ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors focus on the adult child’s anticipation of the death of an elderly parent. They have two primary goals: first to view bereavement as a multidimensional process that may begin before death, and second to explore a number of themes of anticipation, with particular attention to the over-arching dialectic of holding on and letting go. Bereavement, as defined, involves more than the emotional responses of grief, such as sadness, crying, anger, and yearning. There are also aspects of anticipation in which daughters experience shifts in their cognitive view of mother, their relationship with her, with their family, and with their world. Daughter’s emotional response to the decline is termed partial grief; it reflects the daughters’ deep sadness and helplessness in witnessing their mothers’ decline. Adaptation anxiety includes both the daughter’s anxiety about how her mother will handle her dying and anxiety about how she, the daughter, will adjust to the mother’s dying and death.
