ABSTRACT
Many of the family carers represented in online data continue to be active on the forum after the person they cared for has died. This chapter discusses the variety of metaphors that bereaved carers use in our online data to talk about their emotional experiences following the death of the person they cared for. It provides some background on models of bereavement and grieving and on metaphors for emotions. The chapter presents the author's findings in two main parts: metaphors for the individual felt experience of grief; and metaphors for the social implications of bereavement. It reflects on the implications of the author's findings for studying metaphors for emotions, and, for understanding the challenges and needs of bereaved carers as reflected in the data. The chapter shows how the individual felt experience of grief is talked about metaphorically by some of the bereaved carers in our data in terms of Physical Fragmentation.
