Children's Patterns in Mourning the Death of a Loved One

Death impinges on us in different ways and at different times. Some of us were touched by it early on in our lives and have suffered hard-to-heal wounds and lasting tender scars. Others have encountered death repeatedly and may even now be in anguish, struggling to cope with dying or bereavement. And others yet are fortunate in having been granted a briefer or longer period in our lives when we can healthily deny the everpresent shadow of death. Absorbed in the business of living, we manage not be affected significantly by the evidence of death around us because it does not immediately befall ourselves or our loved ones. Such temporary disregard for death is then inevitably shattered when suddenly death comes very close and demands that we come to terms painfully in a new and different way. Over 20 years ago, this happened to our group of 14 child psychoanalysts at the Cleveland Center for Research in Child Development and Hanna Perkins Therapeutic School (1), and prompted us to embark on our research on mourning.