Is It Healthy to Grieve Before a Loss?

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That honesty may help your overall healing process, added Mary-Frances O’Connor, a professor of psychology at the University of Arizona who studies grief and is the author of “The Grieving Body.” Research on late-stage cancer patients found that when the people around these patients worked to accept the loss of their loved one, they adjusted better to bereavement after the death.

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You can use a period of anticipatory grief as an opportunity to figure out if there are any issues you need to work through, such as things that have gone unsaid, Dr. O’Connor said.

When someone is in hospice care, Dr. O’Connor said, “they are encouraged to have closure conversations, getting a chance to say: ‘I love you, thank you, I’m sorry, please forgive me, I forgive you, goodbye.’” Research suggests that survivors experience less depression after a death when they have these types of meaningful communication.

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