ABSTRACT
All parents had a story of the child's death. Having a patterned account of events and feelings over time connected to a death is also consistent with US cultural models of a grief process. The stories provided an account of the child's and parents' travels on a path toward the death, and they always included, early in the story, a description of the entry onto that path, perhaps the first signs of illness or the decisions that led to the child being in a fatal accident. All parent stories included temporal markers, particularly seasons, dates, times, and ages, that could help them and others to know the temporal context for events. The stories often included accounts of what medical personnel did and offered praise or condemnation. Some stories included the words or actions of a government authority. In the narratives of parents whose child's dying was spread over a period of time, often several different dying processes are described.
