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
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.
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
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