Creating Meaning in Funerals

Auteur

William G. Hoy has spent more than forty years caring for the dying and bereaved and was clinical professor of medical humanities at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, from 2012 until 2024.

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Texte du rabat

Creating Meaning in Funerals is a book about the ways in which bereaved families and communities create meaningful ceremonies against a backdrop of what is culturally appropriate, even when their choices might make little economic sense to those outside the culture.

Résumé

Creating Meaning in Funerals is a book about the ways in which bereaved families and communities create meaningful ceremonies against a backdrop of what is culturally appropriate, even when their choices might make little economic sense to those outside the culture. The culmination of these customs and practices, this book maintains, is how bereaved individuals, families, and communities are drawn into significant meaning making in early bereavement. Readers will be repeatedly challenged to suspend their own biases, observe the customs and beliefs of others thoughtfully, and provide counseling support and encouragement to bereaved individuals for whom funerals were or were not effective means of coping with their loss. Discussion questions at the end of each chapter make the book useful for educational settings such as funeral service classroom instruction, thanatology classes, and grief counseling courses. Each chapter is also be accompanied by its own reference list to make chapters more useful individually.

Contenu

Introduction; 1. Anchors of Ceremony: How Funerals Work; 2. Funeral Ceremonies and the Quest for Meaning; 3. Memorials and the Ever-Changing Landscape of Spirituality and Faith; 4. Childrens, Teens, and Memorial Ceremonies; 5. Culture, Poverty, and the Cost of Funerals; 6. Funerals and Complicated Experiences with Grief; 7. The Pandemic that Changed Everything ... Including Funerals; 8. Honoring the Homegoing: African American Experiences with Funerals; 9. Memorial Ceremonies: Where We Have Been, Where We Are Going; Epilogue