ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the variety of ways in which my participants sought to maintain the continuing presence of their dead loved ones in their ongoing lives. It has been noted that, in the absence of their physical presence, it can be important for bereaved people to find places that deceased loved ones can inhabit (Berger, 1995). Indeed, people conveyed how, in the absence of the physical body, deceased loved ones were free to inhabit a variety of forms. Though they talked about more formalised memory-making activity, their narratives tended to emphasise the informal, day-to-day dimension of locating and sustaining the presence of dead loved ones, as conveyed by Fiona as she remembered her father:

There’s things he’s told me or places we’ve been or if I’m sat at home and I can see his picture on the window sill or programmes I know he used to watch, like The Bill or things like that.