The Mourner's Dance: What We Do When People Die

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University. She is the author of several books, including The
Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek and Margaret
Laurence: The Long Journey Home.

Katherine Ashenburg is a journalist, lecturer, and regular contributor
to Toronto Life. This reflection on mourning the death of someone close
to you stems from the accidental death of Scott, the fiancé of
Ashenburg’s youngest daughter, Hannah, shortly before their planned
wedding date. The funeral seemed a harrowing parody of the wedding
ceremony, but Hannah’s attitude sustained her mother and redirected
feelings. Hannah crisply rephrased her mother’s attempt at comfort by
saying, “Time doesn’t heal. Grieving heals.” The strong desire to
grasp what her daughter was going through after the loss of Scott
started Ashenburg on a psychological journey that led to this book; she
needed to share and understand her daughter’s pain.

In 11 chapters, Ashenburg leads the reader through the bustle that
follows a death, the wailing time, the celebration of the life, the
final destination of the body or ashes, and the pain that follows burial
when the mourners are left alone to cope with the dead person’s
belongings and to respond to letters.

There are numerous references to other resources such as Elisabeth
Kubler-Ross’s On Death and Dying. These references cover 14 pages in
fine print. Examples within the text range from Cicero’s daughter
Tullia, who died at the age of 30 from complications during childbirth,
to medieval and Victorian England, including Tennyson’s long poem In
Memoriam. Some chapters address the gender of mourning in different
cultures and consider why some cultures favour black or “sad
clothes.”

“Keepsakes” is a touching chapter in which historical examples
mingle easily with Hannah’s personal mementos of Scott. Ashenburg
notes that “memento” is Latin for reminder. Memory, she notes, was
once a tailor’s term for the wrinkles at the elbow of a jacket, “and
memory is what the inheritors of clothes wear.” The Mourner’s Dance
is a moving and memorable blend of personal experience and wide-ranging,
substantial research.