When Isaak was Gone

An Auto-Ethnographic Meditation on Mourning a Toddler

Bibliographic Data

ID13627791
AuthorsPenelope Ironstone-Catterall (Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada, corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume50
Issue1
Pages1-21
Publication date2005-02-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueOMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0030-2228 • E-ISSN: 1541-3764
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2190/xwda-45ca-yhur-carf
OpenAlexW2047103168
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited8

Taking its starting point from the death and complicated mourning of the author's own child, this article provides a meditation on the loss of a toddler. It was inspired by the lack of materials specific to the loss of a toddler, and on the complicated work of making meaning around the death of a child. The article is itself a work of mourning, drawing indirectly from theoretical work on trauma and mourning in order to begin to carve out a space for thinking about the specificities of the loss of a toddler. It asks questions about what it means to grieve for a child and what social and cultural demands serve to further complicate this process. As a meditation, it asks what helps and hinders the process of producing a narrative around the loss of a toddler as a means of consolation. It also suggests that the isolations of the work of mourning requires a narrative—a performative “telling”—to turn the thought that thought cannot tolerate, the death of a child, into something that may be communicated to both the self and others

Aesthetics · Art · Consolation · Developmental psychology · Literature · Meaning (existential · Meditation · Narrative · Performative utterance · Psychoanalysis · Psychotherapist · Theology · Toddler · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health · Homelessness and Social Issues · Philosophy · Psychology

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