ABSTRACT
In Chapter 8, we delve into the public performances of retrospective sensemaking, the action of ritually bringing closure to a person’s life in funerals and eulogies. We report on funeral customs and rituals and discuss how eulogies specifically and funerals generally provide the penultimate performance of one’s life, constructing retrospective meaning for loved ones’ lives and reconstructing meaning for survivors in light of their loss. We discuss the ways in which funerals are public expressions of faith and grief which offer a very tangible confirmation of a loved one’s death, along with an affirmation of support from the community; and in which these end-of-life rites of passage provide a tangible way to deal with the liminality of the shifting relational identity of the survivors and the deceased.
