Grief (novel)
During the course of the novel, the ideas of the stages of grief are introduced. The stages are denial, anger, depression, and acceptance. The narrator, as well as other characters in the story, slowly passes through these stages in trying to deal with death.
Grief
When an adult child loses a parent in later adulthood, it is considered to be "timely" and to be a normative life course event. This allows the adult children to feel a permitted level of grief. However, research shows that the death of a parent in an adult's midlife is not a normative event by any measure, but is a major life transition causing an evaluation of one's own life or mortality. Others may shut out friends and family in processing the loss of someone with whom they have had the longest relationship.