Using an ethnographic study of nine senior Japanese immigrant widows of international marriages in the San Francisco Bay Area, the author investigated how these women affirmed or reconstructed the meaning of their loss and life and how their worldview, rituals, and faith communities provided a significant source of support after loss. As Asian immigrant widows, the women in this study lived in a marginalized place with multiple losses. The significant key themes that emerged from their narratives, grounded in their intercultural and interfaith experiences, were 1) re-learning to live new lives as immigrant widows; 2) acceptance of human finitude, solitude, and a sense of fulfilment; 3) continuing to have bonds with the deceased; and 4) potential creativity through establishing communitas. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York.

Bereavement liminality Meaning-making international marriage Stories Marginality Japanese immigrant women Spousal loss

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