Journal Article

\What is a Stage but an Invitation?\: Performance as a Method for Grieving

Santoro, Patrick

2021

Overview

In \"The Language of Loss: Grief Therapy as a Process of Meaning Reconstruction,\" Robert A. Neimeyer proposes a constructivist theory of grief, beyond \"'brute facts' themselves\" (263), toward a narrative approach: \"Like a novel that loses a central character in the middle chapters, the life story disrupted by loss must be reorganized, rewritten, to find a new strand of continuity that bridges the past with the future in an intelligible fashion\" (263). Death, for Tuder, is not bound up in just her father taking his fife, but about the ways in which she (and her family) is affected by his suicide: \"a gun, preceded by a few decades of alcoholism and undiagnosed depression.\" Tuder reveres the power of the almighty gods and goddesses - Questioner and Celebrant- and seeks solace in their wisdom: \"Oh small worlds,/Oh little stages,/Take me out of myself/And give me the power of the gods.\" Tuder knows well \"this work of mourning is never finished, \" the work of re-membering is never done. 1 Rando's three phases include 1) the avoidance phase (recognizing the loss), 2) the confrontation phase (reacting to the separation, recollecting and re-experiencing the deceased and the relationship, and relinquishing the old attachments to the deceased and the old assumptive world), and 3) the accommodation phase (readjusting to move adaptively into the new world without forgetting the old and reinvesting emotional energy) (43-60).

• Publisher: Liminalities
• Subject: Architects / Audiences / Death & dying / Grief / Jones, Bill T / Language / Qualitative research