ABSTRACT
It is, however, the personal encounter with death and its severance of a cherished relationship that hurtles us into an adaptive crisis from which we cannot emerge but transformed. The irrevocability of death makes this a loss like no other. Though we summon prior coping mechanisms, nothing adequately prepares for this ®nal separation. The intensity of pain and degree of psychosocial upheaval is such that we fear we will not survive. Yet we do. How we adjust, the subject of this chapter, is by laboring through a painful, lengthy process in a disorganized state, gradually modulating affect, habituating to change, and memorializing a relationship. Slowly, over time, we accomplish the internal and external tasks of mourning.
