We wept and we waited – but what can we learn from the week we mourned the Queen?
Emily Harrop
Cardiff University; Editor-in-chief, Bereavement
Caroline Pearce
University of Edinburgh; Former Editor-in-chief, Bereavement
On 8
September 2022 the United Kingdom’s longest serving monarch, Queen Elizabeth
II, died aged 96, ending 70 years on the throne. Despite her age, the news was
experienced by many as something of a shock, prompting an outpouring of emotion
and intense media coverage as the UK entered a nine-day period of national
mourning, culminating with the state funeral at Westminster Abbey on 19
September. As it happened, this change in monarch coincided with this journal’s
own transition of editorial leadership, providing a timely opportunity for us
to reflect on the nature of public grief and responses to the Queen’s death and
whether there is any learning we can take from these recent events.
Whether
they fell silent, shed tears or queued overnight to physically pay their
respects, it was apparent that many people experienced sadness upon learning of
the death of the Queen; a woman widely admired and respected for her lifetime
of dedication and service. In her age and familiarity she perhaps reminded
people of their own parents or grandparents, and in the uncertain times we are
now living through, the permanence and stability that she symbolised
could feel like something to be cherished. On a broader level, many probably
also empathised with the loss that the Royal Family
had suffered, recognising death and grief as
universal experiences.
People with
a strong affiliation with the Queen may also have experienced a degree of
‘biographical disruption’ (Bury, 1982) and feelings of loss not dissimilar to
the deaths of those known to them. Gibson explains how the ‘narrative
experience of continuity or blending between past, present and future is
ruptured by significant deaths and these can include the deaths of public
figures or celebrities’ (Gibson, 2007: 421). Among older generations the Queen
may have represented a connection to their past, while those sharing organisational affiliations with the Queen (eg charities, the Church, the military) or who identify
with a particular version of Britishness and British
history, may also have experienced the loss of an ‘imagined’ relationship and
associated disruption to identity. The impacts of personal bereavement on
identity are well theorised. In the dual process
model the concept of restoration-oriented coping describes how people negotiate
the practical and psychosocial changes to their lives that occur as a result of
the bereavement (Stroebe and Schut,
1999). Neimayer’s work on meaning-making similarly
posits the bereaved individual as working to assimilate or accommodate their
loss experience as they renegotiate self-narratives which are sufficiently
consistent, coherent and meaningful (Neimayer et al,
2010). Suggestive of such processes in collective grief too, a study of fan
grief following Steve Jobs’ death explained how in drawing on hero narratives
and framing Jobs’ life as one of genius and resilience, the fans were also
framing their own lives in a meaningful way (Harju
& Moisander, 2014; Harju,
2015).
Perhaps of
most relevance to us in the bereavement community though was the apparent
‘triggering’ of personal grief reactions that occurred in relation to the
earlier deaths of family and friends. Bereavement services reported increased
calls to support lines, grief therapists spoke of the
impacts on their clients, and in social and mainstream media we witnessed a
public outpouring of private grief. Following Princess Diana’s death in 1997,
Johnson spoke of a transference of grief, prompting
public grieving over other deaths that had not been properly mourned (1999). Kear and Steinberg similarly argued that the consequences
of public concealment of private grief can find
expression in monumental public deaths and ‘communities of mourning’ (Kear & Steinberg, 1996:6; Gibson, 1997). Although all
grief could to some extent be considered ‘latent’ and therefore likely to be
activated when we recognise losses and experiences
similar to our own, the recent pandemic-context seems a further factor probably
compounding this phenomenon.
In the
study of pandemic bereavement we observed high levels of disenfranchised grief
(Harrop et al, 2021; Torrens-Burton et al, 2022).
According to Doka (1999) the concept of
disenfranchised grief recognises that ‘societies
attempt to specify who, when, where, how, how long, and for whom people should
grieve’ (p 37). During the pandemic however, this disenfranchised grief was
caused not only by restrictions to usual death and mourning practices, but also
by the de-humanising effects of mass bereavement,
media reporting and public and political responses, which left large numbers of
bereaved families feeling that their deaths had been reduced to statistics, and
unable to ‘properly’ grieve and remember the person(s) who had been lost (Torrens-Burton
et al, 2022; Harrop et al, 2021). Butler also problematised ‘Western’ norms of what counts as a ‘grievable’ life, arguing that disparity over whose lives
are grieved and thus deemed worthy of acknowledgement and value, leads to the dehumanising effects of silence and non-recognition of
lives and deaths in marginal communities at home (in the USA) and in other
countries experiencing conflict connected with US policy (2003; 2004; 2009).
Unfortunately,
the dehumanisation which occurred at the height of
the pandemic has to an extent been repeated in media, public and political
responses to the Queen’s death, exacerbating feelings of disenfranchisement. Covid-bereaved families spoke of their anger and upset at
public and media disregard of the Covid Memorial Wall
while in ‘the queue’, tweeting the ‘public ignoring of our pain being played
out’ (https://twitter.com/CovidMemorialUK/status/1570014670014263296). Members of Black Lives Matter and
others fighting for justice for Chris Kaba, an
unarmed 24-year-old black man shot by police on 5 September, probably
experienced similar feelings of anger and exclusion when Downing Street cited
the period of mourning as reason not to comment on the matter, and when their
march was misreported as being in support of the Queen (www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/news/chris-kaba/).
The Queen’s
death provides a striking demonstration of the ways in which grief is a not
only a private but a public experience, and how death and mourning rituals play
an important role in producing social stability and managing the period of liminality caused by death (Pearce, 2019). People
participated in widespread expressions of condolence, extensive laying of
flowers, sharing of memories (of loved ones and the Queen) and talked of
finding mutual support, comfort and connection with others experiencing similar
emotions. As we write this, people are visiting the Queen’s final resting place
speaking of ‘finding closure’. Also striking was the notion of duty, paying
respect and witnessing history; it is thought that around 250,000 people
travelled from across and beyond the UK, queuing for up to 24 hours or more to
see the Queen lying in state or to observe the funeral processions.
Participation in, or even passive consumption of, these events may also have
provided distraction and respite from the ongoing political and economic
crises; all political activity paused, the media reported little else and in
the UK at least it felt as if the world stopped turning.
As Durkheim
(1915) described, death and mourning rituals serve to reinforce social values,
foster identity and build solidarity. As queue members spoke of honouring a life of dedication and service, the act of queueing came to resemble a form of self-sacrifice, and in
the relentless media coverage given to these events, the sense of moral duty
and citizenship that was being invoked became difficult to ignore. In this
respect not only were these public mourners finding personal meaning in their
actions, through this ‘fictive kinship’ (Winter, 1997; Foster and Woodthorpe, 2012) they were also reaffirming the role of
the monarchy in British life and identity, and the arguably deferential model
of citizenship associated with it. In this respect this behaviour
could be seen to exemplify what Harju has described
as ‘the constitutive nature of acts of remembrance’, and a view of memorialisation as a ‘process of signification’ which
serves to sustain both the relationship and the meanings drawn from it (2015:
132). In football matches too, remembrance acts have similarly been seen as a
vehicle for the strengthening of allegiances and dissemination of cultural
knowledge (Russell, 2006; Foster & Woodthorpe,
2012). Commentators have also reflected on the relevance and meaning of these
large-scale acts of ritual solidarity in highly individualised,
fragmented societies, regarding them as attempts ‘to glue the social bonds back
together again’ (Walter, 2001: 495) or rectify societal wrongs (Berger, 1969;
Foster & Woodthorpe, 2012). Walter’s (2001)
reflections following Princess Diana’s death that ‘rituals of mourning and
remembrance symbolise hope, and occasionally despair
… for a better society in which compassion and personal sacrifice will
complement the profit and greed on which Britain's prosperity is based’ (p508)
seem more relevant than ever now.
However, if
we recognise the constitutive nature of these acts of
remembrance and the identity work that is integral to them, it is of little
surprise that the cohesiveness that was being produced in mainstream public,
media and political responses, was also met by feelings of frustration, anger
and indifference. There has of course long been republican-based opposition to
the existence of the monarchy in Britain, while the association of the Royal
Family with a ruling elite, class system and colonial history sits uneasily
with many individuals and communities across the UK and world. To the extent
that these large-scale public celebrations/acts of mourning can be seen as
reaffirming a particular historical narrative, concept of Britishness
and citizenship (and the inequalities, hardship and suffering associated with
it), the levels of frustration and upset among seldom-heard sections of society
are understandable and surely deserve recognition. Regrettably however, the
suppression and exclusion of dissenting voices during this period (including
the non-recognition of other bereavements earlier described) can only have
reinforced these feelings of alienation, contributing to a diminished sense of
national belonging.
There are a
number of possible learning points to consider. First, the familiarity and
extent of official and public mourning practices reminds us of the social as
well as psychological nature of grief and the importance of collective ritual,
recognition and remembering following all deaths and bereavements. The
triggering of personal grief reminds us also of the ways in which global events
affect individual grief processes, in reactivating feelings of loss, loneliness
and sometimes anger, as well as the possibilities for finding meaning and
coherence. Support providers need to be able to recognise
and respond to such events, and their impacts on longer term, as well as newly
bereaved people.
The
apparent ease with which people opened up to and connected with strangers was
another interesting feature of this time, particularly when compared with the
known problems that bereaved people experience with support from their ‘real’
networks (Breen & Connor, 2011; Harrop et al,
2021). Gibson (2007) reflects on a widening gap between media/technological
death culture and ‘real life’ contexts of death and bereavement, and with
reference to internet mourning sites acknowledges that it ‘is amongst strangers
or “virtually located” friends that they gain consistent support particularly
when the time for talking about grief has stopped with other friends’ (p422).
The important function of online peer support spaces was similarly highlighted
during our own study of pandemic bereavement, often also in relation to
inadequate support from friends and family (Harrop et
al, 2021). On the one hand this suggests the value of supporting and sustaining
such spaces, but also our cultural need to address the deficiencies in the
‘real’ networks of support available to people, and the importance of community
initiatives (eg compassionate communities) which endeavour to do just that. Following this, it seems there
is also an important opportunity to build on this renewed interest in and
willingness to talk about death and bereavement; to
continue the conversation in both private and public lives.
Finally, it
feels important to also question ‘protocol’; the appropriateness of political
inactivity, cancelling of services, and cost to taxpayers at a time of national
turmoil and fiscal crisis; the policing of dissenting voices and the apparent
‘total coverage’ policy pursued by many media channels, at the expense of other
significant and devastating news items and more marginal perspectives. Rather than
unproblematically reaffirming and privileging a
particular historical narrative and version of Britishness,
we should instead take the opportunity to revisit our past, give space to
alternative accounts and engage in more critical debate over the cultural, as
well as the socio-economic changes that are needed to build the kind of
inclusive, democratic society to which the Queen also aspired.
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Emily Harrop’s post is supported by Marie Curie centre grant funding (grant no MCCC-FCO-11-C).