Narratives of Three Elderly African-American Women Living in Poverty Who have Lost an Adult Child to Horrendous Death

Abstract

Fifty Elderly African-American Women Living In Poverty Were Interviewed For A Research Project Entitled “Chronic Poverty And The Self In Later Life” Which Studies The Effects Of Long-Term Poverty On Women's Self-Concepts. The Fact That Ten Women Out Of The Forty-Five Women In Our Sample Who Bore Children Lost Them To Murder, drugs, or other forms of violence made the subject of horrendous death (Leviton, 1995) salient during data analysis. Interview transcripts from three women who lost children to horrendous death were examined for reactions to the children's deaths and subsequent thoughts and feelings about their own deaths. Key themes emerging from the women's narratives were: 1) women's experience with poverty and abandonment, their expectation that life includes suffering, and their religious faith assisted them in grief work; 2) currently, women focused on present joys and concerns rather than on past sorrows; 3) women did not articulate thoughts about their own deaths in light of their child(ren)‘s deaths; and 4) women doubted or negated the concept of an afterlife, which contradicts traditional African beliefs and may speak to the loss they endured.