Closure and Grief

Closure is defined as an act of finality. It could be shutting a door or completing a business deal. To many, however, closure means the completion of grief. They assume it is possible to get over loss by shutting the door on grief. This assumption implies that normal grief has a time limit. If it goes on too long, more than a few weeks or months, grief is considered a psychological disorder and pathologized as an illness.

Yet researchers find that instead of closure, people live with grief, oscillating with the ups and downs of sadness that grow further apart over the life cycle but never quite end. From researchers who study family loss and grief, it is found that closure is not a panacea for ...