In January 1833, an author known only as O’G published their musings on the Irish funeral cry, or caoine, in the Dublin Penny Journal. O’G described the cry as “the most singularly plaintive and mournful expression of excessive grief that could well be imagined.” In the article, O’G describes traveling the Irish countryside on horseback… Read more →
Tag: Mourning
Alone, Together: Memory and Death in a Pandemic
“You’re lucky, then, that your mom died before all this began,” my friend said. “At least you got to be there. At least you got a funeral.” However starkly her words hung between us, I knew she was right. As shattering as it was when my mom died in Tucson four days before my sister’s… Read more →
Hygeia: Women in the Cemetery Landscape
We’ve all seen her. Hunched over the grave of an important poet. Standing meekly atop deceased philosophers, businessmen, and writers alike – head in hands and despairing. The Mourning Woman is a motif found throughout nineteenth-century Western cemeteries. She emerged during a revival of classical symbolism in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century gravestone iconography. She draws inspiration… Read more →
A Different Kind of Expert
In the spring of 1813, Abigail Adams wrote to her friend Julia Rush inquiring after the death of Julia’s husband physician Benjamin Rush.1 “[O]h how shall I address you. how offer the consolation I need for myself upon an occasion which has torn my heart in anguish, filled by Bosom with Grief, and so overwhelmed… Read more →
Death before Birth: Pregnancy Loss and Funerals in England
A pregnancy loss is a site of tension, situated between waiting for the baby, the unanticipated loss, and the often complicated grieving that follows. Although still often a taboo subject, pregnancy loss has been gradually attracting more recognition as a life event that does not benefit from being silenced. Support for people going through a… Read more →
Reframing the Pregnancy Story: On Literature, Stitching, and Lost Narratives
My Story When I found out I was pregnant on July 1, 2016, I thought it was the beginning of a story to which I knew the ending. My partner, Carter, and I had only just decided to try to become pregnant. It was our first attempt and it was a success! What a wonderful,… Read more →
Miscarriage and Memory-Making: An Uneasy Relationship
When the Guardian journalist Hadley Freeman wrote about her miscarriage in early 2017, many readers praised the fact that this common, yet woefully misunderstood experience had been so candidly aired. Miscarriages do not elicit the type of kindly curiosity that ‘successful’ reproductive experiences often do, such as the pregnancy revelation, the swelling bump, or the… Read more →
Love and Rage
On November 2, 1992, members of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) carried a dead body through the streets of Manhattan. The deceased was Mark Fisher, a gay man and AIDS activist who had died from complications of the disease he spent his last years fighting. His was the first political funeral staged… Read more →
Public Health and the Dead at Johnstown
In the twenty-four hour news cycle we live in, we frequently are treated to instantaneous images of disasters unfolding around the globe. I am often reminded how disasters do more than destroy the physical infrastructure of the affected areas; they strike at the very core of individual and community identity. The normal rituals of everyday… Read more →