%0 Journal Article
%T In one¡¯s own time: Contesting the temporality and linearity of bereavement
%A Alex Broom
%A Damien Ridge
%A Emma Kirby
%A Katherine Kenny
%J Health
%@ 1461-7196
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/1363459317724854
%X This article explores the experience and meaning of time from the perspective of caregivers who have recently been bereaved following the death of a family member. The study is situated within the broader cultural tendency to understand bereavement within the logic of stages, including the perception of bereavement as a somewhat predictable and certainly time-delimited ascent from a nadir in death to a ¡®new normal¡¯ once loss is accepted. Drawing on qualitative data from interviews with 15 bereaved family caregivers we challenge bereavement as a linear, temporally bound process, examining the multiple ways bereavement is experienced and how it variously resists ideas about the timeliness, desirability and even possibility of ¡®recovery¡¯. We posit, on the basis of these accounts, that the lived experience of bereavement offers considerable challenges to normative understandings of the social ties between the living and the dead and requires a broader reconceptualization of bereavement as an enduring affective state
%K bereavement
%K death
%K dying
%K recovery
%K temporality
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1363459317724854