中華心理衛生協會

Purpose: We aimed to enrich understanding of the subjective experience of grief of bereaved siblings after the cancer death of their father. Methods: A brother and sister who lost their father to cancer were interviewed twice individually about a half year after their father passed away, with a 6-month follow-up. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using a phenomenological dyadic approach. Results: The analysis revealed four general structures which is relational transformation, life history review of the bereaved, affective memories embedded in temporality and spatiality, and the context of home in the narrative data. The siblings initially stuck to their personal sense of home to regain homelikeness that is a homelike being-in-the-world in which the lived body in most cases has a transparent quality as the point of access to the world in understanding activities after the death event. The feeling of homelikeness is embedded in a becoming process; it is not a stable state. The siblings eventually faced the changes, the negativity or absent side related to their home, and then needed to embrace outside experiences. Conclusions: Homelikeness is the underlying transformative structure of home. Death shed light on the essential negativity of life, and the ethical relational experience between the bereaved and the deceased. The clinical implications and research suggestions from this study are discussed.