Remainders of Loss: Memorialization Beyond the Funeral by Catherine Tuey A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario ©2015 Catherine Tuey ii Abstract For my dissertation, I conducted thirty-one semi-structured qualitative interviews with individuals who experienced the loss of a friend or loved one, and who helped to organize a funeral. The intention of my research was to give individuals a chance to share what they found meaningful and important about their experiences during this time. Doing so led me to develop the concept of remainders. The remainders represent the everyday memorialization practices that people perform after the funeral.
They are the by-products of the funeral, the types of actions people tend to perform on their own post- funeral, but they are also the emotional or social ‘leftovers’ that remain after the funeral. By examining first-hand accounts of attempts to memorialize, this dissertation contributes to a sociological study of memorialization by exploring the ongoing ways that people incorporate death or loss in their lives and the meaning that they give to the practices they perform. According to the findings of this research, the contemporary practice of memorialization is a complex and messy process that extends beyond the funeral due to the emotions that come with a loss and remain well past the funeral. iii Acknowledgements This study would not have been possible if it were not for the participants who shared their stories with me.
I thank them for their time and willingness to be so candid and open about their experiences. Many thanks also go out to those who helped me find participants, my committee, family and friends. To my committee, Melanie White, Alan Hunt and Carlos Novas, for taking the time to meet, providing quick turnaround and offering guidance and feedback along the way. Also, to Paula Whissell for her administrative support and guidance, and to Harry and Wilbert for their logistical and technical support.
Many offered support and encouragement along the way, but the coffee dates with Christine, getaways to Jen’s, treats from Mel and unwavering patience, belief and love from Mike were especially meaningful. Thank you for continuing to inspire and teach me. I dedicate this dissertation to my parents, ma-ma and ba-ba. iv Table of Contents ABSTRACT.
III TABLE OF CONTENTS. IV LIST OF APPENDICES. VI INTRODUCTION: STUDYING EVERYDAY MEMORIALIZATION. 1 STUDIES OF MEMORIALIZATION.
4 AIMS AND CLAIMS. 22 STRUCTURE OF THESIS. 24 CHAPTER 2 – A CULTURAL SOCIOLOGY OF MEMORIALIZATION. 27 DEMONSTRATING THE LIMITATIONS OF MEMORIALIZATION IN THE AMERICAN FUNERAL.
27 The American Way of Death. 28 Purified by Fire. 38 USING CULTURAL SOCIOLOGY TO STUDY MEMORIALIZATION. 48 CHAPTER 3 – MEMORIALIZATION AND MEANING-MAKING THROUGH CULTURAL PRACTICE.
55 COLLECTING THE INTERVIEW MATERIAL. 57 THE CODING PROCESS. 59 OVERVIEW OF PARTICIPANTS AND PRACTICES PERFORMED. 61 THE IMPORTANCE OF FUNERALS.
63 Acknowledgement of the Loss. 77 Informal and limited religious elements. 78 Fun and positive atmosphere. 84 POST-FUNERAL MEMORIALIZATION – REPERTOIRE OF THE REMAINDERS.
90 Connecting with others. 101 v CHAPTER 4 – FORMS OF REMAINDERS. 104 DEATH AS DISORIENTING. 106 FUNERAL AS ORDER.
111 ORDER IS TEMPORARY. 114 The Forms of Remainders. 128 CHAPTER 5 – MAKING SENSE OF THE REMAINDERS. 130 MEMORIALIZATION AND PROCESS.
131 NARRATIVES AND THE MESSINESS OF THE MEMORIALIZATION PROCESS. 156 CONCLUSIONS: LOOKING FORWARD WITH THE REMAINDERS. 158 A SOCIAL HISTORY OF CONTEMPORARY MEMORIALIZATION. 161 PERCEPTIONS OF MEMORIALIZATION.
162 MEMORIALIZATION AS PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT. 169 APPENDIX A – FUNERAL WEB SOURCES. 169 APPENDIX B – LETTER OF INFORMATION. 170 APPENDIX C – SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEW GUIDE.
177 vi List of Appendices APPENDIX A – FUNERAL WEB RESOURCES…………………………………………….169 APPENDIX B – LETTER OF INFORMATION………………………………………….170 APPENDIX C – SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEW GUIDE………………………………….173 1 Introduction: Studying Everyday Memorialization My dissertation investigates the difficulties that people face in everyday life when they experience the loss of a loved one. Everyone will face death whether it is their own or someone they know. The emotions surrounding such a loss are complex because one often feels many different emotions simultaneously such as sorrow, confusion, shock, frustration, and maybe even relief if someone has been suffering an illness for a long time. At the same time, people have to manage the practical reality of death.
They must do something to acknowledge the loss and dispose of the body. Death inevitably causes disorder and disruption for the living. The most familiar way that people manage death is to employ the services of the funeral industry. The funeral industry confines its services to the period immediately after the death and performs services involving the body, such as the funeral or memorial service, visitation or viewing, and interment.
While the completion of the funeral often marks the end of the need to manage the death, I want to explore what happens after the funeral to address the complexities that accompany the loss of a loved one. Does memorialization end with the funeral? Does anything remain after the funeral? If so, what remains? My own story is helpful to situate my research. Seven years ago, I received the unexpected news that one of my brothers had passed away. I remember feeling stunned and confused, partly because I was in the middle of packing for a vacation the next day.
I knew that I had to cancel my trip, but at the same time, this news caused such 2 unsettledness that I wanted to go on the trip as planned. I knew that was not possible and the practical reality was evident. I had to return to my family and help plan a funeral. We planned the funeral in three days and had it less than a week after receiving the news.
The funeral offered some order and comfort. Initially, we received support from relatives and friends since many called to offer their condolences, but after the funeral, people stopped calling. It seemed as though this loss was a blip in other people’s lives, but for us, we were still sorting through the emotional and practical complexities that accompanied the loss. For instance, my family had to look after my brother’s estate by closing his bank and credit card accounts; we had to organize and distribute his belongings.
I found that I avoided talking about my brother because of the sadness that the experience brought to my parents and the discomfort it caused my friends. Increasingly, I became interested in this experience of avoidance, sadness, and discomfort. The aim of this dissertation is to study the remainders, the everyday forms of memorialization that happen after the funeral. To me, the remainders represent the ongoing emotional and practical realities that come when one experiences a loss and that exceed the funeral.
The remainders also structure the everyday actions that people perform after the funeral in order to memorialize their loss. A death disrupts at an emotional and practical level. It disrupts one’s life, and causes disorder. The funeral industry offers the means for people to treat the disorderliness of death in a timely and orderly fashion by offering a range of services from body disposal to memorial services.
I want to suggest that the order that the funeral 3 industry creates is only apparent. It is, additionally, temporary because the emotional and practical complexities, specifically, the emotions, memories and experiences, that come with death, persist after the funeral. The funeral industry offers services that address the material aspects of death (e. body disposal) but it does not – and indeed cannot – address the emotional reality or outstanding practical realities of a death.
Funeral services are, by their very nature, limited. The difficulty is that sociological studies tend to focus on the funeral industry at the expense of attending to the broader realities associated with grieving and memorializing in the long term. By and large, they tend to treat memorialization and the funeral as one. My thesis argues that a sociological account of death and dying must deepen its treatment of memorialization.
It poses the following question: how do people manage the practical and emotional complexities that come with the experience of losing of a loved one? Such a study is unique because it investigates individuals’ experiences beyond the funeral. This study contributes to the existing research on death and dying by putting forward the assertion that the disorder and disruption death brings to the living is ongoing. Existing social structures, such as the funeral industry, seek to minimize the disruption that death causes. My research, however, recognizes that attending to death is much more complex.
It argues that the emotional and practical realities that come with death remain beyond the services offered by the funeral industry. In short, this thesis studies memorialization as an ongoing process. 4 Studies of Memorialization My investigation into existing studies about memorialization found that there is no memorialization literature as such, but that different fields study memorialization and tend to focus on specific forms of memorialization. Some of these fields include history, geography, psychology and sociology and some forms of memorialization include monuments and spontaneous memorials.
Typically, discussions about monuments centre on state memorials used to commemorate a particular event or individual, such as National War Memorials or the Abraham Lincoln Memorial. Spontaneous memorials, on the other hand, generally represent those who visit the site of tragedy or related sites and leave mementoes, such as flowers, stuffed animals and notes. Some of the most familiar examples of spontaneous memorials include roadside memorials, spontaneous shrines or ghost bikes. In this section, I will briefly outline how scholars in these diverse fields study memorialization and then illustrate how these studies often equate memorialization with remembrance, that is, as a way to commemorate or remember the loss.
I suggest, however, that this is not a complete account of memorialization because there is something that always escapes memorialization, and that something is the remainders. In the field of history, most scholars tend to emphasize the importance of remembering and investigate how memories or information of the past is retained and shared in the present through publications or monuments (see for example Cubitt, 2007; Meriwether and D’Amore, 2012; Gobel and Rossell, 2013). Historians are also interested in the methods and meaning given to specific past events, such as the Holocaust, in the 5 present (Mintz, 2001; Berman, 2006; Jacobs, 2010). Geographers, on the other hand, tend to explore memorialization by focusing on the use of space and the placement of monuments or cemeteries1.
The design of the space and location of the monument is interesting for geographers because its construction raises important questions about the atmosphere the space creates, the interaction people have with the space, and what people will take with them or what they will remember (Donohue, 2002; Gordon and Osborne, 2004; Klaassens et al, 2009; Foote and Girder, 2010). In this way, some geographers study the preservation of actual sites of events, and the construction of these locations as memorial sites (see for example Gough, 2004; Charlesworth and Addis, 2002). Such memorial sites have become tourist attractions, which has led to the emerging area of research called “dark tourism2” (Stone and Sharpley, 2008; Sharpley and Stone, 2009; White and Frew, 2013; Lennon and Foley, 2000). Studies of memorialization in the field of psychology, however, examine memorials and other acts of memorialization, such as ceremonies or candlelight vigils on anniversaries, as strategies for coping with loss or trauma (see Oliner, 2006; Doka, 2003).
Both state memorials and spontaneous memorials for example offer people the opportunity to express their emotions (specifically grief3) in the event of public tragedies.