Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2005

Department

Cultural Analysis and Social Theory

Abstract

Taking its starting point from the death and complicated mourning of the author’s own child, this article provides a meditation on the loss of a toddler. It was inspired by the lack of materials specific to the loss of a toddler, and on the complicated work of making meaning around the death of a child. The article is itself a work of mourning, drawing indirectly from theoretical work on trauma and mourning in order to begin to carve out a space for thinking about the specificities of the loss of a toddler. It asks questions about what it means to grieve for a child and what social and cultural demands serve to further complicate this process. As a meditation, it asks what helps and hinders the process of producing a narrative around the loss of a toddler as a means of consolation. It also suggests that the isolations of the work of mourning requires a narrative—a performative “telling”—to turn the thought that thought cannot tolerate, the death of a child, into something that may be communicated to both the self and others.

Comments

This article was originally published in Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 50(1): 1-21. (c) 2005 Baywood Publishing Company, Inc. Systematic or multiple reproduction or distribution to multiple locations via electronic or other means is prohibited and is subject to penalties under law.

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