2 the why of suﬀering and to the meaning of life and death [9]. A belief system may also attempt to create or maintain continuity with the deceased in a way that makes sense to the bereaved and their notion of the loved one’s and the family’s singularity [10]. 3. Methods 3.1. Theoretical Framework. We situated our research in a theoretical approach to end of life experiences that is social constructionist in nature [11]. This approach is based on three frameworks. The ﬁrst is phenomenology and the sociology of knowledge, which focuses on how people understand everyday life and see meaning making and interpretation as key human actions. The individual is the creator of a personally meaningful world of lived experience and is best able to explain his world [12]. The second is drawn from the psychology of religion, which is strongly cultural and shows belief systems as cultural lens through which individuals interpret and restructure negative experiences [9]. The third is rooted in contemporary bereavement theory which explores family interactions at the end of life, the meaning of loss, the tie with the deceased, and expressions of mourning within the family context [13]. 3.2. Data Collection and Analysis. This paper emerges from data collected from NIA-funded research “The Meaning of the Death of the First Elderly Parent: A Family Perspective.” In the original study we interviewed 30 families, consisting of a widow aged 70 and over and one or two adult children, aged 40 to 60, from six months to one year after the father and husband’s death. We recruited respondents from the notice of death that appeared in local newspapers. We collected data for this study through formal ethnographic interviews and informal conversation. Data were processed through audiotaping and transcription for analysis or detailed in analyzable ﬁeld notes. The case that follows was culled from both processes. The subjects of this paper had private interviews in their homes approximately ten months after their loved one’s death. Each interview lasted approximately two hours in two sessions. An IRB-approved consent form was obtained from each family member at the beginning of the ﬁrst interview. The main tool of the study was the semistructured interview schedule, which included open ended questions that spanned two sessions. The ﬁrst interview session focused on the reaction of the interviewee to the husband or father’s decline and eventual death. This interview also explored the respondent’s opinion of his end of life care. The ﬁrst interview also examined respondents’ reactions to rituals performed after death and beliefs about religion, spirituality, and an afterlife. The second interview asked for opinions related to other family members’ reactions to the husband and father’s dying and death and an assessment of relationships among family members in general and speciﬁcally in relation to the loved one’s end of life. The general approach to data analysis in the project was as follows: after transcribing interviews, we analyzed Journal of Aging Research them using standard methods of qualitative research. This method includes data review, which asks the broad questions, “What is in the data?” and “How is this data relevant to the topic under study?” The next step is a large level sorting of each transcript, which codes for broad themes and topics intraindividually [14, 15]. We also did ﬁne-grained analyses, which include coding for subthemes and patterns within respondents’ entire transcript. Our method enabled us to better understand the respondents’ interpretations of ques- tions we asked them. The data we used in this paper emerged from gross level sorting and ﬁne-grained analysis. We note that as new data were transcribed and ideas and themes emerged, we back checked them selectively or universally with data from respondents who had already completed an interview. 3.3. Rationale for Use of the Case Study. Our use of one family (three persons, the widowed mother, and two adult children) to illustrate the family responses to the father/husband’s end of life justiﬁes the case study method as a necessary and suﬃcient means of showing a phenomenon of lived experience. In this case, it is the family’s perception of the meaning of the husband and father’s end of life [16]. We use the case that follows because it shows a con- centrated family experience. That is, all members of this family—father, mother, and three adult children—lived together in the family home for over 50 years. Their enduring intimacy with each other created a unique context for a family response to the end of life and produced insight into the goal of our research: the exploration of how a family comes together around the decline of the elderly father and husband and whether the family makes a collective meaning of his death. The case study disclosed the family’s united experiences of grief, as well as, each member’s unique perception of the death due to having a particular relationship with the deceased [16]. We used three themes to organize major aspects of the family’s narrative: (1) how the family imputes meaning to the end of life; (2) the past and present role of each family member and, (3) the family’s ways of coping with the death, particularly through their belief systems. We see the themes as interrelated. That is, ﬁnding meaning in a loved one’s death is an aspect of coping with loss. Meaning can also be found through: (1) recalling his good works and death as an end to his suﬀering, (2) a belief system that assures his exis- tence in an afterlife, and (3) continuing or expanding each family member’s present role in the family. Three themes emerged from our data, based on family members’ answers to interview questions, spontaneous remarks throughout the interview, and our interpretation of their nonanswers, silences, pauses, emotion, and body language. 3.4. The Marino Family (a Pseudonym That Reﬂects the Ital- ian-American Background of This Family). We present the Marino family. Joseph Marino, Sr. died in February of 2009, ten months before the start of our interviews. He was 87 and a survivor of colon cancer, open heart surgery, and a minor stroke. He endured several other health problems for