Narratives of Parental Death, Dying and Bereavement: A Kind of Haunting

210 Pages·2021·1.814 MB·English

by  Caroline Pearce, Carol Komaromy

Narratives of
Parental Death,
Dying and
Bereavement
A KIND OF HAUNTING
Edited by
CAROLINE PEARCE
CAROL KOMAROMY
Narratives of Parental Death, Dying
and Bereavement
“This pioneering volume brings together eight personal reflections on parental
death. It speaks powerfully of the complexities and shifting alignments of paren-
tal and familial bonds, care and responsibility, identity, guilt, self-reflection and
celebration of a life, all of which combine to create the singular sense of loss and
grief brought about by the death of a parent. These remarkable accounts, as
unique as the lives and deaths of the individuals they reference, are all the more
compelling because they are written by leading authorities in the field of death
studies. By focusing on a subject which to an extent has been eclipsed, this mov-
ing, instructive and richly textured book makes a significant contribution to the
study of death, dying and bereavement.”
—Professor Hilary J Grainger OBE, President of The Association for the
Study of Death and Society and Chair of The Cremation
Society of Great Britain
Caroline Pearce • Carol Komaromy
Editors
Narratives of
Parental Death,
Dying and
Bereavement
A Kind of Haunting
Editors
Caroline Pearce Carol Komaromy
University of Cambridge The Open University
Cambridge, UK Milton Keynes, UK
ISBN 978-3-030-70893-1 ISBN 978-3-030-70894-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70894-8
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Foreword
The editors and contributors to Narratives of Parental Death, Dying and
Bereavement: A Kind of Haunting are academics and professionals in the
UK who have provided significant leadership in the field of death, dying
and bereavement both nationally and internationally. It’s an honour to
welcome this anthology that adds to our knowledge of the meaning and
experiences of parental death.
Each of the book’s chapters focuses on parental death, a universal expe-
rience that has for too long received little theoretical, psychosocial and
research attention. This volume offers an important contribution to the
field of death studies that has more often tended to explore the death of
a child or death of a spouse.
In these sensitively wrought chapters, the contributors describe their
parent’s life and death, as well as share their own personal meaning of this
loss. One chapter was written decades ago shortly after a parent’s death.
Most were composed in 2019–2020 long after the parent’s death, in part
through the lens of memory and in part through the perspective of the
author’s academic and professional knowledge of death studies, theory
and research.
Although the authors each have recognised expertise in research and
academic death studies, they are a heterogeneous group, differing in gen-
der, age at parental death, current age, cultural and class upbringing,
v
vi Foreword
family composition, and life-time patterns of emotional and physical
closeness to their parents. They each contribute a unique and thoughtful
perspective in describing their experience of parental death.
This anthology raises important issues and questions about the inter-
face between the knowledge of academic professional scholars, and their
personal private experiences of the death of their own parents. The
boundary-transcending nature of this book will make it useful for aca-
demics who have undertaken research to study others often without con-
sidering their own personal experiences. Gratitude is due to the
contributors who have opened a revealing window into the interface of
the personal and professional aspects of their lives.
I am particularly pleased that the topic of parental death is the main
focus of this collection. Although parent-child relationships have been
studied for the first decades of their lives together, child-parent relation-
ships in middle and later life have been under-investigated and often
limited to issues of role reversal and caregiving. After decades of profes-
sionally researching issues related to middle-aged children and the death
of an elderly parent, I believe that understanding the impact of parental
death can significantly add to our conceptualisation of the complexity of
relationships between middle aged adults and their parents. Once a par-
ent has died, a haunting tie remains, a theme that continually reappears
throughout the book. My hope is that many family researchers will read
these chapters and find new avenues to explore.
Most authors describe their parent’s health, functional capacity, cogni-
tive abilities, and resources available, as well as the choices of care that
were available and desired by the parent. Readers will note that the con-
tributors differ in what they share of their personal feelings. Some of the
inner thoughts of each author are shared directly (e.g. a daughter’s ambiv-
alence toward a new pattern of recovery after her father’s very long and
deep decline). Many write of their sense of regret after parental death,
such as wishing there had been less medical intervention, their lack of
intimacy with their parent, regret that they had not spent more time with
the parent, and of the impact of not being with the parent at the moment
of death.
A noteworthy underlying theme recurring in several chapters is that of
family privacy and “sacred-secrecy” (the silences, what is and is not
Foreword vii
spoken or shared within the family and out of the family). This contrasts
with the more openly described ways in which the authors responded to
the structures and policies of the outside supporting professionals with
whom they interact, whether medical (to diagnose, treat and cure),
funeral (designating procedures to be followed), or clergy (setting expec-
tations for family in ritual). These professionals could find that reading
this anthology will help them gain insight into better filling their chang-
ing roles as they seek to sensitively interact with family members of par-
ents and others regarding the end of life.
Most of the parental deaths discussed in this volume occurred toward
the end of the twentieth century or early in the twenty-first century.
However several children described the death of both of their parents
over a span of decades. This broader temporal perspective allows con-
tributors to highlight societal changes over time in gender roles, the place
of death, timing of funerals, and flexibility in rituals of burial. What was
fitting when the first parent died sometimes changes when the second
parent dies. In any case, the death of the first parent typically increases
the bereaved child’s sense of responsibility and interaction with the
widow/er, while the death of the last parent often generates a sense of
‘orphanhood’, as well as the loss of a final buffer against death.
Scholars interested in family interactions and relationships will gain
insight from these authors’ discussion of the degree to which an individ-
ual bereaved child shares, or does not share, their experience and mean-
ings of parental death with their siblings and other kin. This is consistent
with our group’s research which has found that each child’s experience
can be very different from what a sibling experiences (Moss and Moss
2012–13).
I think that therapists who provide bereavement care will be enriched
by this anthology. This volume might also be a useful tool for university
students in their introduction to death studies, since it offers rich fuel for
thought and discussion.
Finally, I believe that persons who have experienced parental death will
find that this anthology speaks to them about their own identity, how
they related to their own parent in the past, how their parent had an
impact on their own lives, and how their tie with their parent will be
maintained or modified in the future. Several authors discuss their
viii Foreword
thoughts of eventual plans for their own death after reconsidering the
end of life and death of their parent.
The experiences shared by each of the authors will inevitably sensitise
readers to the multi-dimensionality of this topic. The book makes
an important contribution toward expanding our understanding of
parental death.
Glenside, PA, USA Miriam Moss
Reference
Moss, M.S. & Moss, S.Z. (2012–2013). Meaning of the death of an elderly
father: Two sisters’ perspectives. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying,
66, 195–213.
Acknowledgements
This anthology reflects the collaborative reciprocity that exists in the
death studies community. It arose from informal and sometimes intimate
conversations about personal loss. Like many anthologies, it is intended
as a shared offering of personal experiences for people interested in the
detail of what it is like to be involved in the dying and death of a parent.
More than this, it highlights the difference and diversity in such
experiences.
As editors we are grateful to those authors who have shared their expe-
riences and reflected on what it means to them; taking the reader behind
the scenes of family life. We also thank the reviewers of an early draft of
the manuscript and acknowledge how important peer support is to
academia.
ix
Contents
1 Introduction: Narrating Death 1
Caroline Pearce and Carol Komaromy
2 A Kind of Haunting 33
Carol Komaromy
3 A Death Recalled 51
Jenny Hockey
4 C ontinuing and Emerging Bonds: Working Through Grief
as a Daughter and an Academic 79
Kathryn Almack
5 A Bittersweet Legacy 101
Gordon Riches
xi