"I Felt Utterly Useless. I was His Caregiver and Suddenly it wasn't Needed Anymore" Aging Queer Men, Loss and Biographical Disruption.

Résumé

This paper explores the bereavement experience of aging queer men in Czechia through the lenses of the sociology of death, dying, and bereavement, as well as critical studies on men and masculinities. It examines how their coming-out connects to caregiving, and how taking care of a close person and then losing them impacts their life. To do this, the study is grounded in the concepts of biographical disruption and disenfranchised grief, with a focus on care. Drawing on nine interviews and using interpretative phenomenological analysis, three themes emerged: 1) the non-acceptance of coming out and its connection to caregiving, 2) taking on a role of a caregiver as a source of biographical disruption, and 3) the loss of a close person as a source of both biographical disruption and disenfranchised grief. The findings suggest that communication partners who faced non-acceptance of their coming out tend to provide care for others while refusing to seek it for themselves, and that biographical disruption is a useful concept when applied to caregivers themselves who also face the possibility of disenfranchised grief after the passing of their close person.