Recently, a dear friend whose husband had died a few months prior said she had difficulty attending church because at some point during the service, her tears would overflow. She and her husband had always attended church together, and she was finding the sadness of sitting alone to be overwhelming. Her grief was completely understandable; her husband was gone.
There’s another kind of grief that’s less acknowledged by our culture, a grief that occurs when one knows someone is declining, but the length of their remaining days is unknown. The label for this emotional state can be termed “anticipatory grief.” In a study manual by Barbara Rubel, “Loss, Grief, and Bereavement,” she defines it as a grief reaction “related to an impending loss; including mourning, coping, interaction, planning, and psychosocial reorganization before a death.”
