Spousal bereavement in later life: a material culture perspective

Abstract

Using a material culture perspective, this article provides new insight into the experience of later life spousal bereavement. Drawing on qualitative data gathered during interviews with 20 older widows and widowers, it pays particular attention to the domestic setting within which they were living and the ways in which this had come to constitute an environment of memory. Its focus is therefore the sustaining of ‘continuing bonds’ between older surviving and deceased partners. Key to the article is a distinction between dedicated and emergent memorialisation, the former exemplified in the funeral, the grave and the display of photographs, the latter in the more subtle forms of residual traces within the home and embodied domestic practices which together evoke the presence of the dead spouse. Highlighting the sensory and embodied dimensions of bereavement, the article complements a prevailing emphasis on visuality by paying careful attention to the senses of touch and smell. In that it explores the experiences of people aged between 63 and 91, it critiques universalising models of bereavement, providing a nuanced generationally specific account that reveals the importance of shared inter-war domestic cultures for people now living alone, routinised practices that have increasingly less salience among succeeding generations.

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