Grief and Temporality

In the bereavement literature grief trajectories have for the most part been conceptualized according to linear time: whilst non-pathological grief is understood as being time-delimited, it is characteristic of pathological grief that it is persistent and protracted. In the diagnostic frameworks this is represented by the ‘duration criterion’ and the stipulation that grief can be considered pathological if it endures in a sustained way for 6 months or more in the ICD-11 and 12 months or more in the forthcoming DSM-5-TR. Whilst agreeing that temporality is fundamental in the interpretation of different grief trajectories, I argue in this chapter that there is nevertheless a fundamental disconnect between the linear time used to conceptualize grief trajectories in the bereavement literature and the non-linear time through which grief is experienced, particularly as it concerns the ongoing relationship between the living and the dead. Drawing upon data from a questionnaire study recently conducted with colleagues at the University of York, the aim of this chapter is to give an alternative conception of the grief process according to the non-linear time of recurrence. Not only does recurrence help us to better understand the process by which the bereaved repeatedly confronts and then gradually reconfigures the loss of a loved one in an ongoing and dynamic way but, I argue, it gives us the means through which to conceptualize how this relationship might be sustained as a continuing bond in and over time. Given the increasing emphasis on the significance of continuing bonds in the bereavement literature, understanding how it is that they unfold in time is an important step.