This qualitative study examines the subjective experience of fathers' grief responses to the death of a child with a disability. Eight fathers were interviewed and completed the Grief Experience Inventory (GEI). GEI results indicated that fathers did not differ significantly from parents who lose a child in other ways. However, subjectively, fathers consistently reported that their bereavement was marked by a "double loss": disability and then death. Consistent with the literature on gender differences in bereavement, fathers reported greater emotional stoicism and used activity, rather than talk or social support, as a primary coping strategy. Clinical implications for professionals working with grieving men or with couples are discussed.

Losing a child is probably the most devastating event that a mother can experience. When a child with a developmental disability dies, this painful loss may follow months or years of exhausting parenting. How do mothers of children with developmental disabilities respond to this dual loss (the loss of their ideal child and then the loss of their actual child)? This project used a semistructured interview and the Grief Experience Inventory to explore the bereavement experience of eight mothers who have lost such children. It explored variables that are associated with optimal or complicated bereavement. It was found that most of the mothers were very successful in using cognitive coping strategies to find meaning and benefit in the life and death of their children and were able to continue seeing the world as benevolent and purposeful. Exceptional cases are discussed, and implications for helping professionals are offered. The findings of this study fill a significant gap in the theory of parental coping and bereavement.

Several years ago I was invited, as a special education teacher and as a therapist, to lead a unique bereavement group. This group of mothers had parented and then lost children with severe developmental disabilities.They claimed, somewhat resentfully, that they felt out of place, isolated, and unheard in bereavement groups that they had previously joined. They were continually told that their children were not as valuable or that "it was better this way" and that they should be "over it by now"-sentiments that they found totally out of line with their experience. O n e mother said, "Our loss is different. There is nothing in the literature to help us. Please write our story." So I did. This chapter focuses on the qualitative research project that grew out of my work with this bereavement group. T h e experience revealed to me was intense and gut-wrenchingly painful, but inspiring. Trained in the more traditional theories of loss and bereavement, I was unprepared for the stories I heard and the profound life changes that had occurred in these women. O u t of what one would assume to be two tragic losses-first the loss of the dreamed-for child and then the loss of the actual child-emerged a greater 113