Grief is a universal experience, part of the price of being human. An old saying paints it this way: "life includes loss upon loss until at last comes rest." The grief that individuals suffer is private, and each sufferer is isolated in the pain of their particular loss. But bereavement for each person takes place in the context of families and communities and is played out through social interaction in these arenas.

Family and community health practitioners, teachers, and researchers need to be aware that grief is more common than they might expect. For example, a study by Balk and Vesta 1 found that in a college campus community 25% of the students were grieving the death of a family member within the last year, and almost 30% were grieving the death of a friend within the same time period. This provides an interesting emphasis on the extent of bereavement in a particular population at any point in time. Older populations probably would report higher numbers, although that research remains to be done.

The articles in this issue (25:1) of Family & Community Health approach the topic of bereavement in a number of ways and from a variety of perspectives. First, articles by Lindstrom and Steeves challenge and elaborate on current understandings of grief and bereavement. Both articles are rooted in the authors' separate work with individuals who have lost spouses. Lindstrom's article provides an overview of challenges to traditional notions of "grief work" and advances a new perspective on grief as a life experience.

The article by Steeves provides empirical evidence for the notion that the experience of grief may follow culturally constructed patterns over the course of bereavement. For Steeves's informants grief had a specific rhythm or temporal patterns that he describes in detail.

As in the two previously cited articles, most of the bereavement literature is based on the loss of spouses. Conversely, in this issue most of the authors focus instead on the bereavement of different family members. For example, the article by Clements and Burgess reports a study of children who have lost a family member to homicide. Besides their interesting findings, the article argues for the need for family and community practitioners to be able to counsel youth exposed to such family violence. In another example, Robinson describes the predicament adults who have lost a sibling from AIDS face in disclosing their own bereavement in the face of stigmatization from this disease. Both articles also remind us of the situation-specific aspects of bereavement.

The article by Hsu and others reports the findings of a study of adolescents in Taiwan whose fathers died. This article provides a cross-cultural view of bereavement, as well as illustrating the changes such an event causes to the individual adolescent and the family situation in general.

Fletcher's article represents an interesting attempt to view the family as a whole in terms of bereavement; in other words, the family as the unit of analysis for grief as opposed to the individual. This perspective is lacking in the bereavement literature. Fletcher uses case studies of two families who have lost children to illustrate the crisis in identities that families experience in this situation.

Finally, Murphy et al comment on bereavement from a community-based perspective. Parents who lost children were followed in their study over time. This article discusses their use of community resources and the implications of the findings.

WHAT IS MISSING STILL

Several of the authors in this issue are well known in the field of bereavement. Others seem to be starting promising research careers in this field. Although each of the articles contributes new knowledge to the field, it is clear from the whole of the work that there is much more to be learned.

During the editing of this issue this fall, the historic and tragic events of September 11, 2001, were foremost on my mind. Every day for months I read the summaries of the victims' lives in the New York Times. Like every citizen, I grieved for individual victims, their families, and for the communities especially affected. I wondered, as I prepared this issue for press, where we will all be in this vicarious grieving process when the issue is published in the spring of 2002. I hope for the best.

From these events, it is clear that communities, cities, and entire countries can grieve and be bereaved together. It's a different phenomenal level and different perspective but no less "real" than individual grief. For family and community health practitioners, teachers, and researchers, it seems an important area to explore. No articles were submitted for this issue that addressed this level of analysis. This clearly represents an opportunity for future scholarly inquiry. I look forward to watching it develop.

REFERENCE