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I may go on to advise that our clients represent all nationalities and religions, come in family groups at the most distressed and emotionally-unstable time of their lives, and represent all relationships and losses through all conceivable circumstances. I might also add that we get only one chance to fully satisfy their immediate need (among those of ten to thirty other families each day), and that thereafter, mourners return in literally tens of thousands each week. The naivety of casual social acquaintances is to be expected. Far more surprising was my discovery, in the early 1990s, that the cemeteries industry itself had very little idea of who its clients were, let alone what their needs might be. No specific social, cultural or psychological data existed on the people I have since found to be paying around thirty-three million annual visits to Australia’s two thousand three hundred or so cemeteries. The pervading industry attitude suggested it would be insensitive and inappropriate to subject cemetery visitors to personal scrutiny. But empirical study of cemetery visitors, their behaviour and needs, was evidently overdue. So I instigated a site-specific undergraduate social-environmental study and, with increasing industry interest and support, my initial research snowballed, ultimately leading to a national doctoral project. And rather than being affronted, bereaved people were really pleased to find someone interested in listening to their stories. So why do people flock to cemeteries and in what numbers? Who visits and when? What do they do and what does it mean to them? These are some of the questions to which I have discovered fascinating answers through complementary quantitative and qualitative sociocultural research, involving thousands of visitors to cemeteries throughout Australia. Death of a spouse is recognized as the most psychologically and socially significant life event that most people ever experience, and psychology has so far contributed more than other disciplines to our understanding of grief. But almost invariably, previous bereavement studies have been conducted in contrived clinical settings (with a major focus on atypical grief). So I introduced a fresh look at the phenomenon of bereavement through seminal field research in a natural setting of mourners (and with a major focus on typical bereavement behaviour). I found that for mourners of various social and cultural backgrounds, cemetery visitation is a most significant behavioural activity, and a critical component of personal grief-work. Grief-work is the sum of a mourner’s endeavours toward achieving a satisfactory bereavement outcome. The research formed a sound basis for future planning of improved cemetery facilities and services; and has the potential to help ease the grief of literally hundreds of thousands of bereaved people, each year, throughout Australia alone. We mostly visit our parents, spouses and children shortly after their death. But within months, visits typically decrease to special occasions. We place flowers, maintain the grave and talk to our lost loved one. Sometimes we cry or pray. The most frequent visitors include women, older people, and Italian-Catholic and Greek-Orthodox families. Most people visit the cemetery to fulfil a sense of duty or obligation, to facilitate progressive disengagement from a significant relationship, and to seek solace from grief. As we work through our grief, the need to visit diminishes. Some bereaved people don’t visit a cemetery at all for various reasons. The research has been challenging and rewarding, serendipitous and unsettling. Having virtual strangers confide in me their most intimate family experiences and personal emotions is indeed a privilege. Though intimately sharing the often life-shattering experiences of various distressed people, one after another, can also have a high emotional cost. But humans have always been difficult creatures to study at their best; and bereaved ones just happen to be somewhat short of their best.
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