It’s a bit funny to be going from Speaker for the Dead to The Mourner’s Dance, and even more amusing that the next book in my stack is Lady Lazarus. Apparently the library decided to send all of my death-related books at once. Loading me up with the death, as it were.

At any rate, this book is pretty interesting. It talks about the history of mourning, and mourning traditions from various cultures all over the world. I really liked reading about the evolution of mourning in Western society, along with the interesting and esoteric cultures associated with death in other places; she really did her research well, and she talked about everything from sati to keriah and backed it up with meticulous research.

One of the things she talked about was the commonality of mourning. A lot of cultures have a tradition of rending clothes or tearing out hair at death, for example, of keening for the dead and holding a wake or some form of event with food on offer. It’s interesting to see these sort of universal human activities, as a stark reminder that death happens everywhere, and to everyone.

She also talked about the community of mourning, and the idea that mourning is a collective activity. Some people certainly don’t feel this way, and I respect that, but I think there’s something to be said for recognizing sorrow and pain as a group. Maybe that’s why I always end up having everyone over for dinner after funerals; there’s that sense of wanting to be with people who understand for just a little bit longer.

Being of an academic mind, I’m kind of sad I didn’t read this book when I was actively in mourning for someone, because I think it would have been a good thing to have. One of the points she really touched upon is that mourners in modern America especially are viewed as inconvenient, and they are not supposed to upset others with the nakedness of their grief. In the several times during the course of my life that I have been grieving for someone, I have felt this keenly, the sense that I should just sit down, shut up, and carry on, and I think it made the experience that much worse; someone once told me that I was “horrible” when I was in mourning for a very close friend, and it cut me to the quick. If I’d had The Mourner’s Dance then, I might have taken that very differently, because Ashenburg really stressed the idea that, in grief, people kind of need a free license to do whatever they need to do, whether it’s to be in a state of abject sorrow, or to be a brisk organizer, or whatever, and that by being free to do so, they will be able to process their own emotions.

Of course, now that I have read it, I’m taking out an open license to be horrible every time someone close to me dies, because, damnit, being “horrible” is apparently just my way of dealing with grief. So put that in your pipe and smoke it, oh callous and unfeeling ones.

Demographics:

The Mourner’s Dance, by Katherine Ashenburg. Published 2002, 326 pages. Sociology.