ABSTRACT
This chapter follows our previous pilot study (Malkinson & Bar-Tur, 1999) on the “aging of grief,” a term proposed by an elderly bereaved father that we adopted to describe the centrality of grief in the lives of aging bereaved parents. The themes emerged in a group discussion with 29 elderly bereaved parents whose sons were killed during military service which suggested that a strong attachment continues in the inner representations of the lost child. Further research was carried out to examine related issues of the process of grief along the life span and in old age. Forty seven elderly parents were interviewed individually in depth. They were asked to describe their lives following the death of their child until the present. We focus on several issues:
What are the personal, spousal, family and social processes reported by the parents as experienced from the moment of notifi cation of their child’s death? How do grief processes evolve throughout the life span? What is the impact of normative developmental processes and losses on their grief processes?
