Bereavement is part of the human condition, and so it is unsurprising to find an array of generic social scripts which operate to scaffold interactions with the bereaved. They are generic in that we will all lose parents and friends, and many of us will lose siblings, partners, or children. Each script supposes a gravity of loss that in turn translates to a ‘space’ for grieving and delimits requirements in caring for the bereaved. But human relationships are complex and exceed these generic formulations. There are more ways to ‘relate’ to others outside a bionormative schema, yet we lack widely disseminated and embedded social scripts to work through the impact of these poorly recognised losses. In this paper, I analyse my own bereavement journey since the sudden death of my ex-step-father in 2013. I explore the impact and implications of grieving without a social script to guide me (and those around me), the meaning-making journey I have embarked upon to process this loss, and the central place that ‘recognition’ has occupied therein. In addition to demonstrating a need for more nuanced social scripts to deal with varied forms of bereavement, I critique the ongoing social centring of bio- and cis-hetero-normative familial relationships in life which is a precursor to misjudging the depth of blended-family (and chosen-family) loss.
