I haven't posted anything here for quite a while ... apologies. This post is one part of a three part piece. Although it's a write-up of an academic paper it's relevant here I think in terms of the things and the legacies that the bereaved are left with when someone close to them dies. What follows then is an auto/biographical piece focusing on bereavement and loss with reference to material and other 'stuff'.
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Bereavement and Belonging(s), Losses and Legacies:
personal, academic and political reflections on the relationship between loss
and stuff (PART ONE)
This post, along with the following two, is the write-up of a paper I presented at ‘Thinking Through
Things’, a day conference organised and facilitated by Carly Guest and Magali Peynefitte at Middlesex University. In it I reflect on some of
the losses in my own life and write about some of the things (both material and
not) I have been with. As such I am concerned with the relationship between loss and belongings and the relationship between my the losses I have experienced and my sense of belonging in the world.
In 2015 I published an article in the journal Mortality entitled ‘Bathwater, Babies and Other Losses: A Personal and Academic Story’ (1).
In it I argued that it was an experience
of loss that brought me to Sociology – a miscarriage in the mid 1980’s – and
that in turn Sociology has affected the way I do grief. I began my own research
journey studying loss and alongside other concerns have returned to this issue
throughout my career. In addition, alongside my substantive interests I have
always been interested in methodological issues – how what we do affects what
we get – and have always argued for the significance of auto/biography in
research. Three sets of quotes are particularly relevant here:
Charles Wright Mills
(2) argued for a sociological attention to the real and
symbolic places within which people live and work and within which meanings are
constructed. With reference to the work that sociologists do he wrote:
… learn to use your life experience in your intellectual work: continually to examine ...
AND:
In writing another's life we also write or rewrite our own lives.
More recently David
Morgan (3) writing about auto/biographical practice within Sociology rightly
insists:
[auto/biography is not] . . . simply a shorthand
representation of autobiography and/or biography but also [a] recognition of
the inter-dependence of the two own lives; in writing about ourselves we also
construct ourselves as somebody different from the person who routinely and unproblematically inhabits and
moves through social space and time.
Following
this I have argued:
In essence every text we
produce is an auto/biographical endeavour involving intersections of the lives
of those who write and those who are written about (Stanley 1992). So the use
of ‘I’, (Stanley, 1993: 49-50), explicitly recognises that knowledge is
contextual, situational and specific, and that it will differ systematically
according to the social location (as a gendered, race, classed, sexualized
person) of the particular knowledge-producer (4).
Recently, I have also become particularly interested in
creative approaches to both collecting and presenting data in the social
sciences and the humanities and as such value the work of both Katherine Frank and Roger Pelias
respectively:
That there are truths to be found in stories is
inarguable. Similarly, there is always an element of interpretation in
research, and every written text is a product or particular social, political,
technical, economic and personal events (5).
. . . performance itself is
a way of knowing. This claim, axiomatic for performers, rests upon a faith in
embodiment, in the power of giving voice and physicality to words, in the body
as a site of knowledge . . . it insists upon a working artists who engages in
aesthetic performances as a methodological starting point (6).
Here I draw on sociological auto/biography and utilise
creative approaches in order to present a memory box of ‘stuff’ that is both personal (and thus political) and academic.
My adult life has been peppered by experiences that
following Michael Bury (7) we might call ‘biographical disruption’. Bury’s
analysis was related to chronic ill-health which others have engaged with and
extended to include bereavement, unemployment and other losses. Biographical
disruption results in ‘the structures of everyday life and the forms of
knowledge which underpin them’ being disrupted, if only for a time.
My father Ron died when I was 20 years old, I miscarried my only
(to my knowledge) biological child in my mid twenties and was divorced from my first
husband in my early thirties. My relationship with my second husband John was happy
but hard work given his many years of illness and when he died seven years ago (February
2010) when I was in my very early fifties he was estranged from his two sons who
remain estranged (their choice) from me, even though John had sole custody and
they lived with and were cared for by the two of us during their teenage
years and into early adulthood. Five years ago (January 2012) the person who was my main
support and source of comfort throughout all of these experiences – my mum,
Dorothy – died. In addition, other extended family members and close friends
have died over the years and as such I feel that I have had my fair share of
loss and that I have become something of an expert in bereavement and grief,
which includes, but is not limited to, what Robert Howell (8) describes as the
‘significant reorganisation of one’s sense of self, for better or worse’
following the death of a significant other(s).
 |
| Making sandcastles with dad |
 |
| Off on holiday with John |
 |
| Mum and I having a cuppa |
A piece
of memoir now.
Death and Stuff
One day
last week I lifted the garage door, took a look, and quickly retreated. A
couple of months ago the last of my furniture and boxed up goods from
storage, following a house move in 2014, were delivered to my flat. My fairly
large three bed-roomed home and my garage are now, despite at least a once
a month trip to a charity shop, and three or four recent trips to the
dump, full of ‘stuff’. For the last five years of his life my husband John
and I were what is often now referred to as ‘living apart together’ (i.e.
in different places) and my mum Dorothy lived alone, a widow since my
dad’s death in 1979.
So, the
household objects and other material goods of three people, the contents
of three lots of kitchen cupboards, innumerable bookcases and boxes of personal
chattels are now all mine. I have given away/thrown away much of the
furniture and most of their clothes (but not all; as used clothes bear traces,
hold memories of their wearer). Yet, I still have most of John’s collection of
musical instruments and many of the small mum-related gifts I bought for
birthday, Christmas and Mothering Sunday. My mum and my husband were both
generous present givers themselves so many of the pictures on my wall,
the books on my shelves, the ornaments in my cabinets and the jewellery I
wear were gifts from them. Amongst John’s possessions were a small number
of pieces that belonged to his parents and my mum had kept a few bits
following the death of her sister more than 15 years before her own, along
with some possessions belonging to, and writings, by my dad.
Recently
I read a couple of articles (9 and 10) suggesting that downsizing, even
minimalist living, is both an acceptance of mortality and a recognition
of the fact that descendants and friends are unlikely to feel the same
about the particular bits and bobs that are especially precious
to us. I accept this and as a childless widow with no siblings I am
conscious of the need not to physically and emotionally burden my dearest
friends with the responsibility of sorting out and disposing of my
belongings.
And yet,
there is a need, I think, to reflect on the issue of privilege when
thinking of the relationship between death and stuff. The pleasure I
experience on re-reading a letter my dad wrote to me in 1978; listening to
a favourite CD of my husband’s; or looking at the painting my mum
bought me for my birthday a few weeks before she died; warms me and
enriches the memories I have of them. And whilst I accept that a
significant amount of what I own is destined for landfill I hope that
close friends and various charities might find use for, and experience
pleasure from, some of it.
Although
I have been thinking about the personal politics of material goods for
a while now I have found myself revisiting this issue in the weeks since the
Grenfell Tower fire and again in National Refugee Week (19-25th June).
I have written elsewhere about how, despite some commentaries to the
contrary, the fire and the response to it is inevitably political (11). Further
to this I believe that any discussion of the negative aspects
of materialism needs to balanced by a consideration of what it must feel
like to be left with nothing, to lose all or almost all of everything one
owns. Many of those personally affected by the tragedy in West London (and
also others who have to flee their homes for whatever reason) are bereaved
and having also lost their belongings have no personal, particular, things to
remember their family members and friends by. I have no intention here of
denying the huge significance and power of memories and of the emotional
and spiritual legacies of those who have died but to not be able to hold a
loved one’s favourite book or trinket and to have no photographs to smile
at can only add to the sense and scale of loss. That many of us leave
behind us an online presence might mitigate against this loss for some but
again the issue of privilege is at play here. With all this in mind I am
grateful for the clutter that I am left with.
I
first posted this piece of memoir a couple of weeks ago on Facebook and along with some 'likes' and 'loves' a few friends commented with information about some to the
stuff that’s particularly precious to them; either following bereavement or in
memory of important times in their lives. To end PART ONE of this piece of writing here is a short story I wrote last year. Its focus is the presence and impact of one life.
Man of
Substance
On the 15th of December 2015 Peter
Arnold (damn his great uncle) Williams receives 63 emails (11 trying to sell
him something, five invitations, the rest work related); five texts and two
calls to his mobile (mostly personal communications but including one charity
donation request) and three friends and four tele-salespeople ring his home
number and leave messages. Thirty-five of his Facebook friends post or share
prose and/or pictures (the likes too numerous to count); his Twitter account
acquires two new followers in addition to multiple tweets and his online dating
profile is viewed half a dozen times. A parcel from Amazon - ordered three days
previously – arrives, as does another purchase made via EBay. Eight Christmas
cards, all containing best wishes or declarations of love with a number of
hopes for sooner rather than later face-to-face meetings, also fall on the hall
mat mixed up with that day's quota of junk post and a final demand MBNA credit
card statement.
Pete's presence at the workplace is
equally noticeable with his most recent report being read or referred to 16
times and his name put forward for three new projects due to start early in the
new year. Preparations for the office party are well underway and both his
'Secret Santa' personal gift and purchase are placed in a sack along with the
others. Pete is favourite for a DJ stint on the night, his witty, slightly risqué
banter having been a big hit last year. At least a couple of his female colleagues
and Liam from accounts dream of an encounter with him under the mistletoe.
Elsewhere across the country three
presents are bought with Pete in mind and two more are wrapped and completed
with festive stickers bearing his name. A previous girlfriend who lives nearby
passes his flat feeling a shadow of regret, another long ago ex smiles in
remembrance as she dresses her Christmas tree with a box of decorations he
brought her in 1999, and in the next town's Sainsbury’s the friend he is due to
spend the 31st of December with is stocking up early on booze and freezeable
munchies.
At 18.50 pm on the 14th of December 2015
Peter Arnold Williams steps off a bus and walks towards the nearest zebra
crossing. Along with his briefcase he carries a bag boasting an M&S logo
which contains a healthy meal for one and a good bottle of red. He has the day
off tomorrow to finish his Christmas shopping and so can afford an extra glass
or two without fear of a foggy head at work. His mind on what he might find on
Netflix to watch whilst he eats his supper Pete steps out into the road and is
hit by the bus he just got off.
By the morning of the 15th December 2015
Peter Arnold Williams is dead.
TO BE CONTINUED – PART 1 of 3.
References
1. Letherby,
G. (2015) ‘Bathwater, Babies and Other Losses: A Personal and Academic Story’ Mortality: Promoting the interdisciplinary study of death and dying 20(2):
128-144
2. Mills, C. W. (1959) The Sociological Imagination London:
Penguin p204
3. Morgan, D. (1998)
‘Sociological Imaginations and imagining sociologies: bodies, auto/biographies
and other mysteries’ Sociology, 32(4): 647-63 p655
4. Letherby, G. (2014) He, Himself and I: reflections on
inter/connected lives Durham: BSA Auto/Biography Study Group
5. Frank, K. (2000) ‘”The
Management of Hunger”: Using Fiction in Writing Anthropology’ Qualitative Inquiry 6(4): 474-488
p484-485
6. Pelias, R. (2008)
Performative inquiry: Embodiment and its challenges. In J. Knowles and A. Cole
(Eds.) Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research, (pp. 185-193). Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage p186
7. Bury, M. (1982)
‘Chronic Illness as Biographical Disruption’ Sociology of Health and Illness 13: 451-468
8. Howell, R. (2013)
‘I’m Not the Man I was: reflections on becoming a widower’ Illness, Crisis and Loss 21(1): 3-13
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