But maybe, some other child. As for recovery from bereavement, Ms. Finkbeiner doubts that it exists. After such a loss, she says, ''You just don't treat life as lightly, and if you don't treat things lightly, they do become richer.'' As Mardi Horowitz, a psychiatric researcher, has found in his studies of the bereaved, such seemingly contradictory responses reflect two different states and selves that are nonetheless both true. In time, fortunate parents become adept at finding their more comfortable ways of being. A lthough their common ordeal is stressed, reactions vary among the parents just as they do within an individual at different times.
Some couples draw closer, while others divorce.
One parent becomes severely depressed and remains solitary, another befriends the dying and their families. How parents respond depends not only on what happened to them but on who they are. Chapter 1 is closed, Chapter 2 begins. . . . Ms. Finkbeiner wonders if she'll find her trajectory, but the reader knows she will.