What do memorials really convey, and how much do we need them?
Published: 10 July By: Ed Gallois.
Memorials, unlike routine architecture, are not meant to offer shelter to the living but are specifically planned to remember the dead, deliberately designed spaces to recall .
Academics are exploring how and why bereaved people memorialise their loved ones in a major multidisciplinary study. The research project aims to discover how memorials help people cope with grief and maintain relationships between the bereaved and their lost loved ones. The research project, entitled Remember Me: The Changing Face of Memorialisation, will provide support guidelines to professionals and community groups which support the bereaved.
The study has looked at a range of cultural and social issues around death and memorials, including grief and dementia, and how members of migrant communities, military heroes and transgender people are mourned, celebrated and memorialised. From the very earliest human societies, people have always felt a need to mark the death of their loved ones.
Memorials come in all shapes and sizes, from elaborate ceremonies and grand marble headstones, to online commemorations on social media or personal mementos kept in a special box. Now, academics are exploring how the bereaved remember their loved ones after they die, exploring the role of memorials in how we grieve and live after the death of a loved one.
Suhrud consciously refrained from examining Correa’s design but dwelt at length on Gandhi’s philosophy to ask the question: does the man need a memorial at all?
Margaret Holloway, who is a professor of social sciences at the University of Hull, is part of the Remember Me project. It brings together researchers and academics from the fields of archaeology, arts and humanities, history, theology, photography and political science, to name but a few. A Neolithic burial cairn in Caithness, Scotland — an ancient memorial.
Photo by David Shand via Wikimedia. Through her research into death and grief, Professor Holloway has concluded that the funeral service is only the beginning of the memorialisation process, which helps people adjust to life without a loved one. It became obvious that they can never let go of their loved ones. Some experts questioned whether the two theories could be compatible.
The first suggests the bereaved can work through grief and come to accept their loss, and the other that says the bereaved have a continuing relationship with the person who has died.