Diamond Island bridge is falling down: Cultural deathscapes of grief, funeral ceremonies, and continuing bonds after a disaster in Cambodia II: The first months

Abstract

Although the cultural deathscapes of acute grief in the early days after a disaster are well-understood, there is a gap in the literature on the role of ritual ceremonies over the months that follow the initial funeral. Drawing upon a case study of the 2010 Diamond Island stampede in Cambodia, which killed 347 people, this article considers the meaning and value of the ritual ceremonies over the first year after the funeral in comforting the living and connecting them to the dead. A companion article focuses on the events that unfold in the first week after loss.An ethnographic study was carried out in Phnom Penh and 9 provinces with 38 members of the families of those who were killed and 42 key informants including monks and Buddhist lay officiants. In this article several in-depth case studies are presented.Shortly after the cremation, the ritual of ‘changing the body’ helped families who were not ready to let go. The 7- and 100-day ceremonies provided comfort that their loved ones would be successfully reincarnated, and thus helped them accept the irreversibility of their unanticipated loss. Some ameliorated their grief by ‘continuing bonds’ with the dead, who were believed to have been reborn to unwitting ‘surrogate’ mothers who were also members of the grieving families.The continuing process provides disaster relief in the form of ‘emergency cultural grief therapy’ which averts the threat of ‘reincarnation failure’ and provides a socio-moral framework for public mourning and a system of meaning for private grieving. The findings provide insights into developing a culturally responsive framework for ongoing interventions after disasters.