Paper short abstract:

Paper long abstract:

Narratives of grief and loss attest to several possible paradoxes or irreconcilable tensions for bereaved individuals. These may include a sense of presence in absence, past in present, fullness in emptiness, and self as separate yet united with the deceased. Rituals of loss and mourning can give language, form, and structure to paradox and changed relationships after a death. Contemporary American hospice and bereavement spaces are cultural sites for negotiating meanings of death, dying, grief, and loss. By using examples from ethnographic fieldwork and interviews collected at two sites in central Ohio, this paper presents evidence of creative practices for learning to live with paradox, contradiction, and the inexplicable after a death. Practices such as storytelling, painting, quilting, yoga, music, energy healing, and equine therapy are discussed. I argue that emerging bereavement ritual engages imagination, affect, and the body in ways that acknowledge and honor continuing internal relations with the deceased while marking transformation of the bereaved individual.