J. William Worden, Ph.D., a well known grief therapist, strongly believes that a person must mourn the death of someone who has been significant in his or her life. From interviews with the bereaved, Dr. Worden developed his Four Tasks of Mourning. He believes that if mourning is not complete, growth and development cannot take place and lifetime complications could develop. The following tasks take effort, “grief work,” on the part of the bereaved. The tasks do not necessarily occur in this exact order. Worden saw that the bereaved may go back and forth between two or three of the tasks while doing the grief work.

To Accept the Reality of the Loss

• Even when death is expected, there is still a feeling that it didn’t happen.
• This task involves recognizing that the person is dead and will not return.
• Death must be accepted on both an intellectual and emotional level.
• Traditional rituals, such as funerals, help the bereaved to begin to accept the death as real.

To Work Through to the Pain of Grief

• The intensity of the pain and the way it is experienced and expressed is different for everyone.
• It is impossible not to experience some amount of pain when someone very close dies.
• Friends and family sometimes are uncomfortable with the mourner’s pain and may try to interrupt this task.
• Mourners may try to avoid this task by masking the pain through the use of alcohol or drugs, by idealizing the deceased, by avoiding reminders of the deceased, or by relocating or quickly getting into a new relationship.
• No matter how successful a mourner is in avoiding the pain, it eventually will come back again, maybe in the form of depression or when a new loss is experienced.

To Adjust to an Environment in Which the Deceased is Missing

• Adjusting to the new environment is dependent upon what the relationship was and what role the deceased played in the relationship.
• During this task, grief work focuses on coming to terms with living alone, raising children alone, facing an empty house, managing home maintenance and finances, and caring completely for oneself.
• It is important that regression to a state of helplessness, inadequacy or incapacity does not occur during this task.
• It takes time and patience to figure out how to take over the deceased’s roles.
• It is also during this task that the bereaved tries to make sense of the loss and tries to regain some sense of control over his or her life.

To Emotionally Relocate the Deceased and Move on With Life

• For many, this task is the most difficult to complete.
• During this task, the bereaved often finds the ability to invest emotionally in someone or something else.
• The deceased is not forgotten, nor are the memories that were shared, but instead, the bereaved finds enjoyment in life again.
• In this task, the bereaved do not “give up their relationship with the deceased, but find an appropriate place for the dead in their emotional life—a place that enables them to go on living effectively in the world.”
• “The fourth task is hindered by holding on to the past attachment rather than going on and forming new ones. Some people find loss so painful that they make a pact with themselves never to love again.”
• The deceased are never forgotten or replaced—but remain a part of the bereaved.
• The mourner is not the same person he or she was, and he or she never will be the same again.
• With time and grieving, however, the pain will lessen, and the mourner redefines himself or herself.