There is a predilection toward ritual in both personal and societal grief practices, though what is considered publicly acceptable is, in part, policed by the medical industry and capitalism. This has created a system built around suppression, cure, and an imagined “normalcy” designed to put the larger group at ease, sacrificing the individual. Grief is a process of transformation and the birth of a new identity, so the expectation of a “cure” is alienating and harmful to the griever’s sense of self.
Communal grief rituals act to provide direction at a time of upheaval. In traditional Jewish customs water was poured on the doorstep when a death occurred, and in Honduras and El Salvador a black ribbon is hung above the door (Starling, 2023, p. 143). These actions inform the community so they can adjust their interactions with the family (Starling, 2023, p. 143). Such customs “...[spare] the grieving from having to voice their loss over and over again” (Starling, 2023, p. 144). In a society where death is a taboo subject, funeral rituals dictate clear etiquette and assigned roles: “...a funeral offers a venue for the culturally accepted expression of loss-related emo-tions” (Fulton, 1995, cited in Mitima-Verloop, Mooren and Boelen, 2021).
While communal rituals provide initial guidance, personal rituals allow space to explore and understand. In response to the loss of his sister and wife, artist Motoi Yamamoto began creating sprawling, intricate salt designs: “By sitting on the floor and spending long hours drawing, perhaps I am trying to retain memories that fade with time…looking for a convincing form of acceptance to come to terms with the parting of ways” (Yamamoto, no data). Grand or modest, rituals serve remembrance and transition, and there is something in creating that helps assuage loss. The making of The Veggie Cutter required long periods of forming and painting the many mushrooms spilling off the piece, the repetition becoming meditative. As I completed my daily sanding for 8 Day Vigil: 9 years, 37 years, 70 years, the ritual shifted from a practice of lamenting to one of remembering. The resulting objects serve as a memorial and tangible evidence of coping and transformation.
Western funeral rituals provide guidance in the initial days of loss but also dehumanise the lost and the grieving. Commercialising death has shifted the body of our loved ones out of the hands of the family and into those of strangers whose goal is monetary gain. Built into the funeral ritual is a sales pitch where a lack of funds for the “best” memorial can cause shame, complicating grief. The body of the dead passes through the hands of multiple strangers, treated as taxidermy or swept into a box; “...[the American funeral industry] seemed to insist on the most costly and yet somehow the most impersonal wrangling of death, including the use of chemical compounds to postpone the fact of it for as long as possible” (Starling, 2023, p. 73). Funeral and death as an industry is impersonal, crass, and unethical.
The postponement of death is inherent in our language and medical practices. “We speak about people as having “passed on” or “expired.”...[Death] is a problem to be solved, not something natural...” (Giblin, Hug, 2006). The focus on curing death creates fear and discomfort, resulting in limiting publicly acceptable grief behaviours and placing time limits on grieving: “Western society does not adequately recognize the diverse ways in which people grieve, and thus does not readily facilitate alternative ways of grieving. This is indicated in labour laws and policies that allow individuals to take only minimal time off from employment without consequence following a death” (Ord, 2009).
“There is no one way to grieve, and yet we have been socialized to feel that we must grieve in specific ways or risk becoming pathological or abnormal” (Ord, 2009). There is punishment, monetary and psychological, for grieving beyond the societal set bounds. Those that deviate are “othered” in a reaction that conveys society’s discomfort. For survival, the individual must grieve covertly, indicating grief as a shameful act.
My reaction to the societal constrictions of grief has been a conscious expression of my own and a shift toward fringe practices. Sharing my engagement with grief through art, often a tool of social disruption, lessens the societal and personal gap. The Veggie Cutter presents a naked figure with an unnatural skin colour: she is “other”. There is a denial as she attempts to carry on, chopping potatoes and taking care of everyday tasks, even as a transformation is actively taking place. Occult and folk imagery provides recognizable symbols of fringe practices while painting on live edge wood enhances the outsider aspect, fringe rituals often being based in and about nature, and represents the shift from societal constructs and back to nature and instinct.
Society and medicine often present grief as solvable, indicating an end point: “ Grief is expected to be an ordered, limited process that moves by identifiable steps toward "recovery"”(Doss, 2002, Foote & Frank, 1999, cited in Ord, 2009). The idea of grief needing to be “cured” indicates abnormality and further fractures the griever’s sense of self which is already in transition. Losing my mother, I have lost one of the people that has formed me, my story now contains a tragedy that is intrinsic to my identity. Bereavement not only encompasses the loss of another but the loss of one’s self. Grief is a transformation: a process through which we try to understand the new person we are becoming and how we fit into this world full of person-shaped holes.
I have represented mushrooms in my work to convey the sense of transformation. Mushrooms represent death and rebirth as their life cycle depends on new growth from decay. Our bodies become a new thing when we die just as grief makes new things of those left behind. The inclusion of nature also helps frame death as a natural cycle, stepping further from the societal perception of abnormality.
Giblin, P., Hug, A. (2006) 'The Psychology of Funeral Rituals' , Liturgy, 21(1), p. 11. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/04580630500285956
Mitima-Verloop, H. B., Mooren, T. T. M. and Boelen, P. A. (2021) 'Facilitating grief: an exploration of the function of funerals and rituals in relation to grief reactions' , Death Studies, 45(9), pp. 735-745. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2019.1686090
Ord, R. L. (2009). '"It's like a tattoo": rethinking dominant discourses on grief ', Canadian Social Work Review / Revue Canadienne de Service Social, 26(2), pp. 195–211. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41669912
Starling, H. (2023) The bleeding tree: a pathway through grief guided by forests, folk tales and the ritual year. London: Rider, an imprint of Ebury Publishing.
Yamamoto (no date) About. Available at: https://www.motoi-works.com/en/about (Accessed: 18 December 2023).