Grieving in the Everyday: Metastatic Cancer, Life Writing & the Grief of the Dying

Abstract

<p>This chapter draws attention to the grief of those living with terminal cancer. Often the grief of the dying remains unaddressed in the clinical setting and in culture at large. With the concept of the grief of the dying, I consider its likeness to everyday trauma, and suggest non-subsumptive ways of looking for the narratives of such grief. I offer a case study of my experience as a researcher-artist living with metastatic breast cancer, followed by a discussion on how grief figures in the life narratives of the terminally ill. I present four aspects of the grief of the dying: unending uncertainty, the oscillation between immersion and avoidance, fragmented narrative styles and the mourning of one’s own death. I suggest that life writing is a useful site for expressing the grief of the dying and for examining it in critical medical humanities. </p>