Holmes and Rahe (1967) devised a Social Readjustment Rating Scale that describes stress as experienced by events which require multiple readjustments. It ranked the death of a spouse as the most stressful of life events which might result in challenges for health, significant changes in personal relationships, financial stability, and self-identity in the sunset years of their life. For the surviving spouse, factors like age, social support, coping methods, health, and life satisfaction play a significant role in the bereavement process. Early theorists like Bowlby (1980) viewed bereavement as a series of stages like shock and numbness, disorganization, re-organization, and recovery. Kubler-Ross model (1969) postulated that those experiencing grief undergo emotions of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Recent researchers and practitioners however have been of the opinion that bereavement is a more complex process and have adopted the constructivist approach to grief (Neimeyer, Bereavement Care 24(2):27–30, 2005). It includes not only the phenomenological experience of individual grievers but also the reciprocal impact of loss on families and subcultural groups. It studies the effect of group cohesion and communication patterns on the bereavement process. This chapter aims to examine the attitudes, concepts, theories, and applications related to spousal bereavement in the elderly. It also attempts to explore how grief manifests itself in different familial, religious, and cultural contexts.