El Día De Los Muertos: Life IN Death.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a piece about El Día de los Muertos, and as the Day of the Dead approaches once more, I’ve been thinking about it again, in part due to the fact that I love the event, in part as a result of spending a large chunk of my summer trying to get my head around anthropological accounts of loss and death (SUCH FUN), but most probably because I re-watched Coco.

Say what you like about Disney Pixar products, but they do (important) ‘movie messages’ rather well sometimes, most recently in this Día de los Muertos-inspired film that had me physically seat-shifting, not just flutter-blinking, as part of the process to quell the emotion it stirred in me at its end, desperately trying to avoid my Mexican in-laws from seeing me weep at a cartoon. (If you’ve not seen the film, probably best to not read on at this point – return once you’ve indulged!)

It would be remiss not to acknowledge that in opting to centre a film on the Day of the Dead, Disney Pixar was not only taking a culturally-sensitive risk, but it was also continuing with its tendency to appropriate ‘different culture’ for profit. Juan Castellano of Left Voice clearly pointed out that “The fact that Coco is a beautiful film should not stop us from recognizing capitalist appropriation of Mexican traditions.” Yet against all the backlash and debate and statements released in defence and to emphasise that the ‘Land of the Dead’ was research-grounded but ultimately a ‘made up’ “fantasy realm”, original to the film-makers, what must also be said is that, in reference to the theme of bereavement specifically, Coco does allow watchers to really grasp the meaning(s) of death in the Hispanic world, away from the almost-stereotyped imagery. Outside Mexico and other El Día de Los Muertos-observing countries, the event is used as illustration of the Hispanic world’s ability to ‘laugh at death’. It is a gem for tourism, especially for Mexico (the country for which the celebration is seen as most symbolic), those ‘outside’ lured by the visuals and consumables, the vivid colours juxtaposed with the darkness, channelled by the perception of a separation of their ideas regarding the relationship between life and death and those of Mexico as a nation. At its most simplistic, Stanley Brandes sums up the persistent and “familiar cultural construction” that, “Mexicans fail to distinguish life and death and seem unperturbed by the idea of death, while Western Europeans are squeamish before the reality of death, repulsed by the idea of death and differentiate markedly between life and death.” (2003: 130)

But here’s the thing – what you see publicly can’t be considered evidence of feeling. A ritual doesn’t always imply a specific, associated emotion. Internal sensations most often do not correspond to external projections – and research has shown this to be the case in Mexico, where ideas about how Mexicans view death have been found to not necessarily match expressions amongst the people consulted (Brandes, 2003, 1998). The problem for the Day of the Dead is that ideas of death in Mexico’s national identity, projected beyond its borders, can be seen as taking away from the people’s actual experiences of loss through death, and the purpose of the anniversary, at individual and familial levels. Brandes’ review of ethnographic works looking at funerals and wakes in different Mexican states, for instance, led him to argue generally there is an overlooking of the “emotional texture” of death and mourning in the country, that “all over the Mexican republic…mourners react to the death of loved ones in a manner that defies national stereotypes. In none of the[se] descriptions can we detect evidence of stoicism, humor, playfulness, and disdain in the face of death.” (2003: 137). A loss through death is serious and the grief is felt deeply.

After watching Coco, I thought about what I’d written in 2016, about the way I think the Day of the Dead can help the suicide bereaved because it can help people reclaim memories of the person away from the way they died, to concentrate on their life and loves, and while basically I still stand by that I also have started to form ideas that this is only part of the way this anniversary can aid. One of the most important points to Coco’s tale is that death is not solely about the single-moment, biological end – there are stages to death that require work and engagement on the part of those left behind that ultimately result in the continuation of a person’s life in death, not after. Memories exist but importantly they must be remembered, fostered, voiced by another in order for a person to continue beyond the end of their body. Also, our life stories are not owned by us alone – they depend on interactions with others and after death, therefore, they depend on those biologically living to take charge of how and if our narratives continue.

El Día de los Muertos highlights how communication after death is there, as is presence of the deceased (absence just isn’t) – ofrenda offerings speak, and act as invitations, to the deceased, reassuring them there is still space for them, whilst the candles on the altar provide a lighthouse effect to guide them back home for their annual visit. The event is more than simply remembering the loved one and the ‘good ‘ole times’ – it is about being with, as well as celebrating, them. It also allows space for those left behind to think not only of the deceased but their relationship with them as yes past, but also very much present (and even future) – a continuing bond with a loved one who has simply transitioned to a continuing existence in a different world, with the ability to return on a yearly basis. I quite like that – my brother annoyed the hell out of me, I can cope with a yearly hang out 😉 Seriously though, designing, building an ofrenda takes time and effort, it needs time specifically thinking about the gone person and the relationship as experienced, deciding how to lay out the altar in a way that shows what we would want to say to them, or for them to know, as they arrive home (almost like they’ve just been away for a bit). Moreover, ofrenda-making can involve others too, in a way that allows the person lost to be shared, even introduced to those who never physically knew them (thereby continuing a person’s story, extending their life) – they can still be known; new relationships can still be created.

The final, most significant stage of a death, according to Disney Pixar’s Coco (and Gómez, 1997:31), comes when there is no one to remember a person, to communicate with them, to care about them. I will do all I can to ensure that never becomes the case for my brother, that he will live on wherever he is, always aware of a home welcome waiting each year. Indeed, I find that this one day a year is instrumental in helping to provide relief from the bubbling of anger I can feel toward Martin, allowing me to let go, my gut to relax and myself to think of him in softer ways – and I love that. (I am secretly hoping there really is a ‘Land of the Dead’, ‘cause I can totally see Martin as a pontificating, roll-up-puffing, guitar-wielding skeleton in a red hat and slippers…).

For me, in all these ways, el Día de los Muertos’ strength is not in this idea of ‘laughing in the face of death’, but it definitely helps to laugh in the face of suicide – the enormity of this form of death and loss is swatted away like an irritating wasp at a picnic on a day that allows happier, undistorted memories and continuing intact relationships to be reinforced and take centre stage.

Boorstein, M. (2018). ‘How the Oscar-winning ‘Coco’ and its fantastical after-life forced us to talk about death’ in The Washington Post, 4th March 2018. [Accessed here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/03/04/coco-is-the-conversation-weve-been-avoiding-about-death-and-the-afterlife/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4cbe8a746c3e]

Brandes, S. (1997). ‘Sugar, Colonialism, and Death: On the origins of Mexico’s Day of the Dead’ in 270-299.

Brandes, S. (1998). ‘The Day of the Dead, Halloween, and the Quest for Mexican National Identity’ in The Journal of American Folklore, 111:442, 359-380.

Brandes, S. (2003). ‘Is there a Mexican View of Death?’ in Ethos, 31:1, 127-144.

Castellanos, J. (2017). ‘Coco: Capitalist Appropriation of Mexican Tradition’ in Left Voice, 22nd November 2017. [Accessed here: www.leftvoice.org/Coco-Capitalist-Appropriation-of-Mexican-Tradition]

Collin, R. (2018). ‘Coco review: Pixar makes sense of bereavement with a hopeful, healing celebration of life’ in The Telegraph, 19th January 2018. [Accessed here: https ://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/coco-review-pixar-makes-sense-bereavement-hopeful-healing-celebration/]

Gómez, R. (1997) ‘The Day of the Dead: Celebrating the Continuity of Life and Death’ in Journal of the Liturgical Conference, 14:1, 28-40.

Maralason, D. (2013). ‘Dia de los Muertos: Celebrating life through Day of the Dead’ in Latin Chamber Magazine, 6-8.

Ugwu, R. (2017). ‘How Pixar Made Sure ‘Coco’ Was Culturally Conscious’ in The New York Times, 19th November 2017. [Accessed here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/movies/coco-pixar-politics.html]

3 Days in Summer

How often it is that the unexpected triggers a return to memories. My daughter finishes school for the summer holidays in a week, her first year done and dusted. In the end-of term run up, though, she won’t be told to gather with the ‘other summer birthdays’ in front of a whole school assembly for a communal well-wishing. My brother and I, with August birthdays 3 days apart, were always given that dubious honour during our primary years together.

It was never so much the 3-year part of our age gap that bothered me; rather the 3-day element, Martin’s birthday inconveniently (I often perceived) following mine. I do, for instance, recall one occasion when, such was the level of my annoyance at seeing him playing with my birthday presents, coupled with being armed with knowledge of what exactly he was due to receive in 2-days-time, that I was unable to curb the jealousy and revealed the secret to him to get him to just buzz off. It worked – he was ecstatic, and I regained control over my toys. But my mother’s furious glare, prompted by his tattling on what I’d blurted out, was more than a little guilt inducing. Bad sister.

Fast forward to now, and I would be lying if I said that 3 days matters not at all. I’m not going to lie, the gap between our ‘big days’ has played its part in anger-periods post-his-suicide, simply because it is impossible to forget that 3 days after my birthday, we (especially my parents and I) are also called upon to mark another age that he has not reached. How can you fully celebrate your own still-being-here with a looming sense of such a sad-marker-date so close? How just not fair is it that parents are called upon to be happy for one child whilst in the build-up of a loss-reminder for another?

Even the approach to each birthday, as well as the day itself, since Martin’s passing in 2011 has become a little harder. Whilst I’m in no doubt the sands and waters of Cancún, where I intend to be for this year’s anniversary, will be an aid to happier senses of my advancing years, and whilst I also appreciate the continued care of friends and family in showing and sending love, there is still a part of me that finds my acquiring a larger-number-label difficult, just because the day inevitably prompts reflection on and visitation to ‘the past’. Most recently, I have found myself finally realising, as odd as that may sound, that my brother is not aging as I am, that he has already missed a great deal of my life (and I his) to the point of asking, “would we recognise or really know one another at all now?” A chief part of my brother’s ‘hilariously unique’ take on birthday wishes to me included reminders of ‘your body-clock’s ticking, better have a baby’ – I’m way past that point now, so I can’t help but wonder, what would his-age-related-ribbing reference now? I can comment ‘Martin would have said/done this’ or ‘loved/hated that’ all I like, but the truth is, had he lived, his life/experiences may have altered his shape and thought in a way I might not have expected. I don’t and can’t know who he’d be, what he’d think now, at his age. And I don’t really like the idea of putting words in a never-reached-but-still- nearly-34-year-old Martin’s mouth…

Oh, woe is me, etc. etc. As always, it’s remarkably easy to swiftly fall into sadness if there’s no challenge to think about things in a different light. It would be wrong of me to say that frustration at close birthdays was the prevailing emotion as we grew – we did have good ones. I did for instance have a rather excellent party, built on a posh dinner party theme, for which my brother performed the chief waiter role rather (surprisingly…) superbly. In return, I proper engaged myself at one of his, a full-on pirate-themed affair.

Because of our birthdays being so close during the summer holidays, they have left me with some images to remember, like us having a Christmas Tree up in August at his request; him decked out as a roman soldier parading up and down Hadrian’s Wall; him not exactly taking the sport seriously whilst playing on the ‘very proper’ Brora Golf Club course and so on.

Martin was the first person to greet me on my 18^th, bucks fizz in hand, and some of my favourite photos are of us at my ensuing party, his hair spiked with blue, us dancing and sipping cocktails together. Happy, laughter-filled observances.

Maybe the task now then is simply to learn to accept that whilst Martin and I can no longer have more birthdays closely together, we did share some good ones, and it is the memories of these, rather than the regrets for future anniversaries, that should be remembered, clung to, and cherished as enablers of a sunnier tone for each year more of mine.

“Yet though the ocean with waves unending covers the earth

Yet is there loss after all?

For what e’er drifts from one place  is with the tide to another brought

And there’s naught lost beyond recall which cannot be found if sought.”

(Anne Dudley, taken from How the Tide Rushes In)

The Clef and The Hummingbird

At the foot of the Penglais Road hill in the Welsh town of Aberystwyth, there is a small, almost shack-looking, one-storey beige building that is the West Coast tattoo parlour. I passed it almost daily, during my commute to the lectures and seminars and Union Bar nights-out of my undergraduate-student days, each time tempted to investigate more. A friend of mine had had a large red rose with green splayed-out thorns and leaves printed into her lower back and I thought it was lovely, graceful. At the age of 19/20ish, though I never voiced the thought, I really wanted my own tattoo, something ‘little and pretty’ was my thinking. Then I heard a rumour story about another friend who’d fainted and fallen off a chair due to the pain whilst having one done – I never found out the truth basis of the tale, but nonetheless even the slightest idea that such a needle response could happen kind of put me off. I moved on to other desires.
Now, however, a little over six years on from my little brother and only sibling taking his own life, I have two tattoos.

My first tattoo is my ‘reminder of him’. I chose to have it done to tie in with my brother’s birthday, three days after my own in August. I decided on a treble clef design that incorporates a semi-colon, tattooed on the inside of my left wrist – the sign of music to symbolize my brother’s love and talents, and the semi-colon to signify his struggle and passing, and my nod to Project Semicolon, which focuses on the prevention of suicide through raising awareness and fighting the stigma that exists in talking about suicide. The inking experience was more emotional than I had thought it would be, despite how swiftly and efficiently it was carried out. I asked an already-tattooed friend to accompany me – just because I decided to have it done, does not mean I forgot the ‘friend-fainting-and-falling’ story. She held my hand and told me to wiggle my toes to give myself a different bodily area to concentrate on whilst the needle pierced my wrist. I was surprised at how much that tip worked, but it didn’t stop me from thinking about my brother. I welled up. And then it was all over, and I fell more in love with the image on my skin than I had expected I would.

My second tattoo is my ‘reminder to self’. The timing chosen for having it done, lunchtime in the middle of an average week, tied this one into daily, continuing life. The experience was a bit more surreal than the first – I went on my own, listened to the artists debate the merits of tinned peaches and carrots immediately prior to the inking, and it hurt much, much more. For this image, I chose an outline of a hummingbird positioned on the front of my right ankle, a very visible location for myself every day (especially in the morning). The image was not a random choice – having lived in Mexico for almost two years I’ve seen a few of these tiny, most beautiful of birds; my husband and I even visited a local café called El Colibri (The Hummingbird) every week. But these coincidences aside, it is what the hummingbird means that led me to choose the image –  this animal is about overcoming challenges, being mini yet full of strength and courage to handle the troubles and pains it encounters. The feathered-friend also symbolises love and looking for the nectar in life always, despite the traumas that present – even its wings adopt the ‘eternity’, figure-of-eight shape.

It is so easy after losing a sibling to suicide to get stuck. It can feel like you’re in some kind of existence-time-warp because no matter how many new things you do, experiences you have, that one day that changed everything can repeat in your mind at any moment of its choosing, pulling you backwards and demanding your attention over and over again. There is a want to remember and a want to move forward that live in tandem, that are experienced like the rise and fall of sea waves as ‘the days/months/years since’ accumulate. Bad intersects with the good, and sometimes things can feel so inter-tangled with one another that it is hard to suss out where and who exactly you are, especially on an emotional level.

Karen Leader writes about tattoos as being ‘Stories on the Skin’, that they can represent ‘layers of meaning’ and be empowering for the person who has them – far from the derogatory connotations they often have, tattoos can be used to creatively symbolise key events and moments in your life, as a means of helping you tell your story. Dickson et. al. adds to this by referencing Atkinson’s 2003 analysis that tattoos can be a means of self/identity expression, especially where there have been “role transitions, changes in life that have important impacts on identity.” (108). I relate to that very much, and I also take a lot from Leader’s comment that:

“Tattoo narratives…tell a story from the past, but have a unique presentness to them. They do not record a frozen moment in history, but a continual process of becoming” (Leader, 2016: 190)

For me this is how my images work. Skin holds and shows its natural stories through things like aging-caused wrinkles, spots or scars; my tattoos are the special editions I’ve added to my library. Their permanency on my skin entirely reflects my relationship with my brother, the very marking nature of ‘the day the world changed’ and the continued learning-to-live-with my loss. I want to remember my brother, his person and life; I want to remember, as strange as it sounds, that his death was self-inflicted, as a reminder to talk and raise awareness about suicide (as my tattoos can be really helpful as conversation starters), to do my bit in combatting the stigma that it has; but I also want the loss to not take over my whole being and life, wishing to live with and despite it. My tattoos help me do all these things. And at a very basic level, sometimes it is simply useful to have externalities to prompt the self when there is a ‘rough day’ going on – my clef gives me something physical to run my finger over, to trace the line and and remember, something to grant permission to indulge and wallow a little; my hummingbird is something physical to help in giving myself comfort (as well as sometimes a good talking to) in terms of ‘this is just one bad day; remember all the rest and keep going’.

Getting my tattoos was not an impulsive act – they were carefully thought out and reasoned in relation to the events and emotions I have lived, and continue to live, through. I’m ever so glad I have them.

*This post will also appear in upcoming US book publication ‘Surviving Sibling Suicide’, being compiled by Lena Heilmann Ph.D.*

At Where You’re At – An Anniversary Plea

Mrs Higson was a fearsome woman to behold. At least to me. With Margaret-Thatcher hair, heels and handbag (and a personal vendetta against the word ‘nice’ because “it is a word that means absolutely nothing”), she was an English teacher and a half. I don’t remember the specifics of the task set, but when I was fourteen or so, for homework I had pilfered the characters of Pride and Prejudice to write ‘a next chapter’. I also don’t remember the specifics of the text I produced; but I do recall that after hearing the work of others in my class, during an unexpected ‘read your work aloud’ session, I panicked. I subsequently didn’t read mine out as written because, basically, it to me sounded nothing short of diabolical. Consequently, I stumbled all over my words and all I really remember is mumbling something about Mr Darcy getting run over by a horse-and-cart, and standing isolated as my classmates, leaning back in their chairs behind their individual, wood-scratched, ink-welled desks, laughed raucously for longer than I really would have liked. And to top it off, I actually made Mrs H smile. Arms were still crossed, but she failed to stop the upward-curl of mouth-corner. I was dying inside, felt utterly humiliated. I struggled with the production of my own words from that day on.

It’s such a clear school memory for me that I can’t help thinking that it contributed to my need to find the words of others to express what I’ve really wanted to say since the death of my brother. Rather than writing them for myself, I’ve gone looking for those ‘meaningful quotes’ that people like to post on Facebook – someone else can always sum it up better than I. I’ve cried at the work of others as they’ve ‘really nailed it’, ‘it’ being the account of the emotions of losing a sibling to suicide, of grief, of living with loss etc. I’ve never felt capable of ‘really nailing it’ for myself.

Today marks the sixth anniversary of my brother’s death, and I’ve decided this year that instead of seeking some kind of spokesperson, or minimal quote, I would quite like to try and use some of my own words to express what that means.

The thing about anniversaries is that in the common mindset they consist of just one day. Birthdays, Christmases, wedding anniversaries – the focus is on the one-day nature of the occasion each year. With loss, the same is true. There is certainly that one day where the person who was becomes gone. And the related assumption can then be ‘well it’s just one day that you need to ‘get through’’. But here’s where I think a loss anniversary is different – often it can be the build up to the anniversary that is the hardest part, not the ‘day of death’ itself.

Imagine the build up to Christmas, the exciting, warm, mulled-wine and citrusy-smelling, glittery and shiny, event-filled, family and friend-loving month, (maybe two), that culminates in that one day labelled ‘Christmas Day’. Despite the willingness to partake and enjoyment experienced, think of the energy needed to keep up with the to-do list, decorating, event schedules etc.

Now imagine this; the memory-revisiting, visual-recalling, nightmare-enduring, question-re-asking, emotion-resurfacing, photograph-gazing, social-avoiding, circumstance-analysing, guilt-reminding, confidence-and-concentration-inhibiting, restlessness-feeling, and overall person-missing month, (or maybe two, or three, or four…), that culminates in the day that is labelled ‘the day [my loved one] died by suicide’. Despite not wanting any of these aspects, think of the energy required to just juggle (even hide) them alongside everyday ‘normal’ life demands.

What ‘Martin’s anniversary’ on 15th December means for me is a series of rumblings, and then explosions, of emotions and memories relating to his (and our) entire lives that begins in (according to a now recognisable pattern) late October. I recall him as ‘baby-unreasonable-and-downright-annoying-brother’ all the way through to ‘man-decent-to-converse-and-drink-with-brother’ before dwelling, as the date approaches, on the truly awful manner of his death. I don’t specifically devote time to look for the memories to recall – they pop up when they do. No warning, no asking. Welcome, sometimes worth a laugh, but simultaneously just so very, very sad.

And then what this ‘anniversary’ also means is an accumulation of time minus him, another mark of a year of ‘a different me’, the one ‘after him’; another year of his being frozen in time while more memories (that can’t be shared) have been made in his absence.

There is a broad sense that ‘the first anniversary is the hardest’. It is. But so is the second, third, fourth, fifth, to infinity. Each anniversary is ‘the hardest’ for different reasons because emotions endure beyond the immediate aftermath (especially in the case of traumatic losses) into the longer term. A person has to continue to live but forever has that pull to the past that the loss exhibits to them. With a loss as tragic as suicide, it is hard not to have every day as a form of anniversary given the weight of it on mind. And having said I want to not use the words of others, I kind of need to…. Rosenblatt noted in 2008 that, “bereaved people rarely say that they have recovered” (cited in Gibson, J. et.al., 2010: 525) – it often appears it is ‘outsiders’ who seem to use the number of anniversaries passed as a means of judging ‘where the bereaved is (or should) be at’ in relation to the loss they’ve experienced.

So rather than mumbling through my words for shame in them, I would like to this year make a clear plea from what I’ve learned from Martin’s death:

People after bereavement are simply at where they are at, regardless of anniversary number. If you know someone who has experienced a major loss or difficult/traumatic day (in any form that matters to them, not just through suicide), please be aware of how they are called upon to live with it beyond that one day each year. Be wise to how their bereavement may affect them, often in waves, across different times and years, and that their grief will continue as long as it does. Ask how they are and (if they want to tell you), listen to them. Don’t judge. They don’t need someone to fix anything; they just want some compassion and openness to be able to grieve and remember as they feel is necessary for them.

Can’t help wondering what Mrs H would have made of this….

_________________________________________

Martin Andrew Sutherland, 11th August 1984 – 15th December 2011.

15th December 2017:

Hi little bro, I am still mad at you, I still love you, I’m still so very, very sorry, and I will always, always miss you. Me xx

Source mentioned:

Gibson, J., Gallagher, M. and Jenkins, M. (2010). ‘The Experiences of Parents Readjusting to the Workplace Following the Death of a Child by Suicide’ in Death Studies, 34:6, 500-528.

What’s in a name (after death)?

At the beginning of August 2017, I came across an article by Poorna Bell (author of the brilliant Chase the Rainbow). In it she discussed the issue of ‘name’, specifically surnames, their meaning and the circumstances under which they are or can be changed. Name-changing is not necessarily an unusual topic for discussion, especially for women, given the still-relatively-normal-for-many action of changing surname to indicate marriage (see Finch, 2008: 712). But Bell’s piece was particularly interesting because it raised the issue of name changing after the loss of a spouse to suicide:

“It’s a question I was asked a lot in the first year after Rob died. Was I changing my name? Vehemently I said no, but it was also complicated. It was my married name, and I was no longer married…but my maiden name was like a stranger’s house and the locks were changed. I am no longer that person anymore. And I felt by changing my name, I was erasing him from my life, when the absence of him was already so huge.” 2nd August 2017.

I was always quite a traditionalist regarding my name when it came to marriage. I liked the idea of adopting a new surname to show my joining with someone, creating ‘our family’. I got married to a Mexican man, however, and the issue became a bit more complex – Mexican culture requires a person to have two surnames, so I effectively had to keep both my existing surname and adopt the new one. It was only a bit confusing to those in the UK who at first assumed I would drop my maiden name entirely, (something that still sometimes causes complicated conversations with the postmen/women administering my collection of parcels I’ve not been at home to receive). In a way, it was a little disappointing to have the continuation of ‘Sutherland’ permitted. I was proud of my marriage, and wanted to signal the new phase of my life with the new surname. So I went for the easy, not-requiring-legal-paperwork option of using Facebook, dropping my ‘original’ surname and replacing it with my ‘married name’ for social media activity only.

Reading Bell’s article, however, prompted a return in thought to ideas I’d mused over after my brother’s death. I was ‘the last one left’. And there was nothing to illustrate my attachment to him if my name were completely different. But no one asked me if I would change my name back. You don’t ask siblings such things. Names are given to you, downwardly (with a particularly male slant attached (Finch, 2008: 712, 715)), by your parents – you are born into your name and the meanings or significance that parents have assigned to those names. It’s not a matter of choice for siblings – “normative naming conventions” afford choice to the parents (Almack, 2005: 239). But, at the risk of becoming all toddler, that’s just not fair. It’s fairly assumptive and misses a rather large point. (Indeed, the importance of sibling surnames is hinted at by Almack, whose study examining the naming processes and choices of children of lesbian parents found, “In all families where there were two siblings, both children had been given the same surname.” (Almack, 2005: 242))

Further thinking on this led to my decision to revert my Facebook name back to my ‘birth surname’. I wanted to demonstrate my connection to brother – losing him did not mean he had never existed. I wanted to show my pride in the relationship that had been, to remind others that I had been (dare I say, still am) a sister. Death did not severe my attachment, particularly on an emotional level; it just changed the character of it.

The day following my name-change, whilst engaged in that most fun of family activities the dishes, my husband came out with ‘Did you change your name on Facebook?’ To be honest, this was not wholly unexpected, as the idea of what names mean and what a name change signifies is so ingrained in us that I would have been slightly annoyed had the issue not presented in some way. Turns out that he himself hadn’t actually noticed my action, but he had received communication from family in Mexico enquiring as to the health of our relationship because I’d changed my married name back to my ‘maiden’ name. One simple change had prompted across-ocean information-seeking. The thought that a name change could represent anything other than problems in marital paradise, through no fault of their own and thanks to cultural custom, had not entered their thinking on the matter.

I explained. Matter resolved.

But as this situation occurred, I started to think of it in relation to some of the sociology of the family literature I’ve been attempting to understand. (Being a non-sociologist ‘by trade’, as it were, please forgive any rudimentary discussions if you are familiar with such literature). I found Finch’s work discussing the idea of ‘displaying’ as well as ‘doing’ family really quite relevant and useful. She argues that,

“family relationships have to be ‘displayed’ as well as done. They need to be seen, experienced and understood by relevant others as ‘family-like’ relationships.” (Finch, 2008: 714)

In this respect it perhaps says a lot that my husband himself was not so affected by the change, but that those around us, knowing us as the family we are, questioned our togetherness as a result of a name change.

Finch’s statement that,

“Names are seen as having the dual character of denoting the individuality of the person, and also marking social connections” (Finch, 2008: 709)

is interesting, but perhaps the former is actually subsumed by the latter? She continues to state that “surnames and forenames can serve to ground [own emphasis] the individual within family relationships” (Finch, 2008: 709), but is it possible that the family names do not solely help to identify the individual, they actually arguably are the individual, to both the person themselves and relevant and outside others?

Finch’s work does not explicitly mention death in relation to naming, but given that a loss does result in “changes in family circumstances” (Finch, 2008: 716), I would argue that many of her points are particularly powerful if you consider them in a context of bereavement. For instance, Finch declares that

“If social identity is ‘our understanding of who we are and of who other people are’ (Jenkins, 1996: 5), then it follows that a name is both a legal identifier of the individual but also potentially part of social identity.” (Finch, 2008: 712)

From my perspective, death provokes/causes an entire revision of one’s identity; having to work out new roles, new ideas and values, and having to develop new ways to talk about relationships that were once physical but which now cannot be, are all parts of the grief process. Especially after a suicide, it can be about a ‘you-before’ and a ‘you-after’, a search for a new life and accompanying identity that incorporates the old ones (although this takes time and tears to achieve). As such, how a person views, employs, even talks about their name (notably surname) could provide a remarkable insight into specific aspects of bereavement. Personally, I really respond, after my own suicide loss, to Finch’s statement that

“Speaking or writing a name conjures up an image, a history, a sense of personal taste and style….[it] can embody a sense of connectedness with family.” (Finch,2008: 211)

However, firstly, this statement primarily relates to forenames – indeed it is often the case that forenames are where individuality can be expressed, (indeed where names are permitted to be ‘individual’) (Finch, 2008: 712). However, for me my decision to go by my first surname is more of an exertion of my individuality, as a means to providing myself with continuity after my loss. And secondly, the framing around this statement still nonetheless presents the idea of preserving the memory of a lost person as being vertical, not horizontal:

“acknowledging a specific relationship which is important to the parents and giving it a longer life span through their child.” (Finch, 2008: 720)

By choosing my original surname, I am showing how important the relationship was to my brother’s sibling, choosing to acknowledge my relationship with him for myself (as well as others). Because of his youth when he died, there is a ‘longer life span’ for my brother through me, never mind my child. Finch’s work on names in this article is really interesting, but application of the content in the realm of death, loss and bereavement I believe has the potential to be fascinating.

Whereas there are sentiments that suggest sticking with one surname results in “a stable sense of self” (Finch, 2008: 712), my name change is actually about the opposite, chiming with the alternative idea that “a changed name can be a symbol in a narrative of personal change” (Finch, 2008: 712). I have given myself back some stability after my loss and emphasised continuity in my life by exercising choice over, and changing, my family name.

References:

Almack, K. (2005) `What’s in a Name? The Significance of the Choice of Surnames Given to Children Born within Lesbian-Parent Families’, Sexualities 8(2): 239–54.

Finch, J. (2008) ‘Naming Names: Kinship, Individuality and Personal Names’ Sociology 42(4): 709 – 725.