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Rituals of grief.

In her ground-breaking book, On Death and Dying³, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross proposes that there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Most of them are associated with a ritual that one has to undertake in order to facilitate the grieving process. South Korean designer, Eun-Hae Kwon, has explored this concept and designed a nondenominational architecture model, The Gates of Mourning, applied in the cemetery for those who are dealing with grief. Different gates allow for a different emotion to be experienced, therefore leaving the mourner in control but also creating a liberating environment. Her idea develops into an immersive experience and bends the traditional perception of a cemetery as a place to mourn, in turn trying to make it space where the grief is gradually becoming a part of life.
The grieving process, quite literally “the work of mourning”, is a term originally invented by Sigmund Freud, which indicates that suffering should be a normal part of grief and, in order to be free of the desire to have the deceased back, each single one of the memories bound to that person should be brought up and inspected, liberating the ego and preparing the mourner to move on⁴. Freud’s idea is not that we should abandon all the memories of the dead, it is quite the opposite. Through, oftentimes painful, the ritual of remembrance one is able to familiarize grief and live alongside it instead of being consumed by it.
And what exactly do we mean by grief anyway? One of the steps in overcoming fear is calling it by its’ name; in this case, the word ‘grief’ has its’ roots in Latin, translating as ‘burden’. This creates quite an evocative image, suggesting that when we grieve, we are carrying the burden of sorrow.⁵; This burden is something that Mia Cinelli, an

American designer, has looked at quite literally while creating The Weight - an object that can hug us whenever we want it to. The Weight offers deep pressure and helps in getting rid of anxiety and stress that often come with loss. In preparation for the project, Cinelli has researched the effects of weighted blankets in occupational therapy practices to help relieve stress, anxiety, inability to focus, autism spectrum disorders and sensory processing disorder. Consequently, its’ typology represents the symbolic burden of grief itself. As it simulates the gesture of a hug from behind, once you feel calm you can literally take the weight off your shoulders.⁶
Although one can never cease to grieve definitively, the burden of grief can be substantially abolished through mourning rituals. Visiting a grave, celebrating with a feast, displaying photographs of the departed or visiting places that were once significant to them are amongst the most prominent ones. These rituals serve an important survival function by helping to maintain important social bonds but their fundamental motive is an intention to honour not only the loved one, but also one’s connection to them.



// Through the tasks of Freud’s grief work, mourners can “continue to develop their relationship with the deceased by integrating memories into their current lives and relationships”.⁷



This process in itself is cathartic and reduces the sense of alienation.

On the contrary, an utterly different argument is proposed by C. S. Lewis who, being a widower himself, established a personal testimonial illustrating the experience of bereavement after his wife passed away. Lewis shows a side of grief that is the least spoken about – absolute despair. In this state “grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape”.⁸ According to him all the rituals of sorrow – visiting graves, keeping anniversaries etc. – resemble a mummification, they emphasize the “deadness” of the deceased. He offers neither solace nor solution to those in grief, which distinguishes him from other mentioned authors. Whilst others recommend the outdoors and social encounters to ease the pain of losing someone, C.S. Lewis is unconditionally paralyzed with his grief which he later states with a famous sentence “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear”. ⁹ One should take into consideration the impact of religion or lack thereof on the mourning customs. It is worth remembering that Lewis as a devout Christian was equipped with a set of explanations and rituals already in place, even if they existed there only for him to question. It is not the case for the growing population of atheists, whose way of mourning is practically non-existent. As highlighted by Alain de Botton “secular society has been unfairly impoverished by the loss of an array of

The significance of memorabilia.

Preserving mementos is another way to honour loved ones and plays a significant role in coming to terms with loss . It can be said that memorabilia are an inseparable part of a grieving process, they remind us of the death of others and of our own mortality.¹¹ This opinion oscillates between the notion of consciously collecting objects that belonged to the deceased and, on the other hand, a much more unintentional encounter with personal possessions that were left behind, oftentimes comprised of prosaic items that we wouldn’t necessarily collect.
The first group is identified as souvenirs, samples of events which can be remembered, but not relived. They exist in order to authenticate the narrative in which the bereaved talk about their grief. Therefore they have the power to deny the passing of time and carry the past into the present. “Souvenirs, then, are lost youth, lost friends, lost past happiness; they are the tears of things”.¹² Another approach to memorabilia formulates the term ‘evocative objects’, describing items that can hold the vast structure of recollection. These objects might not necessarily have belonged to the deceased but they possess an emotional link to that person. Evoking that link can be achieved by a variety of factors; through items kept from childhood, smell of someone’s perfumes and cooking being the most common of them all, it draws our attention to the fact that “[an] object can hold an unexplored world, containing within it memory, emotion, and untapped creativity”. ¹³ That note is even further emphasized by Marcel Proust and his, now acclaimed madeleine cake. In the first volume of Remembrance of Things Past Proust finds himself tasting a spoonful of madeleine when suddenly he is overwhelmed by a returning memory that this cake has evoked. He concludes that “…after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring (…) remain poised a long time”.¹⁴
In the recent years designers have engaged the topic of grief into a range of different practices, making grieving process more approachable and aiming to familiarize their audiences with the inevitability of their own death. It demonstrates that the discussion about mortality is not something that design should refrain from.
Some of the most prominent and startling projects involve the use of human ashes to create objects that facilitate mourning. Geraldine Spilker in her project Memento – After Time Elapsed has invented and tested a method of combining ashes with resin, making a tactile product from cremated remains. The object – in the shape of a spinning top - is entirely biodegradable, so the ashes can be returned to the earth when the bereaved is prepared. Meanwhile, it is possible to hold, caress and carry around the ashes. As described by Spilker herself: “It moves away from the static existence of an urn, to a gentle dynamic of picking up, touching, playing and observing.”. ¹⁵

Another project that involves cremains (cremated remains) are Lisa Merk’s tactile mini urns which serve as an anxiety-reducing alternative for the funeral ceremony. They are filled with a symbolic part of ashes of the deceased and mourners can choose to hold them in their hands or include them in the bigger urn that might be buried later. “Since funerals are very emotional and stressful events I wanted to provide something for the mourners that they could hold onto or even share their sadness with, at least for the moment of the service.”. ¹⁶
This project creates an image of a funeral that steps away from the traditional ceremony. It gives each of the mourners a chance to have a part of their deceased with them for the ritual and leaves an option for burial or further keeping of the ashes.
On the other hand the influence of consumerism on material cultures of death and traditional rituals has been widely recognized.



// Mass merchandising and disposable character of consumer goods have noticeable effects on memorials and the fast-paced world we now live in has significantly changed the way we grieve. “The time spent remembering the dead is drastically reduced in later twentieth-century consumer culture”. ¹⁷

Digital mourning.

The practice of grieving online is constantly growing, with social media sites “increasingly incorporating features to enable the bereaved to commemorate their dead and share their emotions associated with loss”. ¹⁹ Facebook creates a new setting for death and grieving - one that is broadly public with an ongoing integration into daily life. Users have yet to establish norms around death on social media but there are two sides of the argument clearly emerging.
The first one insists that social media provide mourners with new ways of talking about grief, therefore making it less painful and allowing other users to share sympathy and offer help. The feeling of alienation, oftentimes associated with grief, can be avoided with the help of digital platforms and sustaining online profiles that belonged to the deceased can create a memorial for those in need of “contact” with their loved ones. It eases the pain of those involved in grief and causes them to feel as though their messages can still be received.
“While, on the one hand, Facebook is seen as too casual a medium for a weighty topic such as grief and grieving, it simultaneously provides people with ways to engage with the dead and fellow mourners in ways unlikely in conventional grief practices.”. ²⁰
However, this argument is overwhelmingly defeated by those against cyber mourning, it being a response to the social media’s population that refuses to let anything pass away. Every status, photograph, and comment is preserved, thus creating a memorial of us while we are still alive. And when we eventually die, our relatives and friends can visit our profile constantly as our digital selves are still present. “This creates a terribly confusing, masochistic state of mind, a melancholic stance where the bereaved desperately seeks to keep the person alive through devoted attentiveness to its manifestation in virtual space”. ²¹ In this scenario the grieving can go on eternally, preventing a sense of closure to occur for the mourners.
Two-dimensional, digital approach to mourning flattens our emotional investment in the other person’s loss and makes it more trivial when displayed alongside other social media content. Zadie Smith argues that “the interactions with the deceased online are symbolic of a more generalized devaluation of human life”. ²² She suggests that the younger population, so-called generations Z and Y, growing up in a social media savvy environment will gradually find it more problematic to distinguish Facebook pages from living people, treating one like the other and leading to an inability to grasp the meaning of death when someone actually dies.