Loss: The Secularisation of Meaning

Abstract

When someone today asks, ‘Is there life after death?’, they are as likely to mean ‘What is there left for me to live for?’ as ‘Where is the deceased now?’ Life after death is changing its meaning — from the continuing existence of the deceased in some spiritual realm, to the ongoing life of the survivors. Society — as represented by clergy and counsellors — is less worried about the fate of the dead person’s soul than about how the survivors will cope. Books of bereavement now greatly outnumber books on eschatology. In this chapter I will sketch the background to this profound change, which we may summarise in one phrase: the ‘invention’ of bereavement. Human beings have always, of course, grieved for their dead. By the invention of bereavement I mean the shift of focus from the soul of the deceased to the feelings of survivors, and the declining value given to theological expertise in eschatology compared to the increasing value given to expertise in the psychology of grief.

He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for even I was wrong.

(Auden, 1966, p. 92)