The Mother Load

This autoethnography is focused on the experience of anticipatory grief during the prolonged chronic illness and eventual death of the author’s mother. The author uses a framework for the experience of post-bereavement grief to contextualize her experience with anticipatory grief. The dimensions of grief-related distress that the author uses to map anticipatory grief are defined as numbness/disbelief, separation distress, depression/mourning, and recovery. The author examines the literature, describes her experience with anticipatory grief, maps that journey to the aforementioned dimensions of grief, and discusses the search for meaning in the time after her mother’s death. Experiencing prolonged anticipatory grief may in fact have served to facilitate the process of finding space for meaning and joy in the face of the sadness and loss.