themes and trends that invite comment. No doubt others might survey the same series of chapters (though with a less editorial eye!) and draw different conclusions. And that is as it should be, in a field as variegated and multidisciplinary as our own, which usefully resists what Foucault might have called the “normalizing gaze” of a single authoritative view that seeks to impose its own order on the chorus of voices contributing to this volume (Foucault, 1970). In contrast, I would celebrate the polyphony of voices that constitute bereavement care, and simply hope to invite dialogue among them, rather than to privilege any one voice over the others.
