It has been known since man’s creation, about forty thousand years ago that the arts connect us to the spiritual world, helping us in spiritual understanding of our physical existence.
During the Palaeolithic period, c.15–18,000 B.C our ancestors created beautiful paintings, often interpreted as a ritual that spoke of everyday life on the walls of the caves they inhabited. Mainly scenes that challenged their fears of the beasts they were hunting that could just as easily turn and kill them. Further on, during the Neolithic era in Europe, man would worship the Gods and Goddesses, creating cult idols and objects, shrines, statues, painted pottery, and religious ceremonialism. From the Megalithic stones of the Celtic era, to the illuminated manuscripts, mosaics and fresco paintings in the churches of the Middle Ages, right up to the work of painters like Van Gogh, Kandinsky, Cezanne and Chagall art expressed our human connection to the divine spiritual world.
It is no wonder that art still enables a spiritual connection and should always be considered when enabling a family to cope with the death of their child. In early years we decide, or are told, if we can draw or be creative in expressing ourselves. This is a fundamental fault as we are all creative; we are all capable of making a mark or a sound if we are alive.
The judgement we place on our ability is what stops us.
Creativity during a difficult time is of enormous value, not just in death but at any challenging time. By producing something meaningful during grief funnels the spiritual links between life and death. It channels thoughts and emotions into a caring, thoughtful activity that embraces the spirit of the deceased.
At the time of death, enabling a family to be responsive through sound or mark making connects them to the essence of the spirit of the child. Last week a father announced he wished to make his daughters coffin. It was amazing, there will never be another like it and for him it symbolized a care to the grave. His spiritual effort was buried in the soil with his daughter.
A mother a few years ago told me off for being away when the time came to decide about decorating the coffin. She was so wrong to think I would do a better job. The coffin had been painted red and family friends and staff had written graffiti all over it. Like a broken leg plaster it exuded the life of the young man, the humour the taste and the love we all felt towards him.
Some parents cannot get their heads around burying their child and become stuck and frozen unable to move into the organizing period before a funeral. When we explain this could be a time for you explain who you child is and was often frees them. One mother was huddled in a collection of blankets, hadn’t eaten for days and was refusing all our help. The discussion around what her child’s coffin could look like acted as a trigger for her release from the static state. Flowers need not be the conventional florist variety. We have collected and arranged ferns and wild flowers from around the grounds as one young man loved being swished in his wheel chair past them.
A Quaker family we helped years ago wrote to me recently to say how the simple cowslips we used in his wreath are now planted in their garden. I watched a family transform from ‘’there’s a terrifying coffin the funeral director has left in our garage for you to decorate’’ to my saying “why are you so terrified, it’s only a box?” We hauled it out into the garden where they then spent the afternoon painting it blue and then adding clouds. The importance of the activity was the union created in the time spent together. As a collective they were then all sending that memory and work with their daughter and sister onward on her journey.
Often the parents find they are able to make or have some part of the making of the Order of Service. Frequently there are ideas that spin off from designing this. We find the families find solace in music at this time. Sound making in free form or recording a passage of poetry, song or music for the funeral connects them all spiritually. Music is often part the life of the dying child. One Christmas the hospice choir sang to a young lady on her death bed, she died as we sang. Her parents still say that was so special. Another dying young lady created a piece of music with her family, playing it at the funeral made them feel she was still with them, if only in spirit.
Continuing the bond between the living and the dead is thought to help with resolution, Continuing Bonds, Klass, Silverman and Nickman, 1996, pg351-355. Evidence from our families show that those who talk freely and celebrate the life of their child with us move on to resolution with greater ease than those who hug the past with the fear of letting go or moving on. In this period we try to help with annual celebrations of the life lived, not so much the mourning of the time without. The celebrations are marked with the creative arts at the centre of all the remembering activities.
In conclusion, I would urge the use of the creative arts in mourning and highlight there is no wrong way to express the essence of a human being who has just died. For the creatively nervous it can be a simple activity like finding a few special objects and positioning them on the coffin. The objects act as a link to the life lived and join and intertwine the spiritual to the here and now.
Article by Caroline Jenner
Caroline is a bereavement Coordinator at Little Bridge House Children’s Hospice and has a post graduate degree in Fine Art/Teacher
caroline.jenner@chsw.org.uk
