When someone close to us dies our everyday
world is disrupted and we need to find ways not only to cope with our loss and
the associated grief that we feel but also with not having that person in our
lives on a day-to-day basis any more. It is increasingly acknowledged by
grief counsellors, therapists and scholars concerned with death and
bereavement that there is a place for creativity – including the production and
presentations of music, visual arts, stories and poems, drama and so on -
within bereavement. Such activity is thought to be one result of and to assist
individuals through the grieving process. The production of online memorials is
a fairly recent way of collecting together and displaying such
materials although grief related creations have been produced and documented
throughout history. Some examples of the artefacts, images and other outputs produced and
the value of such production are considered by the authors in a special edition
of the journal Illness, Crisis and Loss http://www.baywood.com/journals/previewjournals.asp?Id=1054-1373 that
my friend Deborah Davidson (from York University, Ontario) and I are currently
editing (due to be published in 2015).The fruits of such activity can be useful
not only for the person who produces the piece(s) but also for others. We know,
for example, that music and fiction enables listeners and readers to experience
emotions — their own and those of others — and understand them in relation to
the contexts in which the emotions arise. Similar can be said about art and
drama. For many grief is a long process and the making of ‘things’ in memory of
those who have died and/or as a way of expressing emotions along the way is
helpful for some.
 |
| Memorial . . . by numbers |
During my own grief journeys I have
experimented with different types of creativity. I still have the picture I
painted following my miscarriage in the mid-1980s. Not much skill or even
originality displayed here as this artwork is in fact the result of a ‘painting
by numbers’ kit but for me this piece is priceless.
More recently following the death of my
husband and my mum I have written a number of (short and not so short) pieces
of fiction; some of which are clearly related to my own life, some less so.
Prior to 2010 I had not written this way since childhood although I had always
hoped to follow my dad who had some success at publishing short stories in the
1960s. All of a sudden I had some ideas. Thus far I have had a few short
stories published both online and as part of my academic sociological writings
on relationships and on loss. Earlier this month my first (and I hope not my
last) ‘paper’ success was published in a collection following the annual
women’s fiction competition by the Hysterectomy Association http://shop.hysterectomy-association.org.uk/hysteria-3/.
In addition to these experiments with art and
writing I also find knitting
therapeutic and fun and I enjoy the pleasure that friends
express when
I present them with the scarves and other small garments that I
have produced.
I share these personal examples
not in any way
as ideals or
exemplars but to illustrate that
any of us, maybe all of us, whether we consider ourselves to be artistic or not, can find comfort, pleasure and a sense of achievement in such work. |
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