ABSTRACT
To become a survivor is to transcend an experience of death in life. Death remains an aspect of existence that man is unable to alter fundamentally or to overcome, but if it overwhelms him he is its victim. Each confrontation with death is intricately interwoven with a complex web of significant personal relationships that are interdependent and ceaselessly impinge one on the other. The young, most especially, see death, premature extinction, as a certainty. To hold on, to wait, to stand back, and to allow time to pass is the survivor's primary need. Surviving a beloved person can become, at least for some, a time of growth, and of becoming more fully human. The survivor, who at first feels he has lost everything except his own small life, may come to incorporate some of the qualities of the deceased into his own being and from there go on to discover some new values for himself.
