The Last Veil: Experiences of Bereaved "Adult Orphans"

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.55016/qn4t9d03

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the experience of adults who lose both parents, a transition sometimes named "becoming an adult orphan." Drawing on the image of a veil that drops with the death of the second parent, we argue that this loss discloses mortality as newly proximal rather than merely known in the abstract. Situating bereavement literature alongside philosophical accounts of mourning in Derrida, Blanchot, Patočka, and Malpas, we develop a hermeneutic account of grief as enduring rather than resolved. Central to this is entwinement, whereby another person becomes a condition of one's world rather than merely a piece of it, and answerability, the claim the dead continue to make on us. We argue that mourning, so understood, is not a stage to pass through but a lasting way of remaining in relation to the dead.

Author Biographies

  • Dr Niall Keane, UWE Bristol

    Niall Keane is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of the West of England, Bristol, and co-editor in chief of the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology. His research spans ancient philosophy, phenomenology, hermeneutics and continental philosophy, with particular interests in Heidegger, Gadamer, phenomenological psychiatry, and the philosophy of culture and meaning. He is the author, with James Costello, of Entwined Selves: Relational Encounter in Psychotherapy (forthcoming, Routledge), and is currently completing a book on Heidegger and Gadamer for Cambridge University Press's Heidegger Elements series.

  • Dr Nancy Moules, University of Calgary

    Dr. Nancy J Moules, PhD is a Professor in the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Calgary. She is the founding and current editor of the Journal of Applied Hermeneutics and co-founder and co-Chair (with Professor Theodore George) of the Canadian Hermeneutic Institute. Dr Moules is lead author of Conducting Hermeneutic Research: From Philosophy to Practice, Second Ediiton (2026, Peter Lang). 

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Published

2026-08-25

Issue

2026: 2026

Section

Articles

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