The public funeral with mourning
Reply 1 (Kourtney Garcia)
Hello Garcia. Thank you for such a well-analyzed post. I fully agree with you that loss is relative to a culture or a community. It is a well-known fact that people’s backgrounds have been the instruments used to legitimize a loss or not, leading to numerous cases of disenfranchised grief. In response to a loss, people go into interpersonal or intrapersonal mourning. The short story on your post is a typical example of a mourning process. The public funeral constitutes interpersonal mourning and is widely accepted. It is in this stage where grief is most disenfranchised as it encompasses a person’s relationship with family, friends, and the society a large. I believe, however, by legitimizing grief through formal and informal rituals alleviates the instances of disenfranchisement. Rituals like burials and processions are all meant to foster social support.