“Come back. Even as a shadow, even as a dream.” - Euripides
Contemplations on grief, in the different forms in which it exists.
Read
A few months ago I read this devastating memoir, Here After, by Ami Lin
Notes on Grief, written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie after the death of her father in 2020 makes you feel the visceral shock of loss as the book moves between memory, disbelief, anger, and learning to live in a world where someone who has always been there is suddenly not.
Writing down things sometimes helps. The day after his mother died, French philosopher Roland Barthes began keeping a diary of his grief; Mourning Diary
On the evening of 30 December 2003, Joan Didion’s husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, died suddenly at their dinner table. Their only daughter Quintana, was gravely ill in an induced coma and on life support. The Year of Magical Thinking shows us what the mind does when the heart encounters something it cannot accept.
Essay - WHAT BOBBY MCILVAINE LEFT BEHIND. Grief, conspiracy theories, and one family’s search for meaning in the two decades since 9/11. By Jennifer Senior https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/09/twenty-years-gone-911-bobby-mcilvaine/619490/
A person on the internet who has lost a friend and does not know what to do next writes about it in My friend just died. I don’t know what to do.
The intellectual history of mourning - Thomas Attig — How We Grieve: Relearning the World.. The interesting question here is how grief changes our relationship with the world, our identities and our understanding of ourselves.
The Cancer Journals - Audre Lorde. Lorde writes about breast cancer, mastectomy, femininity and the politics of how women are expected to experience illness
Watch
Came across this poignant discussion on the Irish Way of Grief
Long static shots of domestic routine continuing after an unexplained death in the 1995 film Maborosi directed by Hirokazu Koreeda.
After Life — Hirokazu Kore-eda
In this imagined afterlife, the recently deceased must choose one memory to take with them into eternity. What would you choose?
4. A Ghost Story — David Lowery
An unusual meditation on time, attachment, memory and the inability to let go.
The Mourning Forest — Naomi Kawase
Two people, both living with loss, find themselves in a forest. A contemplative film about grief, nature and the passage of time.
Listen
My mom became a widow at 23. She found consolation in a song by Oliver Mtukudzi, Neria, the soundtrack to the 1991 Zimbabwean film about a woman who loses her husband and faces the pressures of widowhood.
Take My Hand, Precious Lord" — Thomas A. Dorsey, 1932. Composed the night after he buried his wife and newborn son; became the standard sung at Black American funerals. Take My Hand, Precious Lord" in 1932 out of deep personal grief after his wife and infant son died during childbirth
Akan funeral dirges - Funeral songs performed around the body, sometimes with a soloist and chorus. Look for the work of J. H. Kwabena Nketia on Akan funeral music. Grief is not always a private voice. Sometimes it is a musical form carried by a community. https://journal.ru.ac.za/index.php/africanmusic/article/download/326/224/221
The Lamentations of Jeremiah — grief shaped into a literary form.
Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings — instrumental grief, where no words are needed. "Cultural Impact and Legacy
Symphony No. 3, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs by Henryk Górecki. A composition built around three texts associated with maternal grief, including a mother’s lament for her missing son.
Music of Mourning: The piece achieved national prominence as a solemn anthem for grief after it was broadcast during the 1945 radio coverage of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's funeral. Historic Memorials: It has since been played at numerous historic state funerals and memorials, including those for Albert Einstein, John F. Kennedy, Princess Grace, and the victims of the September 11 attacks.": https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N3MHeNt6Yjs&ra=m
On the Nature of Daylight by Max Richter. A contemporary composition that has become associated with cinematic expressions of loss, longing and emotional remembrance.
Look
Felix in Exile by William Kentridge. An animated work about South Africa’s landscape, political violence, disappearance and the traces of those who have been lost.
Atrabiliarios — Doris Salcedo. Shoes belonging to disappeared women are placed inside wall niches and covered with translucent animal fibre. An extraordinary work about disappearance, violence and the material traces of people who are no longer there.
The Ga people’s proverbial coffins. Known as abebuu adekai, these distinctive funerary objects from Ghana are designed in forms that communicate aspects of the deceased’s identity, life and social world. A coffin might resemble an aeroplane, a fish or another meaningful object. The idea of a final resting place that tells the story of a person’s life is a fascinating entry into the relationship between identity, art and death. collections.maa.cam.ac.uk
The Museum of Broken Relationships. A museum dedicated to objects left behind after relationships end. Each object is accompanied by a story from its former owner. Although its subject is romantic separation rather than death, it raises fascinating questions about why we keep objects associated with people who are no longer in our lives.
The Kigali Genocide Memorial. An institution devoted to remembrance, documentation and education. Consider the role of memorial institutions in preserving individual stories within collective histories.
The 9/11 Memorial Museum. Explore its collection of personal objects, recordings, photographs and everyday belongings. Consider the role of objects in preserving the lives of people who are no longer present.
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Personal belongings recovered after the atomic bombing. Clothing, watches, lunchboxes and other everyday objects become extraordinarily intimate records of interrupted lives.