The poetics of mourning and faith-based intervention in maladaptive grieving processes in Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

The paper is an inquiry into the poetics of mourning and faith-based intervention in maladaptive grieving processes in Ethiopia. The paper discusses the ways that loss is signified and analyzes the meanings of ethnocultural and psychospiritual practices employed to deal with maladaptive grief processes and their psychological and emotional after-effects. Hermeneutics provided the methodological framework and informed the analysis. The thesis of the paper is that the poetics of mourning and faith-based social interventions are interactionally based meaning making processes. The paper indicates the limitations of the study and their implications for further inquiry.

Notes

¹This is the expression used by the bereaved to indicate the degree of their disappointment on missing those they expect to have accompanied them through their distressful experiences. As a form of disenfranchised grief, it represents the social psychology of bereavement and emotional expectations regarding the role of others in one’s misfortunes, distress, and discomfort. It is wild and brutal for one to visit the family of the deceased to announce that the death of their member gave one great delight, but even that reaction is better than inconsiderately absenting oneself from the event. The implicit meaning of the reaction is the fact that the bereaved desperately sick the company of friends, relatives, and neighbors may be because the company facilitates for them the condition to ventilate feelings and emotions in an empathic therapeutic relationship.

²In the Ethiopian socio-emotional standard, sharing food and drinks from the same objects and utensils is a profound marker of love and social interdependence. Bemote, bemote (better you see me die) is a common emotionally charged expression used to have a loved one share from one’s food or drinks. It means “I better die instead of you declining my invitation.” In this mourning, the mourner cries not only for the departed member but for herself because of the sense of grief, loss and longing engendered by that departure.

³Qurban (lit. memorial service) is a well-established practice of servings to memorize the deceased. The first qurban is organized on the fortieth day of the funeral of the deceased, and because of this, it is called arba (lit. forty). The second memorial service is organized on the eightieth day after the funeral, and because of that, it is called semaniya (li. eighty). On these days, the relatives of the deceased would arrange qurban servings for the officiating clergy, other invited guests, and the needy (Aspen, 2001).

⁴Tazkar (lit. remembrance) is one of the occasions on which the relatives of the deceased provide the zake (qurban offerings) as a memorial service.