Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction: The Rendezvous

Chapter 1. Goodbye

Chapter 2. Re-membering

Chapter 3. Home

Chapter 4. Reassessing Continuing Bonds and the Causality Thesis

Chapter 5. Future Directions for Continuing Bonds Research

Afterword: A Family Wedding Reception to Re-member

Appendix: Methodology and Analysis as Mourning

References

Index

About the Author

Blake Paxton is an assistant professor of communication at Saint Xavier University in Chicago, Illinois. He has published and presented research in the areas of interpersonal and family communication, health and end of life communication, and women’s and gender studies. Paxton is a member of several professional organizations including the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, the Organization for the Study of Language, Gender, and Communication, and the National Communication Association.

Reviews

Paxton returns to his hometown to immerse himself in stories about his mother who died when he was eighteen. Artfully weaving research methods, small-town cultural descriptions, rich remembrances, and a developmental view of both the author’s coming out process and a particular mother-son relationship, Paxton describes an alternative to socially constructed closure after death. He brings to life the possibility of continuing bonds with the deceased, providing a rich alternative to letting go as the only healthy conclusion to a devastating death. Paxton’s homing route helps readers map their own journey to continuing, loving bonds with their deceased.Dr Joyce L. Hocker, Clinical Psychologist, Missoula, MontanaAt Home With Grief is poignant, vulnerable, funny, and thoughtful. Paxton captures this mess of emotions we call grief in moments both small and wide-ranging, crystallized in a compelling narrative that offers something valuable to those dealing with grief, those writing about grief, and those who write and study autoethnography.Dr Kurt Lindemann, School of Communication, San Diego State UniversityI recommend At Home with Grief to anyone who rejects, as both Paxton and I do, the ‘‘tyranny of closure’’ (p. 2). One need not believe in an afterlife to agree with an interviewee’s statement that Paxton’s mother will ‘‘live on through your gift’’ (p. 102). Paxton’s book is, finally, a gift to his readers.

Jeffrey Berman, University at Albany, State University of New York, USA, Journal of Death and
Dying"Blake Paxton’s At Home with Grief is a son’s love letter to his mother, a way of honoring her life and the lives she touched. It is about the author’s journey and going back to the community he came from so that he can move forward. And it is an exploration of how we all can move through pain and learn how to let go of grief, while always holding on to the persons we love."--STEPHANIE L. YOUNG, University of Southern Indiana