CONTINUING BONDS, SOCIETY, AND HUMAN EXPERIENCE: FAMILY DEAD, HOSTILE DEAD, POLITICAL DEAD

In most times and places, the focus of continuing bonds is on the well-being and activity of the dead that are linked to the well-being and activity of the living. In this article we describe continuing bonds across cultures by focusing on the dead. Three relationships between the living and the dead organize our thinking. First, the family dead in which living and dead offer help to each other. Second, the hostile dead that threaten the well being of the living. Third, the political dead in which the living enlisting the dead in political conflicts, and the dead motivate the living to battle on their behalf. Shifting the focus this way allows us to see that continuing bonds play important roles in larger narratives as well as in individual and family narratives. When I invited Bob Kastenbaum to give a lecture, I wrote saying I could get him a hotel room, or he could stay at our house. He replied he would rather be at our house. Between the invitation and his lecture I had submitted my first attempt to write about the grief in a self-help group of bereaved parents. It was a topic on which there was no prior literature. After the lecture we sat in my living room. I asked him about the submission. “I don’t know if the article is any good, but I know it is right. ” His acceptance letter arrived 3 days later. That was fast in pre-email days. A few weeks after that he invited me to join the Omega editorial board. The evening had shown me that Bob was a guy to have fun with, so I replied that I would accept the position pending more information about the salary