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It’s okay to never ‘get over’ your grief
Maintaining a place for the deceased in our lives can also mean continuing to draw on those relationships as sources of strength.
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Genuine commitment to others comes before our own happiness. Traditional mourning practices offer a way for those commitments to continue.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: UNSPLASH
Mikolaj Slawkowski-Rode
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Queen Victoria wore black for the remaining four decades of her life after her beloved husband, Prince Albert, died in 1861. This mourning practice was still commonplace during the first decades of the 20th century but almost non-existent by its end. My great-grandmother, who died in 1999, was the only person I knew who wore mourning black until her own death.
Over the past century, traditional mourning practices have fallen out of favour in the West. Black is now usually worn only to a funeral, and not always then. Fewer and fewer people return to visit the deceased at their place of rest regularly; annual memorial services are especially rare. The sight of someone wearing mourning jewellery made of jet can strike a modern observer as a touch macabre. We are not supposed to hang on so tightly to those who are, after all, gone.
