While recent advances in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) treatment has decreased the number of AIDS-related deaths among all women in America, AIDS continues to be the third leading cause of death among African American and Latina women aged twenty-five though forty-four. The majority of the children left behind will be parented by their grandmothers or other women who will assume the parenting role. This article focuses on the ways in which African American cultural traditions affect the grieving and coping responses of a cohort of ten urban African American parenting grandmothers who are caring for children orphaned by AIDS. The African American cultural value placed on commitment to family caregiving, coupled with an abiding connection to systems of religious ritual and belief, sustained the grandmothers as they grieved the loss of adult children to a stigmatizing and shameful death.
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