A tear with a smile: The impact of spouses' expected versus unexpected death on the adjustment period of widows

A story of a widow's exploits of her husband's seventeen month struggle with brain cancer while she reminisces their thirty years together. Years following his death, she speculates how her adjustment would have been impacted had his death occurred suddenly. She sought to investigate whether the level of distress is directly related to the degree of the expectancy of the death. In her pursuit, she called on twenty-one widows who have experienced either expected or unexpected deaths of their husbands. These conversations indicate widows whose spouses died expectedly had lower levels of distress compared to widows who experienced an unexpected death of their spouse. The expectancy of death may aid in alleviating feelings of mourning following the loss; by contrast, unexpected deaths limited the period of adaptation, resulting in an extended period of mourning.