Gay Widowers

Life After the Death of a Partner

Michael Shernoff

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781317994671
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

A recent gay widower may find that once the shock and initial confusion of losing his partner is overcome, there are still many hard, lonely, and overwhelming stages of grief to be worked through. Often, the bereaved feels isolated, and looking around for comfort, realizes that he doesn't have many resources to turn to, but Gay Widowers: Life After the Death of a Partner is a start. By offering first-person accounts of becoming a widower, this book, the first of its kind, allows others who are about to lose or already have lost a partner to find support, validation, recognition, and fellowship. Its editor and contributors hope that by sharing their stories of loss, pain, and bewilderment, they will help others in mourning as well as make one more step forward in their own healing.Men of different ages and ethnic, religious, geographic, and economic backgrounds join together in Gay Widowers to remind other gay widowers that they are not alone and that their feelings of pain, anger, and emptiness are normal and legitimate. Not solely a book about life after the loss of a partner to AIDS, this book is about rebuilding life as a bereaved gay man, regardless of the cause of your partner's death. You will find encouragement for moving your life forward, without shutting your memories away, as you read about:

• how homophobia can complicate a gay widower's grieving and mourning
• handling financial and legal matters before and after death
• specific mental health issues of gay widowers
• dating again
• similarities among gay widowers'responses to their partners'deaths
• making time for your feelings rather than avoiding them
• finding love after or during bereavement
• trauma theory's applications to gay widowers

By bringing forth these stories, Gay Widowers offers bereaved gay men, psychologists, counselors, and social workers--in a society where the mourning process is generally a heterosexual, social construct--a clinical overview of the psychodynamic issues relevant, and perhaps unique, to the mourning process of gay men.

Index

Abuse, sexual, feelings following, 78-79

Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. See AIDS

ADODI, 61,65-66,67

ADODI IBAYE, 67

AIDS, 77,120

dementia and, xv

mourning process and, 146-147

AIDS survivors, 147

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), 13

Alcoholism, 10-14,86-87,149

Alechim, S., 22

Amen-Ra, 68

Anger, 78,140

Anniversaries, 45

effects of, on surviving partners, 25-26

mourning process and, 88-89

Bachardy, D., 4,101-111,149

Beam, J., 67

Belle, R., 70

Bereavement groups, 151-152

Bereavement process. See Mourning process

Birthdays, 89

Bonding, 20-28

"Brotherhood of the survivors," 66

Brownlie, C., 125-136

Burial arrangements, 10

Careers

effect of partner's death on, 17-19

ending relationships for, 62

following partner's death, 120-123

as havens, 116

as solace for grief, 10

Cass, V., 141,142,144,145-146

Child abuse, remembering, following partner's death, 78-79

Churches, 9, 10-11

Cirrhosis of the liver, 84,87

Clayborne, J. L., 83-100

Closet

lifestyles while in, 8-9

survival of partner while in, 7-14

Closure, for surviving partners, 28

Community supports, importance of, 148-149

Coping, with terminal illness of partner, 9-10

Counselors, grief, 55

Crying, 117

Dane, B, 139,146,153

Danieli, Y., 151

Dating, following partner's death, 11, 20-28,34,35,50-52,105, 131-133

Dean, L., 147

Death. See also Partner's death

finality of, 16

moment of partner's, 16

as process, xvii

waiting for, 15-16

Delany, S. R., 67

Dementi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Surviving a Partner's Death Deeply in the Closet
• Do You Have a Partner?
• Postcard from Grief
• Excerpts from a Diary
• No Return
• Tracing Time
• The Merry Widower
• A Dream Is More Than a Wish Your Heart Makes
• Trading Places: A Hillside Chat with Don Bachardy
• Going It Alone
• I'm Not Done Yet
• Conclusion: Mental Health Considerations of Gay Widowers
• Index