Prayers for The Poet

Abstract

The authors engage in an evocative autoethnography1 as they live through the different ways they both grieve and mourn the death of a well-loved friend, colleague, and professor. They share how they navigate the grieving process of death and dying through their cultural traditions.2 Sharing personal stories can be therapeutic to make sense of ourselves and our experiences3 as writing the autoethnography “must always be interventionist, as it gives notice to those who may otherwise not be allowed to tell their story or who are denied a voice to speak.”4 In the end, the authors use autoethnography to live through the grief as it grounds them with a deeper and healthy understanding about the personal and cultural influences shaping bereavement5 as they cope with the death in their own cultural ways.