Using data from several interpretative ethnographic studies conducted in Taiwan from 1995 to 2002, the authors examine indigenous cultural patterns of suffering as they affect adaptation to loss from death. Participant observation and the narratives of 52 widows and 30 adolescents without fathers were used to generate an adaptive model of family bereavement. According to the findings, three themes-maintaining the status quo, restoring images of the deceased in family affairs, and communicating with the dead -represent the efforts of bereaved families to retain a sense of wholeness (a central Chinese goal) and to preserve symbolic images of fathers and husbands. The data indicate that the grieving process in Taiwan is clearly different from its Western counterpart, which emphasizes the concept of "working through" as a major means of healing from bereavement. In Taiwan, reconnection rather than cutting-off relationships with the deceased dominate bereavement responses. Widowed mothers use local religious practices, mediums, and ancestor worship to locate deceased husbands, and teenagers create imaginary fathers to address a sense of incompleteness and failure that emerges from their father's deaths. Our conclusion is that reconnection is a culturally specific and accepted means of resolving grief among Taiwanese.