ABSTRACT
Bereavement is the life situation that results when an attachment ends. Grief is the emotional reaction to loss. It results from bereavement and, because people can anticipate a loss, it can precede it; we then term it Anticipatory Grief. Mourning is the public face of grief, the way in which people behave after bereavement. Clearly religious faith is a complex thing and we should not be surprised at the results of research which seldom show that people who subscribe to a particular religion are therefore less vulnerable to bereavement than others. Grief is part of the range of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that attach people to each other and are found in all social animals. In the early stages of bereavement people tend to swing back and forth between the so-called pangs of grief and attempts to put grief aside and get on with the many tasks that face them.
