ABSTRACT
When the book Contexts of Being (Stolorow & Atwood, 1992) was rst published, an initial batch of copies was sent “hot off the press” to the display table at a conference where I was a panelist. I picked up a copy and looked around excitedly for my late wife, Daphne (Dede, as she was called by loved ones and friends), who would be so pleased and happy to see it. She was, of course, nowhere to be found, having died some 18 months earlier. I had awakened one morning to nd her lying dead across our bed, 4 weeks after her metastatic cancer had been diagnosed. I spent the remainder of that conference in 1992 remembering and grieving, consumed with feelings of horror and sorrow over what had happened to Dede and to me.
