Talking about death

A community event in Newport South Wales

We are two PhD students George Gumisiriza and Sam Hooker based at the Centre for Death and Society (CDAS) at the University of Bath. George conducts research into body repatriation among African Communities while Sam conducts research on caring for the body in the home after death. Our early career research is in the UK context.

We believe it is important to engage the community in conversations around death and dying. Notably, talking about death seems to create social cultural anxieties across diverse communities. Is it taboo to talk about death? Has the current Covid-19 pandemic made it easier for people to talk about death in the UK?

Considering these questions last summer, we hosted a community event in Newport South Wales. It was funded by the ESRC Southwest Doctoral Training Partnership and hosted by Cwtsh, a local community library and arts centre. In two sessions held a fortnight apart on Wednesday the 28th of July and the 11th of August, members of the Newport community came to discuss Death, Funerary Practices and Cemeteries.

The group was small due to Covid-19 safety measures, but the discussions were lively and animated. During the event attendees made comments on it “not being a British thing to talk about death” yet many thought death is something we should be talking about and reflecting on. The daily reporting on Covid-19 losses has probably made death sound more familiar than before.

Two observations could be made by the end of the sessions. Firstly, that attendees were not scared to talk about death (in fact they seemed to rather enjoy it) but they often waited for others to start the conversation rather than initiate it themselves. Secondly, that it is easier to talk of the death of others or death in the abstract than it is to talk about our own death, with “I” or “We” coming into limited use. These were important observations in relation to questions that potentially inform our individual research work.

Session 1 looked at the “bizarre” death of the British poet and novelist Thomas Hardy. He wished to be buried in his local church yard in Stinsford, Dorset near the graves of his parents and first wife (Cox, 1968). Yet, due to his fame there was also a desire from some for a state funeral at Westminster Abbey. Therefore, a strange and extraordinary compromise was struck wherein his heart was removed prior to cremation and buried at Stinsford, while the ashes were interred in Poets Corner during a national service at the Abbey (Jalland, 2010). The discussion therefore centred on how fame can be used to defy the wish of the deceased.

In the second session Western/Welsh funeral practises were compared to Afrocentric Perspectives on death. Parallels were drawn between the Welsh funeral practices of the 19th-20th Century and contemporary African funeral practices. For example, there is a shared belief in death omens including the howling of the Welsh ci corff (corpse dog) and the fox bark close to a home among some African societies in Africa.

Both sessions included a screening of Arnos Vale Cemetery’s ‘A Place to Remember’. A series of exhibition films that take you through the transformation of the Bristol site; through time from a reconstruction of the Victorian Cemetery to the valuable green community space that it is today. After seeing these films participants were keen to speak to leaders about getting more done to rejuvenate local cemeteries.

We welcome ideas for future talks or collaboration.

References

Cox, S., 1968 Concerning Thomas Hardy: a Composite Portrait from Memory. Eds Barber, D.F,. London: Charles Skilton Ltd. Jalland, P., 2010. Death in War and Peace. Oxford: Oxford University Press.