A story in this month's Atlantic, "In Grief, Try Personal Rituals," persuades me that there is something everyone should consider doing regarding personal mourning rituals. The story is about research that concludes "there is a specific way many people can, no matter what their circumstances may be, transcend despair and distress" over loss. The "way" is through the use of ritual, but "not your typical rituals":
• One woman plays a Natalie Cole song and thinks of her departed mother.
• A widower keeps his and his wife's formerly joint appointment at the hairdressers the first Saturday of every month.
• Another woman washes her deceased husband's car every week, just as he used to do (although she does not drive it).
Why are these very straightforward practices so powerful? According to the researchers:
Many of the rituals reported were not ... public ones ... Rather, they were private rituals. Only 15 percent of the described rituals had a social element (and just 5 percent were religious). By far, most of the rituals people did were personal and performed alone.These are personal rituals, performed alone, rituals that people devise themselves. The examples offered in the article are quite simple:
• One woman plays a Natalie Cole song and thinks of her departed mother.
• A widower keeps his and his wife's formerly joint appointment at the hairdressers the first Saturday of every month.
• Another woman washes her deceased husband's car every week, just as he used to do (although she does not drive it).
Why are these very straightforward practices so powerful? According to the researchers:
[These] rituals help people overcome grief by counteracting the turbulence and chaos that follows loss. Rituals, which are deliberately-controlled gestures, trigger a very specific feeling in mourners -- the feeling of being in control of their lives. After people did a ritual or wrote about doing one, they were ... less likely to feel "helpless," "powerless," and "out of control."How can the bereaved practice rituals that are simple, straightforward, private, meaningful, and comforting (even if they are also evocative), and how can others help them do so? Perhaps merely by noticing the natural presence of a practice that is already taking place. In other words, by identifying a meaningful activity that is already happening, a bereaved person could explore (or be encouraged to explore) whether it might serve as a healing ritual.
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