Dena Rosko - Master's Thesis

Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH
Masters Thesis: Performing Impressionistic Autoethnographic Narrative in Text and Pixels to Explore Fear of Death in End-of-Life Care-Giving Contexts Dena M. Rosko Gonzaga University
ComL 680, Section A3 Professor Nobuya Inagaki December 17, 2010
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Table of Contents
Title Page.....................................................................................................................................4 Signature Page.............................................................................................................................5 Acknowledgments.......................................................................................................................6 Abstract......................................................................................................................................10 I: INTRODUCTION, IMPORTANCE, DEFINITIONS, RESEARCH METHOD, BACKGROUND, CONTEXT, AND THESIS ORGANIZATION..............................................11 Introduction................................................................................................................................11 Statement of Importance............................................................................................................11 Background................................................................................................................................12 Fearing Fear...........................................................................................................................12 Worrying About Death..........................................................................................................13 Context.......................................................................................................................................13 Definition of Terms...................................................................................................................14 Research Method.......................................................................................................................14 Thesis Organization...................................................................................................................15 Summary....................................................................................................................................16 II: LITERATURE REVIEW.........................................................................................................17 Ethical Assumptions..................................................................................................................17 Dialogic Sensibilities.............................................................................................................17 Dis/Confirming Behaviors.....................................................................................................19 Performance Narrative Ethos.................................................................................................21 Theoretical Frameworks............................................................................................................23 Narrative................................................................................................................................23 Performance...........................................................................................................................26 Fear of Death.............................................................................................................................32 Terror Management Theory (TMT).......................................................................................32 TMT Challenges....................................................................................................................36 Performing End-of-life Experiences..........................................................................................38 III: SCOPE AND METHODOLOGY..........................................................................................40 Scope..........................................................................................................................................40 Research Assumptions...............................................................................................................41 Methodology..............................................................................................................................44 Autoethnographic Imperatives...................................................................................................46 Autoethnographic Performance Narrative in End-Of-Life Care Giving Contexts....................48 Procedure...................................................................................................................................49 Research Questions................................................................................................................50 Study Timeline.......................................................................................................................50 Narrative Sources...................................................................................................................50 Study Limitations.......................................................................................................................55 Sampling Bias........................................................................................................................56 Reliability, Validity, and Generalizablity..............................................................................57 Performing I...........................................................................................................................58 Reflexivity..............................................................................................................................60 Dialoging We.........................................................................................................................62
Reframing..............................................................................................................................63 Changing the Question...........................................................................................................65 Analysis Framework..................................................................................................................66 IV: THE STUDY..........................................................................................................................69 Introduction................................................................................................................................69 Narrative Analysis and Rhetorical Criticism.............................................................................70 Study Findings...........................................................................................................................71 Poems.....................................................................................................................................71 Photographs............................................................................................................................88 Discussion of Findings: Blogging as a Produced Performance................................................92 Poems.....................................................................................................................................92 Photographs............................................................................................................................94 Blog Layout and Design........................................................................................................97 Embedded Interactivity..........................................................................................................99 Un/Marking the Self in the Texts.........................................................................................100 Symbolically Exchanging Expectations..............................................................................104 Continuity: Digitizing Community & Presence..................................................................108 Performing Farewell............................................................................................................112 TMT and Curtain Call..........................................................................................................115 Findings Summary...............................................................................................................118 V: SUMMARIES AND CONCLUSIONS.................................................................................122 Implications for Communication and Leadership...................................................................127 Study Limitations.....................................................................................................................134 Recommendations for Future Study........................................................................................139 Conclusion...............................................................................................................................146 References................................................................................................................................147 Appendix A: Biography Release............................................................................................178 Appendix B: Print and Mail Version of Study Disclosure.....................................................179 Appendix C: Email Text Version of Study Disclosure..........................................................182 Appendix D: Facebook Text Version of Study Disclosure....................................................184 Appendix E: Blog Remembrance Full Text.........................................................................186 Appendix F: Study Tables......................................................................................................296 Appendix G: Mentor Agreement............................................................................................301 Authors Note..........................................................................................................................302
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Title Page
PERFORMING IMPRESSIONISTIC AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC NARRATIVE IN TEXT AND PIXELS TO EXPLORE FEAR OF DEATH IN END-OF-LIFE CARE-GIVING CONTEXTS ____________________________________________ A Thesis Presented to the Faculty in Communication and Leadership Studies School of Professional Studies Gonzaga University ____________________________________________ Under the Supervision of Professor Nobuya Inagaki Under the Mentorship of Dr. Lois Melina ____________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in Communication and Leadership Studies ____________________________________________ By Dena M. Rosko December 2010
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Signature Page
We, the undersigned, certify that we have read this thesis and approve it as adequate in scope and quality for the degree of Master of Arts.
Gonzaga University Master of Arts Program in Communication and Leadership Studies
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Acknowledgments I find it true, as Dr. Caputo said, that the journey is not without help (personal
communication, September 28, 2010). I am here with help and theres much more work to do! In the meantime, a thank you to my professors in my core courses and beyond who made time for me and for integrating my husband and I into Gonzaga life: Dr. John Caputo, Dr. Heather Crandall, department chair, Dr. Michael Hazel, my first professor in the program, Dr. Peter Tormey, Dr. Alexander Kuskis, Dr. Kipp Preble, Dr. Larry Chouinard, Dr. Cher Desautel, Sara Johnston, Dr. Joe Albert, Dr. Michael Poutiatine, and Dr. Kris Morehouse. Thank your patience with my progress to write with brevity, for your insights and words of encouragement, and for even sharing your own loss experiences. Thank you to my advisors for your guidance, scholarly dialogue, and for being present throughout the process of developing my thesis from design to finish. A special thank you to Dr. Lois Melina, my applied research professor and thesis mentor, for teaching me performance ethnography, for your input on my theoretical frameworks and methodology portions, for your understanding, genuine and scholarly dialogue, and for your encouragement. Thank you to Nobuya Inagaki, my thesis director, for your line edits and for advising me to organize in layers, to write with clarity and with my audience in mind, and to keep my oral presentation simple. Thank you to my faculty reader, mentor, thesis director, and the dean of the School of Professional Studies for approving my thesis. Thank you Lois and Nobuya for helping me to regroup and avoid falling into a qualitative research hole by making time for conference calls, by encouraging me, and by contributing clarity to my process. Thank you to my reference list sources! Thank you to the professors, directors, and PhD students who contributed to my academic journey through interviews via phone, Skype, e-mail, or in-person: Drs. Lynette
Hunter, Carl Whithaus, and Rebekka Anderson, University of California-Davis, Dr. Bill HartDavidson and PhD student Marilee Brooks, Michigan State University, Drs. Dave Clark, Kathryn Olson, and PhD student Tatiana Batova, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Drs. Eric Peterson and Tom Mikotowicz and MA student Jeremiah Miner, University of Maine, Drs. Janet Bing, Lindal Buchanan, and Kevin DePew, Old Dominion University, Dr. Jason Swarts, North Carolina State University, PhD student Robert McKeever, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, PhD student Janelle Harrison, Regent University, Dr. Gordon Mitchell, University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Pamela Takayoshi, Kent State University, Dr. Richard C. Gebhardt, Bowling Green University, Prof. Nobuya Inagaki, Drs. John Caputo, Michael Hazel, Peter Tormey, Alexa Dare, Michael Poutiatine, and Mark Beattie, Gonzaga University, and Dr. Calvin Troupe, Duquesne University. Thank you to Dr. Lisa Mazzei for contributing insights to implications of voice in autoethnographic research. Thank you for answering my questions about your PhD journey and programs. Your input and kindness helped me to develop my research interests and admission proposal to prepare for life post-Gonzaga. Though our conversations centered on my PhD path, your advice and expertise unexpectedly and thankfully contributed to developing this thesis by helping me to understand the research process, disciplines, and frameworks involved. Thank you to Dr. Valerie Manusov, University of Washington, for supporting my journal journey early on from my undergraduate days in intercultural communication to writing my letter recommendation for this program so I could be where I am first place. Thank you to Dr. Lisa Mazzei for speaking with me about the implications of voice in autoethnographic research. Thank you to my husband James for promising to provide what I needed, from my computing and Internet technology support, to driving to my residencies and staying in the dorms, to carting around our food and meeting me for lunch, to being my in-house coding
consultant, and for contributing your experience as a team lead. Thank you for communicating a positive perspective, for your sense of humor, for encouraging me to persevere with confidence and without apology. Thank you for your conscientious read and for sitting with me during orals. Your willingness to embark with me on this journey reminded me that I began this path years back partly as you showed me it possible. I also appreciate you working so I could study full time and so give my best effort to my work. Thank you to my parents for faithfully praying for me daily, for your advice, and for raising me. Thank you for telling me that youre proud of me, for reminding me to follow God, and for supporting and praising my endeavors. Thank you to my sister for advising me to follow my heart and for your hearty laugh. Thank you to my niece for keeping me grounded by playing with me in the early years, for cooking, for visiting, and for watching I Love Lucy episodes. Youre fabulous company! Your sense of humor, beautiful smile, sweet personality, and insightful questions remind me to show you what it looks like to take courage and follow a dream: I know you will go far in life, just remember the imaginary island does exist and God loves you and has a plan for your life. Thank you to those aunts, uncles, and cousins who confirmed me. Thank you to cousin Lisa for calling me when you read Grandmas story on The Living Memorial, and to cousins Amy and Barbi for keeping in touch via text and pixels. Your combined enthusiasm for my work and person lifted me up when I needed the support. Thank you to Grandma for your example faith, hope, and love in your consistent, for encouraging me to not fear anything, and for your service to prepare us for your transition. Thank you to the friends who encouraged me. Thank you Shannon for your belief in my capacity to succeed in graduate studies, Why not teach a university? Thank you Dena K., Juls, Hanh, Danielle, Chevas, Angie, Adam, Nathan, Sara, Kevin, Carrie, Jennifer, Chris C., April,
and Laura for your friendship, enthusiasm, and prayers. Thank you to friends, family, and church, too numerous to list, for praying for me. I know your names, faces, and kindness, and your service and responsiveness encourage me to do the same. I know God hears your prayers. Thank you to all my program colleagues for showing me that relationship is the context for inquiry. Thank you for reading my works, for your feedback, questions, and encouraging comments, for looking out for me, for checking in on Facebook, for praying for me, and for reminding me to take it easy near the end. Thank you for staying with me. I regard you as friends. Thank you to the people who participated in my research projects for allowing me to learn from your experiences. Thank you to Gonzagas landscape staff for keeping campus beautiful so that we enjoyed a special place to study during my two residencies. Thank you to Dr. John Caputo, the senior scholar of this program, for contacting me after my first course to encourage me that I can indeed go big. Thank you for designing this program in the first place, the process of which confirmed my gifts, facilitated my growth, and gave me a solid foundation on which to build for my future pursuits in all my life spheres. Lastly, thank you to God for giving me life and for sending our friend Dan, who told me to choose life at a critical moment when I began this program. If Ive missed anyone here, then please let me know promptly so that I can thank you properly! Thank you for reading. Kindly,
Dena M. Rosko Renton, Wash., December 15, 2010 http://denarosko.com/contact.html http://textandpixelreflections.com denarosko@gmail.com
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Abstract This study explores fear of death in end-of-life caregiving contexts via impressionistic
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autoethnographic narrative as performed on a blog with photographs and poems. This study relies on ethical assumptions for communicating dialogue, confirmation, and a performance narrative ethos in end of life. This study employs Terror Management Theory to identify a gap in existing empirical fear and death studies, and fills that gap by embedding its framework and method in the psychotherapeutic tradition to foster creative freedom and psychological safety and so break the cultural silence shrouding grief. Key findings show that the blog coordinated a therapeutic process to assuage death fears, but that other virtues besides fear performed in the text. These outcomes benefit narrative healthcare. Implications include leading for affective and spiritual healing and communicating compassion, creativity, and love. Recommendations for future research involve partnering with technology organizations, the arts, and social sciences to design communication systems to benefit people in healthcare organizations. Keywords: fear studies, death studies, Terror Management Theory, performance, narrative, narrative healthcare, holistic leadership, dialogue, confirmation, impressionistic autoethnography, techno-cultural studies, cyber studies, photography, writing, blog
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Masters Thesis: Performing Impressionistic Autoethnographic Narrative in Text and Pixels to Explore Fear of Death in End-of-Life Care-Giving Contexts I: INTRODUCTION, IMPORTANCE, DEFINITIONS, RESEARCH METHOD, BACKGROUND, CONTEXT, AND THESIS ORGANIZATION Introduction This study explores fear of death in end-of-life caregiving contexts through performing impressionistic autoethnographic narrative via the digitally mediated arts, or a blog, photographs, and poems written during loss. Navigating loss can be as the Psalmist described: a dark and shadowed valley (Psa. 23). Grief can feel as fear (Lewis, 1961). Sometimes persons need a guide for such a potentially frightening journey. For me, that person was my maternal grandma. Statement of Importance All persons at some point die and lose someone they know or love. Not everyone may fear death, but fear exists as a human emotion and so a common experience, albeit at different degrees, or for different reasons. Culture and society constructs norms for expressing emotions and grief, including rituals to memorialize people who die and to comfort the bereaved. Politics also influences peoples end-of-life experiences. Current healthcare reform in the United States organizes and assigns value to the ways people live and die in healthcare settings. Current communication norms in the West utilize new media or computer mediated communication as ways to assign meaning to relationships and experiences. Thus, this study provides a relevant, timely, political, social, cultural, and communication-oriented glimpse into a persons end-of-life experiences as performed through the digitally mediated arts.
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Background
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I used to ride my hot pink Powder Puff bike with a floral banana seat and fluorescent spoke dots down our hill and the six blocks to my maternal grandparents house. Those rainbow flourish days later gave way to a darker space after I finished my undergraduate work at and moved home. By then, Grandpa was in his end of life and died that September. While I attended his wake, I avoided attending his burial and memorial services. Prior, I had interviewed him on his World War II experience, wrote the interview in a narrative format with photographs, and gave copies to family. I witnessed this work comfort family and me; the narrative gave me a mourning ritual. I also have written a manuscript about Grandma and my interactions. Each of which led me to my vested interest in creating and researching life and end of life narratives for healing purposes. Beyond that imperative, I photographed and wrote short stories and in journals since I was 12 as a way to experience, understand, and share my world. I continued my interests as an adult when I studied creative writing and founded a photography business. Fearing Fear Still, I experienced fear of death: my own, and the death of those close to me, especially Grandma, with whom I shared a close bond. Fear eroded my sense of self, engulfed my life, and in its intensity bullied all other feelings and clarity underground. Historically, I struggled with physical health challenges, which caused me to feel I had little control over my life and that my life was limited and even shortened. Subsequent dismissiveness in medical organizations led me to further worry about my welfare (Rosko, 2009, October 2). I struggled with a fear-dominated, distrustful, and dual mind when I avoided making long-term commitments. Ironically, I maintained uncertainty as a deer in headlights to feel safe (Bradac, 2001). I often catastrophized the future, or what Garner (1997) described as believing that the worst case scenario would
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occur. This behavior only perpetuated the illusion that I could control my life by withdrawing from it. As I withdrew, I fulfilled what Palmer (1990) called the scarcity prophecy. I felt that my hope in my future had dimmed. During those years, I lived in irony. I existed with intense fear, aware that I lived divided in mind, spirit, and experience from the person I wanted to be: one who centered herself on faith, hope, and love instead of fear. Worrying About Death Romanyshyn (1999) described mourning as losing my grip on the world (p. 99). Losing a loved one can make us die a little and fall apart psychologically (Duck, 2009, p. 323). I worried about Grandmas death because I worried that when Grandmas body died, I would lose my grip with myself, with others, and with my dreams. It was as if I anticipated Grandmas death as my own, both physically and spiritually. I also feared I would repeat the anxiety and panic I had experienced around the time Grandpa had died. This anxiety perpetuated disconnect and so prevented me from experiencing a whole life (Wheatley & Kellner-Rogers, 1999). From this background, I interacted with Grandma as her own health ailed and processed the fears I felt as I learned from her life stories and faith in the context of our relationship. Context Context always communicates, and communication creates context, which then influences peoples choice-making behaviors (Conrad & Poole, 2005). I interacted with Grandma in end-of-life care giving contexts. These contexts shaped my fear experiences. From 2001-2006, I visited Grandma at her private residence. From 2006-2010, I visited Grandma when she resided at a local rehabilitation center. Since 2001 I began to research and write her life story as intertwined with mine. My interactions with Grandma took place within a dialogic and familial relationship. Dialogue, a complex a phenomenon as relationships (Baxter, 2004), is
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH relationship. Relationships exist as ongoing, created, creatively expressed, necessarily
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destroyed, and mysterious interactive experiences (Pearce & Pearce, 2004). Dialogue constitutes and mediates knowing as relational (Holoquist, 1990, as cited in Baxter, 2004, p. 109). As we communicated values and beliefs, we gave ongoing meaning to our communication habits (Baxter & Montgomery, 1996, as cited in Baxter, 2004, p. 112). Our interactions with this studys topic took place in a caregiving context. I helped my mom and Grandma by providing respite care, theological conversations, recording and writing her stories, running errands, planning classic movie nights, praying, house cleaning, photographing her birthday parties and holidays, archiving classic family photos, and blogging. Definition of Terms Capossela and Warnock (2004) constructed caregiving as a community effort to provide support and respite for caregivers who have dual roles (see Klugman, 2008). Rogers (1989) suggested that persons experience fear when they sense a lack of safety and mutual understanding in their environment. Death seems the final unsafe experience. End of life caregiving contexts remind persons of death. Fear can lead to anxiety sensitivity, which can aggravate existing health challenges (McKracken & Keogh, 2009). Text and pixels refers to the name of the blog and the digital narrative samples. A blog is an online journal designed for interactivity and audiovisual presentation. I entered the blogging world in 2006 with R Abode (Rosko, 2006) and transitioned to Text and Pixel Reflections during this program (2009-present). Research Method This study uses impressionistic autoethnography and performance narratives to understand fear experiences in loss via digitized performance art shared on a blog, which includes photographs and poems written during this studys timeframe (see Chapter 3). This
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study proposes to fill a gap in death terror research by seeing if autoethnographic narrative provides opportunities to benefit communication and reframe fear in end-of-life and to discover potential therapeutic interventions for persons struggling with fear and or loss. Autoethnographic narrative allows researchers and readers to explore stories, experiences, epiphanies, and contexts (Creswell, 2007). Autoethnographic research exists in two genres: impressionistic and traditional (Leavy, 2009). This study employs impressionistic autoethnographic narratives given the comments, embedded links, and audio files on the blog by other people who contributed to my production process. While I created the blog, poems, and most of the photographs, I include photographs by others, such as the classic images and those of me with Grandma. Thus, impressionistic refers to creating content together, though I remain the primary narrator. Mediatized is essential to this studys use of a blog as a performance text. This study uses traditional autoethnography by including a self narrative as the sample of study and by reflecting on what I have learned as part of the discussion of findings (see Chapter 4). This study embeds the research process within the psychotherapeutic tradition and narrative therapy (see Mattingly, 1998; Polkinghorne, 1988), which allows me to explore fear of death constructively by drawing on the ideals for mutual understanding, authentic growth, and creative freedom (Creswell, 2007; Rogers, 1989; 1994). The performance aspect comes about due to aesthetic intent and identity: I created text and pixels on the blog, or the aesthetic text, with the intent to tell the story of my experience to an audience (see Chapter 2). Thesis Organization Chapter 2 explains performance narrative as this studys theoretical framework and identifies a gap in death terror research by including a representative literature review of empirical works that have studied death terror. This chapter describes dialogue, communication
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confirmation, and performance narrative ethos as salient and necessary ethical assumptions for researching fear of death in end-of-life caregiving contexts. Chapter 3 describes the scope, research assumptions, methodology, procedure, and analysis framework for this studys text, or a blog, photographs, and poems that I wrote during and following Grandmas end-of-life. Chapter 4 outlines this studys analysis strategy and results and discusses findings. Chapter 5 explains socio- political and cultural limitations of the research method and findings, addresses implications for communication and leadership, recommends future research, and concludes with salient observations. Appendices A to C include a biography release, ethics protocol, and full text of the blog, respectively, Appendix D shows Tables 1.1-1.4, which represent the first level analysis of findings, and Appendix E includes the mentor agreement form for this study. From this study, I designed a website for loss narratives (see Authors Note). Summary This study desires to understand how I responded to my fears during Grandmas end-oflife by creating performance texts on a blog, and if such fears were salient. This study challenges socio-cultural norms that silence grief expressions by including photographs, poems, and blog posts, which I created during Grandmas death and our familys subsequent mourning rituals. This study aspires to advance fear and death studies by showing how narrative and technology can benefit peoples experiences with communicating their inner world to engage their socio-cultural realm amid loss. This study contributes to healthcare discourse by proposing ethical standards for employing performance narrative, the digital arts, and storytelling approaches by communicating confirmation, dialogue, and an awareness that all the texts we choose to create shape peoples experiences in end of life.
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH II: LITERATURE REVIEW
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This literature review will describe theoretical and ethical assumptions of dialogue, communication confirmation, and narrative and performance ethos and then explain communication and performance narrative frameworks as they relate to this studys topic: performing fear of death, grief, and loss as mediated by digital narratives. This review will detail empirical works that explore fear of death as managing terror and will explain how such research maintains a gap with inherent challenges for researching end-of-life. This literature review will propose online performance narrative frameworks and their ethical assumptions as a meaningful and socially beneficial ways to research fear of death in end-of-life caregiving contexts. Ethical Assumptions This study assumes that performance narrative researchers, clinicians, and constituents need certain ethical sensibilities when interacting with peoples fear of death in end-of-life. No morality remains a sufficient measure for people who need grace to fully participate with their story so self-narratives must find a home in culture and in the self in order to develop moral character through experiencing life events (Hauerwas, 1994). To be gracious, end of life, fear studies, and healthcare researchers need to participate fully with peoples narratives via dialogue, communication confirmation, and a performance narrative ethos. Dialogic Sensibilities Conquergood (1983a) suggested performers have a moral responsibility to perform dialogically, or to be aware of the ways that the performance amplifies voice over other peoples voices through the performance. This study considers how dialogue occurs through narratives mediatized via digital arts, rhetoric, the narrator, and the performance. Building from Bubers (1970) I and Thou, dialogue provides a context for inquiry (Baxter, 2004) where people meet
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each other in fluid and fragile ways. Central to this study, people dialogue through story as an informal daily activity (Anderson, Baxter, & Cissna, 2004). People express turning points in their lives through storytelling, reminiscence, and idiosyncratic expressions (Baxter, 2004). Arnett (1981) emphasized the need to understand such a rhetorical situation between persons (p. 212) from which a shared meaning emerges. This call to action represents praxis, invokes an ethic for people to communicate human concerns and social practices, and calls the researcher to direct responsible rhetoric toward another (Groom, 2008). Dialogic praxis means responding to people in a situated context through the rhetorics (Groom). After all, to exist means to name and to create (Freire, 1994). Dialogue offsets the naming power that a performer has in creating an aesthetic text by taking into account the primacy of the narrators voice. This account produces a paradox as the narrators voice also contributes to dialogue, or the ways that people publicly communicate their ideas and experiences with others whose ideas and experiences may differ. Dialogue in research assumes that relationship provides a context for inquiry (Baxter, 2004). Relationships impact decision-making and provide a better ethical guide than preconceived ethical criteria or review processes (Denzin, 2003b). Given this emphasis on relationship, dialogue responds to the call to humanize, to be responsible, to be available, and to be present to comfort others (Loudiy, 2008). This study assumes it ethical and essential to humanize people in end-of-life, which often occurs in organizations, such as in family and healthcare. Groom (2008) defined organizational communication as an act of being-for-others, a response to the moral dimension of a communicative spaces... that shape peoples lives (p. 148). Communicating end of life experiences in academic or healthcare organizations requires an ethos to be for others in a moral manner, such as by extending hope to people in suffering (Hyde, 2004). People experience hope when they care for others (Hyde). This dialogic credo
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meets autoethnographic narratives call for researchers to write beyond their personal experience to symbolize redemption and hope (Denzin, 2003a). This ethos for sharing suffering to extend hope resonates with this studys assumption for full participation (see Chapter 3). This ethos constitutes an ethic of care, where caring relates to this study as situated in a caregiving context. In short, dialogue means understanding the self as participating fully with their own and others suffering and as embedded in organizations, culture, and in the outcome of the story that they create as a result of their shared and embedded experiences. Resonating with narrative, dialogue means relationally and creatively responding to human suffering. Dis/Confirming Behaviors Relationally and creatively responding to human suffering through story confirms people as they present themselves to be. Communicating loss and fear of death requires a confirmation ethic. Drawing from Laing (1960; 1961), people confirm each other when they acknowledge that each other exists as they present their existence to be (Cissna & Sieburg, 2005). Conversely, people disconfirm each other when they communicate that the other does not exist (Cissna & Sieburg). People can confirm each other in loving or hateful ways, which suggests an uneasy space in proposing confirmation as an ethos for this study. To emphasize, communicating confirmation means acknowledging and responding to a person as he or she presents him or herself to be. Given this studys emphasis on intent to create aesthetic texts, communicating confirmation means acknowledging that persons create performance narratives to communicate identity and experience. Contrary to muting critique, confirming behaviors acknowledge and so respond to people as they communicate themselves and their relationships to be (Wilmot, 2005). Acknowledging the presence of a person requires giving and receiving love in an appropriate measure to who the person performs him or herself to be (Laing, 1994). By this definition,
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confirming a person shows love, while ignoring or dismissing a person through disconfirmation communicates violence (Anderson, Cissna, & Arnett, 1994). Echoing dialogue, communicating confirmation fosters a safe place for people to share their diverse stories because confirmation does require compliance, only a willingness to respond to people as intelligent beings who are more than capable of self-awareness, choice, and even performance. Communicating death to a frightened culture. What does it mean to communicate confirmation for persons who fear death? Lendrum and Syme (1992) identified fear of death as fostering self-, group-, and culture- censure as people are too afraid of death to talk about it (p. 260). As a result, the bereaved often find themselves in social networks that are unable or unwilling to listen to their grief stories (Silverman, 1988). In other words, cultural tendencies to avoid death disconfirm peoples experiences with loss. Communicating to break silence. In public society, people censor themselves when they perceive a lack of public support or commonality in their views (Hayes, 2007) and when they fear isolation or separation from others as a result of experiencing something publicly unpopular (Neuwirth, Frederick, & Mayo, 2007) such as when speaking into the public a publically morally and emotionally charged controversial issue (Noelle-Neumann & Petersen, 2004). This self-censorship becomes silence and directly links the psych-social to the public (Noelle-Neumann, 1974; 1984; 1991; NoelleNeumann & Petersen, 2004). Silencing death or emotions effectively segregates the self from the public. A person no longer perceives him or herself to belong to a social world when that world does not communicate a willingness to hear his or her story. Thus, persons censor themselves for fear of being excluded or cut. This fear of being cut off trumps the damage done in silencing ones need to communicate morally or emotionally charged issues within
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themselves. This silence disconfirms people whose situation merits a response in a culturally unpopular but important experience, such as fear or death. People censor themselves and so suffer in silence when they perceive a lack of social support to discuss their grief. Lewis (1961) described his own experiences with self- and culture- censure after his wife died, perhaps the bereaved ought to be isolated in special settlements like lepers. To some Im worse than an embarrassment. I am a deaths head (pp. 12-13). Helmrath and Steinitz (1978) reported instances of family and friends sidestepping references to the bereaveds loss, and called this sidestepping a conspiracy of silence (p. 788). Silverman and Silverman (1979) noted people self-censure because they cannot resolve the discrepancy between their emotional desires and the reality of the death (p. 438). Beach (1995) found that families stifled communication altogether as a way to protect each other from the topic of death. Significantly, Irwin (1991) noted that people self-censor grief due to societal pressures and perceptions that expressing grief and emotion inappropriately indulges the self. Alternately, Walsh and McGoldrick (1991) claimed that families who used direct communication and mutually recognized their loss and its impact on them faired well in grief. In other words, people counter silence shrouding death, emotions, and loss when they communicate in relationships to assuage death fears, rather than to avoid them. On this point, Bosticco and Thompson (2005) suggested families uphold the value of communication in the grief process (p. 258), or to confirm people in end-of-life by listening to their loss accounts. On a sociocultural level, what does it mean to confirm peoples loss experiences as they present them to be? Performance Narrative Ethos Performance narratives may break the silence shrouding death assuming that people may rehearse death when they perform (see Blau, 1982/1983; 1990; Phelan, 1997). Performance
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ethics mainly involve being aware that the intent to create an aesthetic text involves the intent to influence socio-cultural norms (see Conquergood, 1983a; 1985; 1998; Pelias & VanOosting, 1987). Performances lofty goals, such as to change society, to discover the self, and to heal from broken experiences requires research to maintain a greater responsibility to performance ethos and discourse (Langellier, 1985). Performance ethics apply to all performance medium (Langellier). Performance media symbolically extend the self as a way of being in the world. To oversimplify, if someone takes on a character as a way of being authentic and then performs that character in theater, then the performance medium is the stage and the text the character portrayed on the stage. In this study, the performance medium is the blog, which coordinates and performs remembrance poems and photographs to a public (see Chapters 3-4). Creating personal narratives challenge cultural norms to take a womans life seriously (Carter, 1985), which resonates with confirmation. For instance, feminist theater regards performance as the dialogic responsibility to express emotions and experiences to find common ground and then act with others (Carter). Narrative imperatives call researchers to distinguish between the narrator, the narrative, and the narrated (Maynes, Pierce, & Laslett, 2008) and yet find a way to do so holistically (Leavy, 2009). Resonating with dialogues ethos to respond (Baker Ohler, 2008), performance narratives ethos is to take social and moral responsibility over ones intent to create aesthetic texts (Conquergood, 1983a; 1985; 1998; Pelias & VanOosting, 1987). The aesthetic infers engaging culture through a text with design elements that resonate to the ways culture normalizes beauty and appearance. Performance narrative imperatives call people to be aware that their memory and writing forge meaning and persuade their public. The performance narrative ethos for this study considers how to understand creativity in a material world, where the self-activity of creating things insists on putting life back into a given frame
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(Bell, 2007), a relevant behavior when considering performing loss, death, and fear. Overall, essential to performance ethos includes awareness of the intent to create these aesthetic texts; the intent communicates a choice to persuade the audience of the certain way of being and thinking. From a therapeutic perspective, loss narratives highlight how people experience their unmet expectations as situated in the unchangeable, such as death (Mattingly, 1998). This view assumes a therapeutic ethos to performing loss narratives. As Schechner (1993) contended, performance, with all its tensions, misgivings, aspirations, and process, provides a best way to love and struggle with the other in and outside of the self. Ultimately, this study assumes it primary to respond to people in end-of-life through a relational, creative, and culturally-engaging approach. This imperative to respond builds from the performance narrative ethos to be aware of the impact that performers intent to create aesthetic texts has on their audience. In other words, an ethical response to loss includes responding by performing narrative for a therapeutic purpose. Theoretical Frameworks This study focuses on the inside world of emotion, or fear, the socio-cultural world of contexts, or end-of-life, and the in-between world of mediating emotions and end-of-life through digital performance narratives. This study draws on performance narrative frameworks to understand how people signify and make sense of their emotional and loss experiences. Narrative People approach human suffering meaningfully and with sensitivity when they rely on a communication framework for storytelling, where attention to human suffering means attention to stories (Mattingly, 1998, p. 1). Narrative frameworks provide a way to understand identity and therapeutic uses in loss. Narrative studies the ways that people experience the world in and through their stories (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). Narratology, or the study of narrative,
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involves knowing how people seek clarity about their selves and experiences through performing vignettes of their lives (Rosenwald, 1996). Narrative researchers study lived experiences and life stories as a narrator attaches meaning to those experiences (Geertz, 1986; Turner, 1982). The act of narrating experience means organizing and communicating a context and event in the narrators every day life (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). Context matters to narrating change (Langellier, 1985; Pepper & Wildy, 2009), where understanding how people respond to and resolve unexpected life changes constitutes a goal for this study and for narrative therapy (see Mattingly, 1998). Essentially, a story expresses how and why life changes (McKee, 2003, p. 52), where narratives show a sequence of events, or turning points, and how those turning points contribute to changes in the narrators identity, choices, and relationships (Denning, 2005; Maynes, Laslett, & Pierce, 2008; McAdams, 1993; McKee, 2003). Narrators transform people as they narrate and experience turning points in their lives (Denning, 2005; Peterson & Langellier, 2006). As narratives promote and describe change, narratives organize experience as movement, or the antithesis to death. Performance narrative provides a vehicle that takes us to a place other than where we usually are (Bolt, 2004, p. 190) and so provide an emergent story. This story resounds with moral constructs, a persuasive and aesthetic appeal, and an ongoing conversation (Ruminiski, 2008, p. 113) that reveals much about peoples social roles and contexts (Langellier & Peterson, 2004; Peterson & Langellier, 2006). This theme for continuity illumines how people understand critical life events (see Webster & Mertova, 2007). Narratives show a story of growth and tension as narrators revise, include, and exclude certain details (Josselson, 1996). Given this transformative quality, narrative provides a beneficial research method for trauma studies (McNiff, 1998; Leavy, 2009). Historically,
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narrative draws on interdisciplinary scholarship and provides an intervention for helping people move from trauma to recovery (Polkinghorne, 1988; Mattingly, 1998). For example, Glazer and Marcum (2003) found that storytelling and other creative expressions, such as art, helped children to express and process grief, effectively breaking what Bosticco and Thompson (2005) called a culture of silence shrouding the topic. Glazer and Marcum (2003) observed that cognitive development can limit a childs grief expression. However, stories allowed children to lose themselves in the story, and so ease the process of making sense of a new situation (e.g., death and the support group, p. 137). As stories eased tension, stories provided Rogers (1989; 1994) safe and creative environment for children to participate with others in working through their loss. In this way, storytelling imparted a therapeutic value where the processing of grief can be aided by the use of narrative and art (Glazer & Marcum, 2003, p. 137). In what ways does storytelling and art benefit adults experiencing loss? For starters, narratives create and express identity (Scheibe, 1986; McAdams, 1993) and so provide a way for people to present themselves and their experiences to the world (Ochberg, 1994). This act of performing narrative imparts agency as people need to tell stories to be who they are (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; McAdams, 1993) and so persuades people of the experiences and identity as they narrate them to be (Garro & Mattingly, 2000). Recalling confirmation, narratives then give a text that calls people, culture, and society to respond to the narrator who has situated the self in the text. In so doing, storytelling opens doors formerly locked by self- or cultural censor to highlight peoples innermost circle, or that core part of them that influences their surface behaviors, but otherwise remains unseen by others (Altman & Taylor, 1973). Narrative shows the self as in suspense between life experiences and therapeutic plots, or how people navigate the social drama between broken expectations, painful experiences, and finding ways to continue
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living (Mattingly, 1998). Put another way, narrative performs a coherent (Polkinghorne, 1988) and discontinuous (Anzalda, 1987; Mattingly, 1998) self to a culture formerly out of touch. Performance narrative as a psychotherapeutic strategy (Mattingly, 1998; Polkinghorne, 1988) and transformative process sounds an appealing intervention for end-of-life contexts and fear studies. The emphasis on personal change relates to autoethnographic performance narrative in loss situations (see Chapter 3). Psychotherapy that utilizes narrative helps people to construct meaningful experiences (Polkinghorne, 1988). Therapeutically, storytelling provides a healing process (DeSalvo, 1999; Pennebaker, 1990) for persons experiencing tumult. For instance, narrative enriches persons when they retrospect to create a narrative that satisfies their current situation (Polkinghorne, 1988). Importantly, storytelling means investigating the ways that peoples words and events influence their actions and motives and vice-versa (Mattingly, 1998). People reflect and tell their intent, desire, or beliefs, and the ways that these motivations lead to action (Mattingly). People need to narrate in order to act and vice-versa (Mattingly). In narrative therapy, narrative helps persons to locate their desire when they experience loss (Mattingly), meaning that narrative promotes the potential self (Mattingly). This potential self makes the narrative difference because narrative addresses persons broken and segmented experiences and helps people to envision a hopeful future amid trauma (Mattingly; Polkinghorne, 1988). Put another way, narrative provides a therapeutic approach to loss by understanding the correlations between choice, action, and healing. Performance The act of performing narrative means the act of performing words that do things (Garro & Mattingly, 2000, p. 261). Performance studies provide a framework to study the ways that people empower themselves and envision a hopeful future in loss. Performance and
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narrative together bring the text to life. Performance texts, broadly conceived, include visual narratives and any other meaning-making symbol created and shared by people or culture (Bakhtin, 1986). Building from Goffman (1959), Turner (1987) defined performance as a social drama, or the relationship between peoples thoughts, emotions, and experiences. This social drama creates genres from which people draw meaning and influence from the social dramas that created them (Turner). People perform narratives based on their daily social experiences (Conquergood, 1983b; Turner, 1987) and people perform every day life without a clear demarcation from the performance (Blau, 1982/1983; 1990). Resonating with narrative, when people perform every day life, they create and express identity (Carlson, 2003; Conquergood, 1981; Scheibe, 1986). Phelan (1993) described performance as the ways that people represent their identities and experiences without reproducing them, which means that performance narratives make a way for people to be in the world (Ochberg, 1994). In what ways do people perform narrative, and what differentiates narrative from performance? This question may arise from the histories by which the disciplines of performance and narrative developed and the subsequent camps that separated the processes and media with which people tell stories, such as via text or oral (see Bauman & Briggs, 1990; Blau 1982/1983; 1990; Conquergood, 1998; Langellier, 1985; States, 1996). In any case, performance and narrative overlap in their regard for identity, experience, and process. As with narrative, performance involves the ways that people communicate their everyday lives (Conquergood, 1983b). Performance associates with narrative by redoing experience via narrative (Peterson & Langellier, 2006). Significantly, the narrator, by narrating, performs. Conditions for a performance to occur include the need for a performer, event, audience, and performance (Langellier, 1985). Importantly, peoples artistic intent and interaction with a text and public
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constitutes performance (Conquergood, 1983a; 1985; 1998; Pelias & VanOosting, 1987; States, 1996). Performance assumes poiesis and process (Conquergood, 1991; Bell, 2008), suggesting that people learn, become, and make a difference through creative expression. In other words, performance involves a process as mediated by event, identity, and intent. Performance also involves performer and audience presence (Auslander, 1999; Bell, 2008) and, most of all, a tripartite interaction between the performer, audience, and sociocultural and political realms (Carlson, 2003). As Schechner (1993) observed, performance enacts behavior as heightened and publicly displayed. The conversations become an interactive domain where people communicate varied ideas amid shared interests and solutions (Prellwitz, 2008). This public space yields a process for people to communicate community via sharing texts and relationships (Prellwitz). Thus, performance speaks relationship, socio-culture, and politics into, and exacts each from, the public domain. Since performance narratives bear public implications, it is important to understand the deliberate and persuasive process by which people perform narrative. Bell (2008) defined symbol use as being situated, mediated, learned, and enacted. Performance narratives rely on rhetorical devices that require awareness as to the ways that people use symbols to influence others via persuasion (Bell). Text includes all cultural systems and virtually anything in the world that can be read (Bell; J. Caputo, personal communication, September 27, 2010). For example, culture operates as a text, where any culture... can be defined as a system-in-motion of signs and symbols (Boon, 1986, p. 239). People create signs and symbols that in turn create culture and the culture normalizes or rejects the performance text. Performance texts mark and unmark peoples social dramas with rhetoric and symbols (Phelan, 1993), such as by images. Bolt (2004) wrote that performance art encompasses the monstrous performative ways that
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images leak into the world and produce it in someone unforeseen way. This is the power of the work of art (p. 188). In this way, performance art influences peoples everyday lives. Turner (1987) wrote that performing experience involves interrupting the level surface of ongoing social life, with its interactions, transactions, reciprocities, its customs for making regular, orderly sequences of behavior with passions, compelled by the volitions, overmastering at times in the rational considerations (p. 90). In other words, performative experience does not occur as a tidy linear plot whose end meets expectations, but as a discursive, yet culturally normalized, way to fashion and wield power via symbols. This study explores a digital texts power in shaping socio-cultural norms for communicating a loss experience. Technology influences and highlights socio-cultural norms for performance. Storytelling needs the digital to be a public and performative process (Bratteteig, 2008). Concurring with Turners (1987) social drama, people create theater in their every day interactions online (Dixon, 2007). Loss experiences often occur in tandem with culturally sanctioned mourning rituals. Rituals, yet another broad-based term, include symbolic meaning systems, performance acts and processes, and relationships and experiences (Schechner, 1993). Schechner suggested that the future of ritual in any given society depends on ritual being embedded in a mediated context. Digital performance narratives mediate context, a context which in turn mediates the ritual to a public. The public includes a diverse and unpredictable audience, and institutional context that often makes performance rituals, such as public memorials, political (Santino, 2003). People design communication systems, which in turn influence the ways that people communicate, and so creates an ongoing feedback loop (Conrad & Poole, 2005). For instance, digital production and performance processes occur in human designed Socio-Technical systems
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(ST), which shape how people communicate. ST assesses technology from a holistic paradigm: social, psychological, environmental, and technical outcomes (Trist & Bamforth, 1951). The digital mediates the sense-making context, the production process, and performance outcomes, making the digital value-laden (Bratteteig) such as when mediated texts make memory an afterthought as memory changes each time people interact with the texts online (Auslander, 1999). The act of publicizing a ritual in technology changes the social text to a political one. Online performance narratives challenge the criteria of what constitutes a performance, such as need for the body and audience to be spatially or temporally present (Lindemann, 2005). Technological performances are not the same as face-to-face interactions (Lindemann). However, online narratives do not exist as disembodied because the performance implicates the performers body on the other end of the virtual (Langellier & Peterson, 2004; Peterson, 2008). By challenging performance criteria, technology allows researchers to challenge the primacy of the body as a way of knowing (Chvasta, 2003) and so seek new ways to conceptualize performance. This shift in embodiment benefits narratives dealing with death, where a body no longer exists. Mainly, online performances frame the way that people negotiate relationships, including those memorialized and mediatized via technology (Lindemann, 2005). Significantly, Blau (1982/1983; 1990) and Phelan (1997) argued that people perform to rehearse dying. Performance and technology are burial practices with very old motivations: to hold onto life, to presence, to existence, to communication (Bell, 2008, p. 263). In other words, people perform and create technology in response to their mortality awareness. Further, public memorials situate the deceased person in the land of the living (Santino, 2003) implicating the performer and the audience to keep the deceased alive in the performance (see Hornsby-Minor, 2007). Yet mediated memory and rituals only last so long as an audience interacts with them
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(Chvasta, 2003) because performances, as their audiences and performers, live on borrowed time. At some point performance immediacy must end (Blau, 1982/1983; 1990). Put more simply, people know death in relation to life via performance (Chavsta, 2003), yet know their performance, as their life, is temporary (Blau 1982/1983; 1990; Phelan, 1997). Even performing an end to a story, such as when a blogger stops posting to a blog, gives the experience of death (Chavsta, 2003). Performance testifies to life by looking like death because the life itself, as the performance, will eventually end and thus seem to be chronically left behind (Blau, 1982/1983; 1990). Thus, performances in-between remains that tension by which people tug and pull between life and death and amid life/death awareness, almost as Arnetts (1994) existential homelessness. This notion end again refers to epistemology as mortality awareness mediated and precluded by performance (Blau, 1982/1983; 1990). Furthermore, people write their mortal rituals, memories, selves, and arguably others into being by blogging (Chavsta, 2003). In this light, perhaps performing mediatized loss does not mean that people rehearse, reproduce, or represent death, but that people strive to reach for life in light of their knowledge of death through their intent and action to reframe it. This framework moves people into an uneasy space between expecting and observing what actually happens in life/death (Blau, 1982/1983; 1990), which resonates with therapeutic narratives emphasis on reconciling unmet expectations (Mattingly, 1998). On the bright side, people perform on borrowed time by making the performance moment exemplar. In this way, performance invites people to say no to death to say yes to life (Chavsta, 2005). The question remains, How do performance narratives mediate emotional or loss experiences, what do narratives reveal about the experience, and do performance narratives make it possible to rehearse death and birth life?
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Fear of Death
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One must understand the nature of fear to explore how people perform their fear of death. Emotions such as fear flag that which a person values (Pugmire, 1994). Anxiety perpetuates disconnect (Palmer, 2000) and so prevents persons from experiencing a whole and productive life (Wheatley & Kellner-Rogers, 1999; Witt, 2007). Fear dominates, divides, and confuses peoples consciousness (Fromm, 1966; Osborn, 1965). In Freires (1970) terms, fear oppresses people. For instance, persons maintain uncertainty as a deer in headlights to feel safe (Bradac, 2001) by withdrawing their commitments to their goals. People strive harder to predict the outcomes of their choices, often catastrophizing the future, or believing that the worst case scenario will occur (Garner, 1997). This striving perpetuates the illusion that a person can control life by withdrawing from it (Palmer, 1990) and, most importantly, indicates a persons sense of lack of control. By withdrawing, people fulfill what Palmer called a scarcity prophecy and so miss opportunities to change their situation for the better. This fear-precipitated downward spiral opposes peoples need to draw nearer together, to communicate, and to make decisions in end-of-life (see Blackall, Simms, & Green, 2009). Terror Management Theory (TMT) Terror Management Theory (TMT) represents a mammoth theory that studies death terror. Heine, Harihara, and Niiya (2002) described TMT as one of the boldest and most farreaching theories regarding the self-concept (p. 187). TMT suggested that people fear death, an inherent human experience (Castano & Dechesne, 2005), because they deny their own mortality (Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 1991). A person can experience this denial in emotionally disturbing ways such as anxiety and fear (Consedine & Magai, 2003; McKracken & Keogh, 2009; Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 1991).
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Mortality awareness coexists with human efforts to live and to relate with others. Tom Pyszczynski, Sheldon Solomon, and Jeff Greenberg introduced TMT after reading books written by the late cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, The Birth and Death of Meaning (1971) and The Denial of Death (1973). Researchers have since developed TMT through empirical works. TMT explores social behavior by identifying and testing mechanisms people use to moderate their fear of death when they experienced death reminders, or mortality salience (MS). MS mechanisms fall under two categories: identity (1) and culture (2), or self-esteem and cultural (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986; Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Solomon, Rosenblatt, Veeder, Kirkland, & et al., 1990; Solomon, Greenberg, Pyszczynski, 1991). For instance, Harmon-Jones, Simon, Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Solomon, and McGregor (1997) found that persons with a higher self-esteem experienced lower degrees of MS effects. Castano and Dechesne (2005) explored the ways that groups reified, or made real, their members social identity. They found that participants used social identity to moderate their death terror. Social identity includes peoples existence, self- and group- esteem, each of which helps persons to counter their sense of isolation when they think of death. The degree to which persons felt more connected to their selves and collective experienced greater self-esteem, and so experienced less anxiety and uncertainty about death (Castano & Dechesne). Peoples beliefs also mediate death terror (Taubman-Ben-Ari, Findler, & Mikulincer, 2002). For instance, peoples faith in God provides attachment in loss (Granqvist, Mikulincer, & Shaver, 2010), which may explain why people cling to their worldview when they fear death. Arndt, Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Solomon, and Simon (1997) discovered that participants thought of death less when they defended their worldviews. Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Solomon, Rosenblatt, Veeder, Kirkland, et. al (1990) discovered that persons respond to MS by bolstering
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH their cultural worldview and to show preference to their group members who share this
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worldview, or their in-group. Castano, Yzerbyt, Paladino, and Sacchi (2002) found that in-group affiliation provided symbolic existence in persons who faced death reminders. Persons cling to their social group and worldview affiliation because doing so tells them that they will survive and continue to exist after they die. Group membership, worldviews, and self-esteem have their drawbacks even though they can offset death terror. For example, perceived social support can lead to in-group bias. Persons socially identify with others who share and endorse the same cultural worldview (Halloran & Kashima, 2004) and cling to their social group (Castano, 2004) when confronted by death reminders. In-group includes groups that share worldviews and ethnic identities. For example, Arndt, Greenberg, Schimel, Pyszczynski, and Solomon (2002) found that persons mediated death terror through identifying with the same gender and/or ethnicity. Persons experienced MS when they interacted with persons outside their group (Harmon-Jones, Greenberg, Solomon, & Simon, 1996). People fear being excluded, separated from, and silenced from their group when they think of death (Case & Williams, 2004). Put together, when reminded of death, people fear being separated from their cultural group, which drives them to cling to their socio-cultural group and to defend their shared views more even to the point of excluding out-groups, although not always (Dechesne, Janssen, & Van Knippenberg, 2000). Such clinging bears social justice implications in socio-cultural contexts that demand critical decision-making skills. Pyszcyzynski, et al. (1996) discovered that participants exaggerated consensus when faced with MS. Arndt, Lieberman, Cook, and Solomon (2005) found that MS prompted persons to make legal decisions and to alter their judgments toward criminal offenders, due process concerns, and compliance with judicial admonitions based on
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their cultural worldview and group affiliation, rather than the evidence at hand. Greenberg, Simon, Pyszczynski, Solomon, and Chatel (1992) found that MS intensified negative reactions in persons against groups whose views or culture threatened theirs. Greenberg, Schimel, Martens, Solomon, and Pyszcznyski (2001) observed that mortality reminders led to racism, where white participants were more likely to show favoritism towards white racists. Thus, death terror can generate conflict between groups with differing social backgrounds and cultural practices, such as approaches to caregiving or death. This study explores the experience of vulnerable population, or someone situated in an end-of-life context. TMTs political implications do not bode well for just treatment of such persons assuming that end-of-life caregiving contexts remind people of death (Katz & Genevay, 2002; Neimeyer, Wittowski, & Moser, 2004; Peck, 2009). The dying symbolize mortality and so remind persons of death, effectively triggering death fear (Isaksen, 2002; Katz & Genevay, 2002). For example, Martens, Goldenberg, and Greenberg (2005) found that people used ageism to buffer death terror. Namely, persons viewed the elderly as a threat because such persons reminded participants that death is inevitable, the body fallible, and that their bases for mediating death terror and self-esteem are transitory and temporary (Martens, et al., 2005). Isaksen (2002) based this dynamic on peoples fear of animality, or losing control over ones bodily functions, and of being insignificant. These threats reduced elders to subhumans when the aged persons deteriorating physical and cognitive abilities symbolize death (Isaksen). Isaksen signified these threats as a decrease in productivity, competence, strength, quickness, and mental agility. Fear of death can then impact quality of care. For instance, Peck (2009) found that oncology workers anxiety about their own death directly reduced their communication of advance directives to their constituents, suggesting that
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persons death anxiety disrupts communication in end-of-life (Neimeyer, et. al 2004) because people who fear death avoid the dying. Therefore, it remains essential to understand how a society normalizes approaches to communicate death terror, which can build a just society or tear it down (Tam, Chiu, & Lau, 2007). Considering resource allocation, Tam, et. al asserted that fear of death perpetuated social injustice, especially with high MS and nationalism in war time. During wartime, injustice occurred when persons showed preference toward their socio-cultural group by withholding resources from group outsiders (Tam, et. al). Given current healthcare reform, concerns for resource allocation in an economic downturn run high. If end-of-life contexts remind people of death, and so precipitate a downward spiral of survivalist behaviors, then the state of caregiving for dying persons looks bleak. To offset this dysfunction, eliminating the potential for anxiety can reduce the need to defend worldviews when reminded of death (Greenberg, Martens, Jonas, Eisenstadt, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 2003). The overarching imperative for death and fear studies, then, must address peoples fears to foster socially just and beneficial communication. TMT Challenges People in clinical spaces must understand how social context and research method inform praxis (Meyers, 2007). If TMT is right, then people experiencing fear of death in end-of-life contexts are likely to fail to make meaning of their experience in a socially constructive way without understanding their cultural influence or the social norms that shape their experience. Although TMT provides a well researched, established, and replicated theory, it possesses inherent challenges and potentially destructive assumptions. For instance, TMT logic relies on the rational frame (Cohen, Solomon, Maxfield, Pyszczynski, and Greenberg, 2004) and so may privilege one way of knowing over others. Perhaps TMTs quantitative approach is popular with
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH persons and contexts that already prefer the rational frame, such as medical organizations (Morgan-Witte, 2005), which comprise a context where people experience end-of-life.
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Additionally, TMTs quantitative approach has relied primarily on lab and experimental studies whose findings may not translate to actual end-of-life contexts. TMT also risks reducing, or sociologizing and individualizing, the individual as separate (Hogg & Abrams, 1988) and by categorizing them as Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynskis (2004) cultural animal. On the former, TMT disconnects the self and sees the self as situated on the outside looking in, instead of in the in-between. On the latter, TMT assumes a survival mindset, where perhaps researchers found what they assumed. Even Mikulincer and Florian (1997), forerunners in TMTs attachment styles, questioned TMTs primary notion that people defend themselves against the threat of death by assuming a conservative and egotistic attitude toward life, and questioned if people have additional human needs yet to be explored. Indeed, TMT can go no further than reductionist claims when it believes that people are driven by survival instinct alone where only the socially fit and the well-grouped survive. Not only that, but TMT equivocates attachment to love (see Mikulincer, Florian, & Hirschberger, 2003; Mieja, Kalaska, & Adamczyk, 2006); love involves choice, and not a survival instinct to cling to people and relationships to buffer death anxiety (see Florian, Mikulincer, & Hirschberger, 2003). TMTs own researchers acknowledge the theory lacks solutions to offer people who fear death (Ein-Dor, Mikulincer, Doron, & Shaver, in-press). Since everyone eventually dies, then research approaches in end-of-life must consider other imperatives such as quality of life, holism, and love. While Weick (1979) defined a strong theory as generalizable, simple, and accurate, TMTs sweeping claims risk overlooking the excesses in research that may provide more beneficial and enriching information.
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Given these considerations, TMT provides an awkward fit for researching populations made vulnerable by societies that construct worth based on physical health, performative ability, age, reasoning capacity, socioeconomic productivity, and emotional fortitude. Overall, TMT paints one picture of fear of death in end-of-life care giving contexts, even while admitting that fear of death is a variable, multidimensional, and complex phenomenon (Florian & Mikulincer, 1997a). To counter such limitations, death studies must create a new agenda (see Neimeyer, 2004). Arts-based research provides such a possibility. Yet, arts-based research must sustain aesthetic critique if it wants to critique the pitfalls of science (Hunter, 1999), which includes understanding how the arts and humanities and science themselves operate as texts. Hunter suggested understanding rhetoric situates textualities, such as the arts or sciences, with knowledge and so recommended avoiding a pendulum swing to the arts. Olson (2006) suggested that such rhetorical scholarship can bridge the arts and humanities and social sciences. In other words, even research texts shape meaning and so influence peoples experiences and social dramas. While death terror may seem the phenomenon to explore, perhaps death terror symbolizes other dynamics that death studies must discover based on existing situated knowledge. While humans may be fated to die, people may still perceive themselves to have agency to influence events by their actions and choices. The distinction here involves understanding how persons attribute life changes such as death to external or internal causes (see Burrus & Roese, 2006). In other words, how do people perform their affective, aesthetic, and agentic lives in light of death, and how do those performances influence their experiences? Performing End-of-life Experiences If emotions contribute to making consciousness, or a way of knowing (Damasio, 2000), and if consciousness sustains human creativity in communication (Damasio), then emotions,
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including fear, fuel creative expression. Creative approaches to grief work may mediate cultural norms and assign meaning to loss (Mattingly, 1998). Combining creative and scholarship works can further close the gap between theory and praxis (Conquergood, 2002); Chvasta (2005) noted praxis-oriented scholarship to be a necessity for performance studies in the digital age. Yet, what happens to the relationship when someone dies? Hornsby-Minor (2007) regarded herself as a carrier of her great grandmothers performance. Perhaps such performances rely on the audience to take on the story of the deceased as well. When performing loss, are people only carriers of the stories of, or embodying the rituals for, those who died, or does the performance delve deeper? Therapeutically, people who perceive connections and assign meaning to their loss experience less anguish over time (Frank, 1995). Even so, therapeutic intent in research must avoid romanticizing or minimizing death as a painless, fluid, transcendent, pleasant, or good experience because such views perpetuate sociocultural expectations and may not confirm peoples actual experiences (Adams, 1979; Frank, 2009; Mattingly, 1998). Additionally, arts-based therapy does not work for everyone (Irwin, 1991), and there exist limits to expecting research to result in therapy (see Chapter 5). This study explores the ways that digital narratives perform fear of death in end-of-life caregiving contexts and how the performance process assigns meaning to the elusive and complex topic of fear of death as performed and mediated online via photographs, poems, and a blog. What do these narratives perform about fear of death, broken experiences, and healing in loss? Do performance processes benefit people experiencing emotional upheaval in loss, and, if so, how, why, and what are the socio- cultural and political implications of assigning meaning to loss and fear of death via the digitally mediated arts?
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH III: SCOPE AND METHODOLOGY Scope
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This study informs universal experiences as situated in the self: mortality and mortality awareness. Death is universal, and fear is a human emotion. Thus, grief work maintains a large scope, and death terror remains a complex phenomenon to study (Florian & Mikulincer, 1997a). Romanyshyn (1999) compared mourning to a shipwreck leading to a lost grip on the world. Persons experience fear of death as one way to respond to death (Florian & Mikulincer, 1997a; Mikulincer, Florian, & Hirschberger, 2003). Grief can feel as fear (Lewis, 1961). Emotions such as fear flag that which one values (Pugmire, 1994). People experience fear of death in varying degrees as anticipatory dying, terror of their own death, or worry of the death of a loved one. This fear can exist before, during, and, for the survivors, after death occurs. This study seeks to understand such a dynamic and proposes to fill a gap in current death terror studies by using a creative approach, or studying the performance narratives of a blog, photographs, and poems that I created during the timeframe of Grandmas death and our familys mourning rituals. Grandma died in January 2010, the month that I began applied research class. By February, I had already created the performance text on my blog: poems that I wrote and photographs that I created during her final dying stages, the graveside service, and the life celebration service, and then selected those to post on my blog Text and Pixel Reflections. Importantly, I promoted this blog via social networks and email to family and friends, and the blog allows public access for anyone online to read. This study explores how I used digital art to create meaning, to analyze and interpret, and to re-present my experience (Leavy, 2009).
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Research Assumptions
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This study assumes that autoethnographic impressionistic performance narrative provides an ethical research strategy for studying end of life and fear experiences. Autoethnographic narrative explores emotions (Ellis, 1997) and identity (Coffey, 1999) as intertwined with how people understand their relationships and experiences (Ellis, 1999; 2004; Krohn, 2007). TMTs empirical works classified fear of death as a management motif. This study assumes that exploring fear of death in end-of-life caregiving contexts requires dialogic sensibilities, communication confirmation, performance narrative ethos, and a holistic approach. Dialogue provides a rich ethic of care for performing creativity and meaning in order to respond to peoples suffering (Baker Ohler, 2008), to be present, and to impart hope (Hyde, 2004). Dialogic ethos in research means that I stay with the process and text and see it through. Impressionistic autoethnography includes other voices in the text, albeit still filtered through the researcher via the writing (Chase, 1996). Digital performance narratives show reframing, continuity, and provide a mediated space to understand how I performed fears and loss to my public without needing to be physically present. I also refer to dialogue when audience interacts with the blog concurring with Chvasta (2003), who suggested that a performance occurs any time a person interacts with a text. This interactivity, the audio, photographs, and poems of and by other people combined with my photographs, poems, and blog make this study impressionistic. Significant to this study, people must participate in both the ritual and the suffering that it precludes for ritual to be effective (Russell, 2004). Ironically, sufferings strength implicates power in socio- political and cultural norms as suffering inverts hierarchies. Rituals potentially heal those suffering in part by questioning the power structures that produce or amplify suffering (Russell), resounding a dialogic ethic to stay with people in suffering (Hyde, 2004) and to honor
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each persons voice to confront the ways that culture and society oppress people (Freire, 1970). Here, compassion comes with engaging suffering. Compassion as a participatory choice involves more than a knee-jerk emotional response to pleasure or pain (Russell, 2004). Performing suffering by participating with ritual contributes to community as people support each other through sharing traditions and suffering (Russell). This studys approach fully participates with socio-cultural norms for mourning rituals and reframes and designs its own mourning ritual via the performance in the blog. In addition to participating with ritual, this study assumes it a holistic strategy to understand the ways that the rhetorics inform how and why people assign meaning to loss, a process that impacts peoples experiences and decisions. Thus, performance as holistic also must carry political clout assuming that the self as social also must be cultural and political to be whole. Fernandez (1986) considered wholeness in relation to communities who interact with texts, and defined experience as the elaborately achieved in an argument of images (p. 179). This interactivity constitutes the blogs civic engagement. A holistic approach to research involves bridging the art-science divide (Leavy, 2009) by understanding the ways that any research text serves as a rhetoric, or a symbol that influences the ways people understand knowledge and assign meaning to findings (Hunter, 1999). This concept relates to rhetorical leadership (Olson, 2006), where this study assumes it necessary to acquire rhetorical understanding in all research assuming that even the method provides a text. Drawing closer, peoples experiences coalesce as a whole, and do not exist in tidy compartments. Carlson (2003) suggested performance studies take on a holistic view of performance by no longer separating the performer from the audience, the performer from the performed, and the individual from the performer. Performance and storytelling provides an
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approach that makes the narrator and researcher also the audience. Storytelling becomes the site of interaction and helps a text to transition from an I to a We mindset (Peterson & Langellier, 2006). Even telling stories in a family constitutes performance (Pollack, 1990). This mindset imparts social identity and agency (Langellier & Peterson, 2004; Peterson & Langellier, 2006), which again links holism with socio- cultural and political action. Traditional autoethnography via my reflections and discussions of findings (see Chapters 4 and 5) provides the I while impressionistic autoethnography provides the We. This study assumes it imperative to bridge each mindset to experience holism. On the therapeutic facet, storytelling puts people at ease in new and stressful environments (Glazer & Marcum, 2003). For some, the writing process heals the rupture that the self and families experience in loss (Pearce, 2008). Storytelling provides a way to give the bereaved a sense of connection with the deceased and an opportunity to experience unified selves and relationships (Bosticco & Thompson, 2005). When facing death, physical healing seems impossible, so this research must address emotional and relational well-being. Expressing emotions in writing heals (Pennebaker, 1990). Healing narratives link feelings to events and reveal insights from painful experiences (DeSalvo, 1999). Writing empowers persons with agency to understand loss when one might otherwise feel out of control, thus reducing death anxiety (Bosticco & Thompson, 2005). Moreover, storytelling in healthcare contexts provides a process to realize this academic institutions mission, or that students influence social change via expressing their gifts (Gonzaga University, 2010a). Such research harnesses the power of storytelling to motivate others to social change, awareness, and hope (Denning, 2005; Denzin, 2003a; 2003b; McAdams, 1993; McKee, 2003, June). Again, holism necessitates a sociocultural and political self. Poignantly, Howarth and Hinchcliffe (2007) described creative
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expressions power as speaking to loved ones from the grave. Mainly, narrative provides an accessible way for readers to interact and understand sensitive and disturbing life issues (Leavy, 2009), such as fear of death and loss. Methodology Performance narrative re-presents and reframes experience in aesthetic form (Pelias & VanOosting, 1987). This study layers multiple narratives to improve credibility by preventing an over-reliance on one narrative source. Digital stories include visual narratives that synthesize images, video, and audio recordings of photographs, music, and text. See Appendix C for the full text of the blog used for this study. This study uses traditional and impressionistic autoethnography performance narratives to participate fully with fear experiences in loss via digitized performance art as posted on a blog, which produces photographs and poems written during this studys timeframe (see Procedure section). This study proposes to fill a gap in death terror research by seeing if autoethnographic narrative provides opportunities to benefit communication and reframe fear in end-of-life and so discover therapeutic interventions for persons struggling with fear and/or loss. Autoethnographic narrative allows researchers and readers to explore stories, experiences, epiphanies, and contexts (Creswell, 2007). Presently, autoethnographic research exists in two genres (Leavy, 2009): traditional and impressionistic. Traditional autoethnographic narrative begins with the researcher sharing personal experience and then relating the narrative to the research. Traditional autoethnography involves writing conclusions and narrative that transition from field text to research text (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). Impressionistic autoethnography, an emergent multimodal method, uses auto- and ethnographic research about others and the self. Either method appeals to researchers as writers because they
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emphasize process, identity, and an arts-driven study (Leavy, 2009), though impressionistic autoethnography may define autoethnography more accurately. While the term commonly refers to the self in culture (Grbich, 2007), autoethnography signifies an inner-outer and outerinner symbolic and social process as embedded in context, or the self in socio- cultural and political and the socio- cultural and political in the self, highlighting what Reed-Danahay (1997) called a blurred genre and voice. This study employs impressionistic autoethnographic narratives given the images, comments, embedded links, Grandmas poem, and audio files that I selected to post on the blog. These texts include other people as framed, or mediatized, through my production process. While I created most of the photographs, I include photographs that others took, such as the classic images and the ones of me with Grandma, which my husband usually photographed. In all photographic cases I post-produced the images with Photoshop Lightroom, which reframed the images via my selections for cropping, color, and exposure. Thus, impressionistic refers to others creating the content with me, though I remain the primary narrator. This study uses traditional autoethnography by including my self narrative as the sample of study and my reflections on what I have learned as part of the discussion of findings (see Chapters 4 and 5). This study embeds the research process within the psychotherapeutic tradition and narrative therapy (see Mattingly, 1998; Polkinghorne, 1988), which allows me to explore fear of death constructively by drawing on the ideals for mutual understanding, authentic growth, and creative freedom (Creswell, 2007; Rogers, 1989; 1994). The performance comes about due to aesthetic intent and identity: I created text and pixels on the blog, or the aesthetic text, with the intent to share my experience to an audience and to fashion my own mourning ritual.
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Autoethnographic Imperatives
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Autoethnographic research provides a way to understand the in-between processes, such as human perception and ethos, which influence knowledge and experience: Although risks are taken by any researcher using a personal experience approach such as autoethnography, there is a place in scholarship for shining the light of research where one stands for attempting to know ones own experience and sharing that knowledge. As qualitative researchers, willing to confess that reality is based on perception, why should we not examine more fully what constitutes our perceptions? (Yardley, 2006, p. 12) Denzin (2006) went so far as to suggest that autoethnographic narrative is the only ethical approach to use in research (as cited in Melina, 2008, p. 161). Autoethnography assumes that the researcher must draw near to a research phenomenon, resonating with Heshusius (1994), who suggested research shift from an objective stance to a participatory mindset. Performance autoethnography requires the researcher to participate with the social drama that she or he studies. For this study, this ethos means participating with ritual and suffering (Russell, 2004). For instance, Nelson-Becker (2006) took personal interest in her work as a participatory researcher by aspiring to foster an environment that nurtured her participants well-being through listening and being fully present via a holistic approach. Nelson-Beckers findings elevated her research role as a mutual participant in the end of life experience that she studied. Autoethnography proposes to carry a caregiving function (Bochner & Ellis, 2006, p. 111). Pepper and Wildy (2009) and Ellis (2004) described narratives as a holistic research strategy to care for peoples well-being. Pelias (2004) contended that a holistic emphasis (which he called resonance) comprises autoethnographic writings purpose. The autoethnographic concept of self as witness (Leavy, 2009) matches the dialogic ethic to be this moral witness (see
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Hauerwas & Vanier, 2008; Loudiy, 2008) and allows readers to identify with the narrator
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(Denning, 2005; Leavy, 2009). This imperative to care for and to witness people in loss reminds me to understand my fears before suffering with others to help them to do the same. Contrary to being self-indulgent, autoethnographic research moves beyond the life story to acknowledge context as central (Cole, 1992) by assuming that research occurs in a historical moment with others through the embodied, mediated, and socio- cultural and political self. Thus, autoethnographic imperatives include vulnerability (Ellis, 1999), or exposing the self who also spectates for a social purpose (Behar, 1996, p. 14). For Behar, such vulnerability persuades the researcher to perform autoethnographic narrative to jump into an intimacy of serious social issues (p. 14) without abusing their conscience, congruence, or power in doing so. In this way, autoethnography confronts cultural norms that judge peoples vocalized grief and emotion work as self-indulgent and so frees people to voice their experiences in a society that silences death narratives (see Bosticco & Thompson, 2005; Hawkins, 1999; Irwin, 1991). While the method marks and unmarks voice (see Chapter 5), the method at least carries a liberatory appeal. Creative research approaches require additional skills than other methods as the researcher creates the object of study, and so can be more rigorous. Autoethnography disrupts former research boundaries (see Kvale, 2002) by emerging new ones (Leavy, 2009). Generally speaking, researchers and writers work a dual role as content creators and audience (P. Takayoshi, personal communication, October 1, 2010), adding the challenge and benefit of multiple Is: narrator (Elliott, 2005), participant, critic, commentator, theoretician, audience, cultural contributor, and so on (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). In caregiving, autoethnographers work as a carer (Klugman, 2008), in family storytelling, the role of a relative (see Langellier & Peterson, 2004), and in academia, the role of researchers (Bochner, 1997; Hoppes, 2005).
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Autoethnographic Performance Narrative in End-Of-Life Care Giving Contexts In sensitive life situations such as end of life, autoethnographic performance narrative honors peoples emotions and experience. To accomplish this feat, autoethnographic researchers need fine-tuned sensitivity and to actually experience their serious subject matter. Ellis and Bochner (1999) recommended bringing personal narratives and emotion as research methods into medical social science. Dickson-Swift, James, Kippen, and Liamputtong (2009) found theoretical and empirical support that public health researchers did emotion work in their qualitative research. If qualitative researchers already do emotion work (Dickson, et. al, 2009), and if emotions provide a filter or framework for knowing (Carey, 1999; Pugmire, 1994), then autoethnography provides a means to bring emotions to the foreground. Autoethnographic narrative needs processes that encourage mutual caring (Denzin, 1997; Noddings, 1984), trust building (Ellis, 2004), and even friendship (Tillmann-Healy, 2003). Thus, this method heeds the dialogic ethic to respond to suffering persons (Baker Ohler, 2004; Hyde, 2004). Narrating the event in text and performing the experience symbolizes this ethos. Constructing such narratives requires a person to identify the significant over the trivial (Pepper & Wildy, 2009), a practice that teaches the researcher how to live by finding meaning in adversity (Bochner & Ellis, 2006). In end-of-life caregiving, narratives allow carers to identify divided areas in their lives and to empower themselves (Jones, 2001) through exercises in regaining their personal space, autonomy and sense of identity (p. 179). Autoethnography also helps people to heal and grow. Autoethnographic narratives foster growth in part by disrupting social norms and suggesting new and different ways to approach social problems (see Denzin, 1997). For instance, Bochner (1997), in his autoethnography, said that his fathers death led him to confront the divide between his academic and personal life.
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Pearce (2008) experienced the writing process as healing her and others ruptured identity during her mothers chronic illness and death while she and her sister cared for her mother. Constructing a narrative of my life and of my familys life enabled me to claim my life (p. 145), where reconstructing identity meant integrating difficult narratives into her life after her mother had died. Pearce found that her voice and person remained intact: Though my identity ruptured, I did not. Though my world was interrupted it did not end even when you have lost everything, you have not lost yourself (p. 145). Pearces insights contribute to a shift in cultural norms in loss. Autoethnographic narratives redirect focus to the self, potentially offsetting the tendency in grief accounts to overemphasize the deceased (Walter, 1996). Regarding fear of death, Hoppes (2005) explored autoethnographic narrative as transitioning from fear of death to an awareness of death when he cared for his father during his fathers end-of-life. From this awareness, Hoppes gained self-discovery about who he was, is, and, importantly, who he will become. This study explores empowerment or agency, continuity, and change as healing components to narrative (see Mattingly 1998; Polkinghorne, 1988; Garro & Mattingly, 2000), or how I performed fears of death in digitally mediated narratives when caring for Grandma, my self, and others in her end-of-life and mourning rituals. I consider how this learning process shaped my understanding of my identity, my healing, and my life course. Procedure Yukl (2006) recommended interpretive research triangulate its approaches to enhance credibility. While this study may not directly constitute a mixed methods approach, I suggest using multiple narrative samples, theoretical frameworks, and ethical assumptions to check and balance and better address the idiosyncrasies and varieties of the topic in question. I conduct my research via three qualitative approaches: autoethnography (Behar, 1996; Bochner & Ellis,
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2000; 2006; Creswell, 2007; Ellis, 1996; 1997; 1999; 2004; 2008), rhetorical criticism (Foss, 2009; Varallo, 2009), and performance narrative analysis (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Denzin, 2003a; 2003b; Mattingly, 1998; Phelan, 1993; Polkinghorne, 1988; Riessman, 1993; 2007). Research Questions This study explores how impressionistic autoethnographic performance narrative as a digital text illumines fear of death in end-of-life care-giving contexts. This study asks two (2) questions: (RQ 1) What does the performance text reveal about my fears and loss experience? and (RQ 2) What did the production process reveal about how I worked through those fears before and after Grandmas death? Study Timeline I focus this time-based study on narratives I performed on my blog from January 20, 2010 to March 12, 2010. I draw on a post dated November 16, 2010 to guide my reflections in
Chapter 5. I labeled these posts Remembrance on a blog titled Text and Pixel Reflections. Narrative Sources Denzin questioned using the term data as it interprets findings as fact and so inaccurately describes autoethnographic narrative research (May 4, 2006, personal communication, as cited in Melina, 2008, p. 161). Thus, I refer to data as narrative sources, or the poems and photographs that perform on the blog stage. These narrative sources as post scriptum study my authentic emotional and socio-cultural experiences as situated in the timeline of Grandmas end-of-life and our familys mourning rituals. Poems. I selected poems as a purposive sample as I wrote them about my experiences with Grandmas death during her death rituals and then posted on Text and Pixel Reflections labeled
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Remembrance. Poems are a performance narrative in the literary genre. Poems as performance mean that the genre itself signifies that the word merits analysis and critique
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(Carlson, 2003). Poems comprise action research and can increase empathetic understanding by communicating core narratives and strong emotions and by teaching through the power of language (Leavy, 2009). Poetrys imagery and succinctness allow people to express thoughts, feelings, and experiences (Bolton, 2009). Writing poems responds to the autoethnographic ethic as the researcher inquires on the borderland: within, without, and even becoming with the participants (Denzin & Lincoln, 1998). Poems provide an aesthetic, empathetic, and nontraditional re-presentation (Leavy, 2009). Poems compel, clarify, and engage through an economy of words to share and understand an experience (Leavy). Importantly, poetry presents the human drama of what might be (Aristotle, Poetics, as cited in Piirto, 2002b, p. 435) by teaching alternative expression and alternative seeing (p. 434). Metaphors, often found in poems, bridge the abstract with emotions and behavior (Bleyen, 2007). Creative writers work as moral change agents who pluralize instead of categorize voices (Tierney, 2002). Poetry, then, requires researchers to engage with depth, socio- cultural and political awareness, and to respond by envisioning the future with imagination and feeling. Photographs. I selected photographs as a purposive sample. The photographs cover three events in three different locations: Grandmas biological dying process at Talbot Center for Rehabilitation and Healthcare in Renton, Wash., Grandmas graveside service at Tahoma National Cemetery in Kent, Wash., and the familys Life Celebration Service for Grandma at South Center Community Baptist Church in Tukwila, Wash. I posted these photographs with captions as introducing the poems on Text and Pixel Reflections and labeled the posts Remembrance.
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Creativity involves the act of image-making (Yardley, 2006). Though Phelan (1993) argued that photographs reproduce and do not perform, photographs compose a performance genre (Holm, 2008) meriting analysis and critique. Photographs work well as a primary narrative source (Bryman, 2008). If the writing process fosters healing (DeSalvo, 1999), then does the photographic production process heal? Photographs serve political action by confronting the privileged role that text maintains in research (Bohnsack, 2008), and so photographs enlarge the possibilities of conventional empirical research (Harper, 2002). Important to this study, photographs explore deeper shafts into a different part of human consciousness than do words-alone interviews because photos capture the impossible: a person gone; an event past (pp. 22-23). Photographs reframe my experiences, relationships, and contexts in degrees of sacred and intimate. Additionally, this study explores a complex topic. Portraits portray rich and complex details in a simple and engaging way (Leavy, 2009), perhaps in line with Fernandez (1986) notion of wholeness as simplifying the complex. As visual art, photographs also address identity issues and power struggles and re-present cultural, political, social, and organizational aspects of identity (Leavy, 2009; Phelan, 1993). The daily social drama influences the medium (Turner, 1986) and conveys political and cultural information that challenges dominant views (Hooks, 1995, as cited in Leavy, 2009, pp. 218-219). In this way visual art makes accessible and engages the socio- culture and politic by illumining those lacking representation, such as those in end of life, death, fear, or illness experiences. For credibility, I draw on my experience as a freelance photographer from 2003-2010 (Rosko, 2010a). Even though I am not in all the photos, I regard these photos as impressionistic autoethnography as I took them of people interacting with each other, with me,
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and in our shared end of life context. I appear in these narratives via creating, producing, selecting, performing, and reframing them. These photographs constitute performance narratives as I re-framed ritual with them, and comprise an archive that signifies my loss experiences. Blog. A blog uses computers and the internet to produce a narrative online for others to read. I posted the poems and photographs with titles, captions, comments, embedded links, audio files, tags or labels, and salutations on the Text and Pixel Reflections blog. I labeled the posts relevant to this study as Remembrance. The blog coordinates the photographs and poems and performs them via the layout and design. The comments and online format show the performative as a public sharing. The blog narrative, then, performs experience and ritual in text and pixels. Given the blogs design and publishing process, the blog produces the performance to a public. Researching blogging in healthcare situations such as end of life necessitates assessing blogs empowering, healing, communal, and persuasive potential. Blogging as writing provides a therapeutic process because the blog can be revised and rewritten (Bolton, 2009). Blogs also perform identity. Miller and Shepherd (2004) envisioned blogs as a rhetorical genre by which persons perform with the Self, with others, with time, with history, and with culture. Bloggers acknowledge that motive in each other and continue enacting it for themselves. The blog-asgenre is a contemporary contribution to the art of the self (sec 4 para 5). MacDougall (2005) concluded that blogs provide a format for persons to construct their identities and increase selfand social awareness via coordinating symbols such as images and by providing a format for persons to engage in down to earth, intelligent and pointed, audience-aware writing (p. 582). Importantly, blogs provide a healing medium by their agentic and communal potential. Blogs empower by blurring the traditional distinction between the amateur and professional
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producers of media content (Cammaerts, 2008). Psychological empowerment functions as how persons perceive their control, social connection, and agentic potential (Stavrositu & Sundar, 2008). Agency refers to the capacity one has to assert influence or power (Howard, 2008). Stavrositu and Sundar (2008) found that blog creators empowered themselves because the blog design allowed them to conveniently customize their blog. Mainly, bloggers as speaking agents provide their own voice and agency, and from this agency, a sense of competence, confidence, and assertiveness (Stavrositu & Sundar). For healing to occur in loss, one must express agency, and this agency must carry socio- political and cultural implications (see Chapter 5). The Internet as a designed system embeds agency by allowing writers and readers to participate with each other and the text because blogs embed interactivity. Online performances publicly co-construct multi-faceted selves (Chavsta, 2003), meaning that people dialogue their diverse and changing aspects that define their self with their publics when journaling or blogging online. Blogs provide a sense of community among readers, where community development "involves making private troubles public issues" (Labonte, 2008, p. 89). Blogs blur the distinction between public and private (MacDougall, 2005), which makes blogs political and praxis-driven. Blog communities issue check and balances in the comments and other types of feedback (Kaye, 2005) and in the ways that readers assign credibility to a blog (see Chavsta, 2003). Importantly, when bloggers, including readers, perceived community, they needed less confirmation for their agency (Stavrositu & Sundar, 2008), which suggests that blogs check and balance the power implications in voice. Bloggers respond to an ethic care by integrating needs when they share like-minded values and experiences, and share personal events and build relationships as ways to share emotional connections (Stavrositu & Sundar) that foster community. Blog readers and writers together validate blogs as a community because blogs give
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feelings of belonging and influence (Bess, Fisher, Sonn, & Bishop, 2002), each feeling of which depend on the outreach that bloggers perceive themselves to have to others (Stavrositu & Sundar, 2008). For instance, people use blogs to navigate health-care decisions and experiences. Chung and Kim (2007, May 23) found that, among persons with cancer and their companions, blog use provided a way for bloggers to engage in proactive decision-making, to manage their emotions, to receive social support, and to gain and share information. Even in the absence of perceived community, blogging as a writing process provides a therapeutic benefit because the blog can be revised and rewritten (Bolton, 2009), which creates a hospitable climate for change, where transformation contributes to healing narratives (Mattingly, 1998). Reconceptualizing liveness via digitally mediated performances teaches much about the gray areas of lived experience in a digitally mediated culture (Chavsta, 2003). Online journals, themselves a living text, come, go, and change (Chavsta). Performing narratives online still includes the body only through a different sensory and reference point (Peterson, 2008). This notion of mediated liveability (Auslander, 1999) challenges performance as embodied and temporal. Though open-ended and subject to revision as people interact with the text, the story production ends (Chavsta, 2003). In this way online journals reveal the instability between the word and the sign, which sits well in the in-between space that is performance narrative, and in that space meets this studys topic: the instability of choosing and revising life amid loss. Study Limitations Research measures depend largely on dominant discourse in the academy. All research, as technology (Bratteteig, 2008), remains value-laden with inherent intent and outcomes. All human-conceived measures are imperfect because people possess limited and embedded perceptions (Carey, 1999). Thus, all operational variables remain subject to error, and all
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samples subject to bias (Gonzaga University, 2010b). To further complicate matters, no canon or systematic approach exists to validate narrative studies (Riessman, 1993). This openness reflects the constructivist view that narratives are value-laden (Rapley, 2007) and emergent (Mattingly, 1998). Science cannot be spoken in a singular universal voice, warned Riessman (1993, p. 70), meaning that even performance narrative maintains limitations and implications. Sampling Bias I am the sample. Thus, the sample contains bias. All research, to a degree, uses the self as sample given that the researcher filters the analysis (see Chase, 1996). Autoethnographic narrative works to reveal the self-as-researcher and the subsequent limitations and biases inherent in research. Behar (1996) described this transparency as forsaking the mantel of omniscience (p. 12). In this way autoethnographic research confronts current dominant research perspectives (Holt, 2003) that may even feel ambivalent toward the method for its vulnerable qualities (Behar, 1996). Other criticisms of this approach include it being scientifically invalid due to the use of the self as the only narrative source (Bochner & Ellis, 2000; 2006; Holt, 2003), by telling a shared narrative as my story (Krohn, 2007), and by the dominance and privilege of the I (Jackson & Mazzei, 2008). Piirto (2002a) worried about unreliable narrators in autoethnographic narrative, and Langellier and Peterson (2004) referred to the limits of the comfort of the familiar and muting critique (pp. 238-239). Additional criticisms charge autoethnographic narrative as being solipsistic, or self-serving, superficial, indulgent, and full of unnecessary guilt or excessive bravado (see Behar, 1996). Behar asserted that such charges stem from unwillingness to even consider the possibility that a personal voice, if creatively used, can lead the reader, not into miniature bubbles of naval-gazing, but into the enormous sea of serious social issues (p. 14). Some might even contend that my poems read
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more as expositions rather than poems, but that gray area is yet another debate within the arts. The inclusion of metaphors, imagery, themes, and compelling content make them poems and the narratives together address a serious social issue of end of life and fear of death. This study takes place post scriptum, or after what has been written, save the November 16 post. While I did not create the main performance text solely for research, either way my intent to create aesthetic texts informs my affective and healing experiences in loss. All research responds to intent, and this intent implicates bias. Reliability, Validity, and Generalizablity Reliability means replicability or stability of research findings and the ability of research to reflect an external reality or measure the concepts of interest (Elliott, 2005). This study has high construct validity given the relevance of the narrative samples and analysis to the construct of interest as I wrote the narratives during Grandmas death and so the narratives may answer if, how, and why I performed fear of death. Internal validity means the results are not an artifact of the design while external validity refers to what degree findings, which the researcher procured from a sample, generalize to a broader population (Elliott). Importantly, reliability and external validity depend vitally on the meaning shared by individuals within a culture (Chase, 1995, as cited in Elliott, 2005, p. 28). This study fails tests for reliably because the concepts of interest comprise the inner world of the researcher, but passes the test for identifying the shared meaning that constitutes culture. This study also risks failing internal validity, given that its initial strategy for analysis searched for themes that I assumed were in the text due to my familiarity with the text. A lack of internal validity means that the sample may have spurious variables, or variables that measure constructs other than the one(s) measured. These spurious variables cause attribution errors that can distort conclusions.
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Still, high internal validity may not guarantee sound findings. Case in point, TMT has high internal validity given its experimental methods. Yet, a hypothesis tested in a lab remains a lab hypothesis whose findings may retro-justify the operational variables, or miss out on other variables that exist in the field. Narrative studies contribute to meaning-making and cultural knowledge, each of which can be difficult to measure. It may help to apply autoethnographic performance narratives criteria for a sound research design: vulnerability, credibility, authenticity, transferability, educatability (Behar, 1996; Bryman, 2008; Ellis, 1999), and narrative coherence (Polkinghorne, 1988), dis/continuity, and reflexivity (Mattingly, 1998). Performing I Clinical narratives, such as of end of life, must give critical accounts of dominant discourse and power structures in clinical situations because narratives empower performers to persuade (Garro & Mattingly, 2000). This autoethnographic narrative about loss in a clinical context persuades, and so possesses power. This power, a two-sided coin, imparts agency and risks dominance as power and immediacy propel arts research in two ways (Leavy, 2009): (1) arts appeal extends to culture, and (2) art evokes emotion, reflection, and can change the way that people think. Sharing ones life experiences takes the ethic that its gray space to temper with co-constructing that of others (Chavsta, 2003). Yet, self narratives tamper with others experiences by imparting the narrator with a privileged account (Jackson & Mazzei, 2008). To explain this challenge, Phelan (1993) described performance as an ontological way of being, or the ways that people represent their identities and experiences without reproducing them. This distinction addresses bias implications in autoethnographic research. Performances tripartite relationship (Carlson, 2003) merges with autoethnographic research as such research requires awareness for the researcher to fully engage as participant, to contribute to culture, and
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then to take a step back to reflect on the implications of being the primary voice in research. Performance in research involves a process that establishes a mediating, authorial, as well as an authoritative voice, posing itself as a useful interpreter for readers (Bolt, 2004, p. 189). In this way, performance research narratives possess power by performing We through I, or by providing an interpretive lens, and so are not neutral. Performance as a mode of production (Boon, 1986) implicates voice in research as digital narratives are also value-laden (Bratteteig, 2008). Bolt (2004) explored representation as a primary framework for performance art. Representation conveys more than it intends, but never totalizes (Phelan, 1993). Performance, as with all research, risks totalizing perception. To offset this power, the performance changes each time people interact with the text (Chvasta, 2003): the performance performs (States, 1996, p. 8), and, thankfully, so does the audience. To clarify, performance narrative distinguishes between narrative and narrator. Narrators perform in part via persuasion. Persuasiveness depends on the richness and appropriateness of the research questions, which depend on the story (Elliott, 2005; Maynes, Pierce, & Laslett, 2008). Narrators choose how and why they will handle detail, which is significant because narrators act as filters. Narrative researchers choose their questions, context for inquiry, and discourse, which influence research balance, or whether or not voices are represented and findings are socially beneficial. Researchers maintain power in writing their findings (Chase, 1996). Stories do not speak for themselves. Stories speak for narrators. On this point, Jackson and Mazzei (2008) distinguished between performing and narrating the I in knowledge and representation inherent in storytelling from my point of view and inherent within the performance rhetoric itself. This rhetoric creates tension, and the tension provides a research ethic to acknowledge my presentation as fragile tellings (p. 314).
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There is much to learn from the silences, for exclusion and discontinuity in narratives also speak (Mattingly, 1998). Concerns for I in autoethnographic research resound from analytic and educated voices who critique said research. These voices constitute an I as well. In voicing I the unmarked texts are those voices not included. Resource constraints make it seem impossible to account for every single persons, dead or alive, voice. The concern behind voice also applies to the self-narrative, which constitutes a voice meriting participation. One overlooked challenge with autoethnographic narrative is its demand on I. Autoethnographic scholars acknowledge the exhausting and demanding nature of autoethnographic narratives, such as the requirement for vulnerability (e.g., Behar, 1996; Ellis, 1997; 1999; 2004; 2008) and the demands of microscoping the self in emotional and distressing situations (Ellis, 1996; Krohn, 2007) for systematic critique. This study may provide one such example, where I the granddaughter, the narrator, the performer, and the researcher expose my emotional and loss experiences to the world (Krohn). Perhaps for this reason, Ellis (2008) cautioned her students against using themselves in research too early in their academic careers. This risk, as does the audience, further complicates concerns for voice in autoethnographic research. Reflexivity Autoethnographic approaches often discuss reflexivity as a way to offset the powers of voice; reflexivity involves an awareness of changes within the self and a willingness to step back and analyze the research through different lenses (Leavy, 2009). Reflexivity needs the researcher as performer, social, and self to see the ways that their inner experiences shape their outside behaviors. Reflexivity also means that a performer is aware that she is performing, or has performance consciousness (Bell, 2008) and the moral intent to create an aesthetic text (Conquergood, 1983a; 1985; 1998; Pelias & VanOosting, 1987). Kapferer (1986) warned that
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the world as we live is not founded on some kind of solipsism which views only the individual self and self-experience as real (p. 188). States (1996) recommended that enlarging the field prevents solipsism; reflexivity provides one means to widen vision. Kapferer (1986) observed that culture makes particular and yet universalizes the ways that people order their everyday experiences. The larger field for lived experience includes an inner-outer process where people express feelings, expectations, thoughts, and desires in culturally normalized words and images (Bruner, 1986). This means that reflexivity addresses the larger field of people who experience their individual and social existence in relation to themselves, to others, and to culture. The same rules that apply to the performer and narrators also apply to the audience and analyst. Communication systems inform the ways that people communicate and the communication systems that people design in turn inform the way that they communicate (Conrad & Poole, 2005). Given such power, Gorfain (1986) implicated reflexivity as the powerful means by which performances manipulate reality. Yet, reflexivity may fall short of accounting for the privileges of I (Jackson & Mazzei, 2008). After all, putting on different lenses does not change the mind behind the eyeballs, and adding more Is to the research sample does not guarantee sound findings, or resolve the privilege given to narrating experience through the self, as Jackson and Mazzei noted. To counter this short-coming, I suggest reframing reflexivity as situated rhetorical transparency: reveal the ways that the narrators logic, through deliberate prose, intersects with that of the readers, through reader response and content contribution (e.g., blog comments) and contribute to culture. This move will help readers to distinguish between the narrator and the narrative.
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Dialoging We
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Dialogue provides an answer to the limitations of reflexivity. Although this study does not claim to speak for others, arts-based research, as science, constitutes a text that influences and reframes meaning (Hunter, 1999) and so maintains a degree of power in the socio- political and cultural realm. Autoethnographic performance narrative, then, needs dialogue as a context for inquiry (Ellis, 2004; Tillmann-Healy, 2003) to account for the primacy of the narrators voice. Narrative analysis draws on the dialogic ethic to speak multiple voices to a specific experience, discipline, or society (Leavy, 2009). These voices must legitimate themselves to be distinct; otherwise, why tell the narrative? I wrote this study and the blog to perform and make meaning from my fear and loss experiences. This study limits me to that intention, yet there exists no tidy boundary between the self and others, or intent and praxis. The narrative provides a rhetoric that persuades audience experiences. Dialoguing We in autoethnography refers to when members of nondominant groups strive to represent themselves to dominant groups in normative ways while remaining faithful to their own self-understandings (Pratt 1992; 1994; 1999) and voice their interactions with dominant groups as a subordinate (Butz & Besio, 2004), such as persons made vulnerable by storytelling hierarchies in families (see Peterson & Langellier, 2006) or culture that silences grief work (see Bosticco & Thompson, 2005). In other words, this studys limitations flip over to its assets; power needs voice and vice-versa. These dynamics carry hefty ethical implications about what I chose to perform and how I framed my experience through the performance. The text shows me depicting myself, Grandma, and others in loss ritual, demonstrating that autoethnographic impressionistic narratives constitute research filters, too. Performing narrative in family also constitutes a politic, or an act of power (Langellier & Peterson, 2004; Pollack, 1990). Even so, the arts make my experience
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available to anyone who chooses to interact with the text, and so each person can draw her or his own conclusions about the credibility of the text. As readers draw their own conclusions of the blog, the readers maintain a degree of power. As Conquergood (1985) wrote, genuine dialoguical [sic] engagement is at least a two-way thoroughfare (p. 9). The audience must also feel connected to the narrative to regard the narrative as a credible account (Chvasta, 2003). Performance occurs when an audience interacts with the performance, where audience interaction constitutes performance regardless the medium (States, 1996). Thus, audience performs I as well, permitting autoethnographic narratives as performed on a blog to voice a dialogic We. Therefore, performance as a dialogic responsibility (Carter, 1985) and mutually interpretive effort (Langellier, 1985) suggests that concerns over voicing I may be overemphasized. Concerns over voice are already violated if, as Bakhtin (1986) said, people speak the words of others; again, the debate camps in an unavoidable problem and assumes a two-dimensional, or individual, self, and so can not move research forward. Practically, this research dialogued We given the collaborative writing via professor and mentor feedback. Reframing Performances emphasis on reframing provides a helpful response to the aforementioned concerns. Reframing assumes the self performs socio-culturally. Reframing defined as audience interpretation may move past the political implications of voicing ones story as a privileged account. Performance as a process, a way of being, and a record of hypothetical or symbolic behaviors differs from performance as a live presence (States, 1996). Framing events means that the performer generates performances and that external contexts or situations influence the performance (States). Reframing means understanding how the framing of a performance influences dominant discourse and so echoes prior concerns over voice. However, reframing
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addresses intent more readily; performance changes the initial experience via framing, meaning that performance occurs when the performer consciously, deliberately, and artistically makes choices and so demonstrates control over their actions (States). Reframing means the performance must embrace both written scholarship and creative work as a way to challenge the hegemony of texts without perpetuating a dominant discourse by replacing one with the other (Conquergood, 2002). Positively, performance narratives show a story of growth and tension as narrators revise, include, and exclude certain details (Josselson, 1996). Reframing assumes a need to balance discourse without violating intent and praxis. Bauman and Briggs (1990) recommended resolving this dilemma by distinguishing between discourse and text by lifting the text out of its setting to understand how the performer used the text, but this study assumes it impossible and undesirable to separate the self from the text as the text embodies the self. To what extent do self narratives reframe experience, or even voice? Writing as performance reframes. Writing and performance, broadly conceived, also includes photography and new media (Auslander, 1999; Holm, 2008). One way that writing heals (DeSalvo, 1999) may be its challenge for people to lessen their power-hold on life, rather than maintain it. Writing otherwise means not knowing how it will all turn out. We only have to set out toward the unpredictable future... and bring a new world into being, one word at a time (Luce-Kaper, 2004, p. 167). This open-ended view conflicts with the seeming permanence in death and may benefit people who anticipate death with fear. Yet, reframing a fear or loss experience as healing, while potentially beneficial, still creates a rhetorical text that influences, and so politicizes, peoples experiences and behaviors. Even so, reframing addresses how intent and praxis intersect, which constitutes an avenue of concern in this action research.
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Changing the Question Changing the question may also help to respond to the debate over limitations in
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autoethnographic research. The debate, while important, misses the central question, albeit slightly: When do we, as privileged researchers and educators, question the processes and modes of production that make academic discourse as a privileged discourse in society, what can we do to invite voices from other societal spheres into our research process, and how does our work benefit peoples daily experiences? Put bluntly, are researchers willing to give up their central role? After all, as Kendall (1965) suggested, any text about others shelters a text about the self within it, thus contributing to what Brettell (1997) called a blurred genre and blended voice. Do we use research texts to shelter ourselves? In other words, change the question by reframing research processes in general as texts with embedded rhetorical processes that influence findings and peoples experiences and behaviors. Perhaps voice is not the topic of concern in loss narratives, but compassion is. So far, the best approach Ive come up with is to embed ethos and creativity into the research process. Knowledge comes by being close to, and not separated from, people (Conquergood 1998). Ritual as a journey means ritual involves more than just a ceremony but a labor of each day (Russell, 2004, p. 239) of people who struggle and suffer together. This shared suffering defines community and upsets a researchers emotional obstinacy that prevents him from understanding the experience (Russell). This participation moves the researcher out of her comfort zone to emotionally and physically participate with her world, and by challenging her to reframe how she projects her assumptions onto the world (Russell). For these reasons alone, autoethnographic performance narrative provides a valuable process to understand contexts where people suffer and so gain insights that may help each person who participates with the experience.
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Analysis Framework
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Narrative analysis emphasizes Shanks (2002) lantern metaphor for research: inquiring to illumine a social experience with rich detail. Narrative analysis allows for systematic study of personal experience and meaning, (Riessman, 1993, p. 70), or how people construct and attach significance to their experiences. Narrative inquirys language and criteria continue to be developed (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000), which leaves analysis strategies broad-based. Unfortunately, this means that narrative research can be confusing as one definition of narrative cannot cover all applications (Riessman, 2007). Fortunately, narrative research can be creative. This study layers analyses. This study will introduce the blog as an artistic and intentional text by focusing first on keyword analyses for themes and metaphors in the poems and genre analysis of the photographs (see Foss, 2009; Varallo, 2009 for rhetorical criticism strategies and Tables 1.1-1.4). Photographic analysis includes Holms (2008) three genres: participants-produced images, researcher-produced images (ritual), and pre-existing images (classic) and also include socially contrived genres: people/portrait, editorial, details, establishing, action, landscape, and artistic (see Chapter 4). The discussion segues from the first level analysis, or the conscious world, to a second level analysis, or the unconscious world by referring to this studys theoretical frameworks (see Chapter 2). This study will discuss findings by focusing on the blog as coordinating or staging the performance. Credibility as signified by website design and structure (Warnick, 2004, as cited in Sanderson, 2008, p. 916), artistry (Chavsta, 2003), tone, style, and tense also provide analysis frameworks (Leavy, 2009). Importantly, the blog constitutes a culturally normalized way to communicate, which informs implications for voicing loss.
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Narrative analysis identifies emerging themes by telling of lived experiences to re-present the experience as a whole (Leavy, 2009), such as by comparing details and themes through repetition and contradictions (Jones, 2003, as cited in Leavy, 2009, p. 33) and through coherence by organizing, structuring, and categorizing themes (Riessman, 1993). Analyzing coherence requires improvisation, or reinterpreting conclusions and hypotheses (Riessman). Narrative analysis seeks dialectics, such as fear/love, and acknowledges that stories occur in a historical moment and negotiate the tension between change and permanence (Punch, 2005). This theme for change resonates with Mattingly (1998), who suggested that healing occurs when narrators locate desire amid discontinuity between their expectations and experiences. This study connects themes to understand how the blog layout and design influences the narrators aesthetic intent in the performance, how the narrator handled discontinuity and coherence, and if the narrator experienced healing in the process. Behind each analysis performs the choice to include them in the blog and the research text, so intent will remain an overarching theme in findings. Analyzing narrative therapeutically involves seeking what the narrative includes and excludes (Garro & Mattingly, 2000), marks and unmarks (Phelan, 1993), and, again, what is continuous and discontinuous (Mattingly, 1998). In trauma studies, such as loss, narratives may not be chronologically-oriented initially because a person must re-tell the narrative to reach coherence (Leavy, 2009; Polkinghorne, 1988). Narrative analysis considers turning points (Denning, 2005; McAdams, 1993; Leavy, 2009), which relate to this studys implications for vocational and holistic leadership (see Chapter 5). These turning points involve participants locating a desire or ethos that influences their choices and goals and structuring their narratives and experiences to re-present a point in time when they shifted their interpretation (Leavy, 2009). This re-storying interplays with the cultures existing frames, such as cultural norms for loss,
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emotions, and griefwork (see Bosticco & Thompson, 2005; Dennis, 2008; Hawkins, 1999; Irwin, 1991), and allows narrators to change the story based on what they learned from it (Leavy, 2009). This study searches for turning points as agentic markers that lend continuance. Connecting narrative findings to theoretical frameworks helps readers to understand findings and yields critical reflexivity, which avoids self-indulgence (Grbich, 2007; Punch, 2005). Narrative reflexivity asks, Does my research contribute to the field and society? In what ways does my voice filter findings for the reader? and How does my reframing influence socio- cultural and political outcomes? This study supplies a front lines view of what it looks like for one person to face her fears in a constructive way, and so perform healing and impart courage for readers to do the same. This study assumes this vested interest, but works in the discussion section to relate findings to research questions, theoretical frameworks, and ethical assumptions (see Chapters 2 & 4). This study will employ Denzins (1989) epiphanes to find turning points and lessons learned as salient to the research questions and topic. In addition, autoethnographers must help readers to ascertain their studys worth and the research community to better understand the method (Yardley, 2006). Generally, readers can evaluate this study by asking, Do the findings answer the research questions? How does the performance portray the fear or loss experience? How do the narratives persuade? How do the themes, turning points, discontinuity, and cohesiveness inform the research topic? What does the study mark or unmark? Do the narrative samples illumine the context and culture? What benefits or insights can be gained through the narratives? This study considers if and how the narrative samples and findings illumine the research questions and topic, confirm this studys ethical assumptions and vested interest, and benefit research and society.
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH IV: THE STUDY Introduction
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This study explores fear of death via impressionistic autoethnographic narratives as performed via photographs and poems posted on a blog written during and as mourning rituals for me and my family. This study relies on the Remembrance posts in chronological order of appearance starting with the most recent as follows: 1. Love as an Ethic of Care (March 12, 2010) 2. Grandma Adelines Life Celebration Service Playlist (February 25, 2010) 3. Grandma Adelines Life Celebration Service (January 30, 2010) 4. A Bouquet for Grandma & A Handful of Soil (January 29, 2010) 5. Grandma Adelines Viewing: Reflections (January 28, 2010) 6. Grandma Adelines Poem (January 27, 2010) 7. Grandma Celebrates Life in Family, Work, Church, and Service (January 25, 2010) 8. Grandma and My Multnomah University Days (January 25, 2010) 9. Grandmas Obituary in The Seattle Times (January 24, 2010) 10. Recorded Interviews with Grandma: On Family and God Understands (January 23, 2010) 11. Remembering Grandma with Faith, Hope, & Love (January 20, 2010) I briefly reference the historical posts, the University days, audio, and Grandmas poems to provide a backdrop for my inquiry. As I posted these recordings and her poem in the studys timeline, it is necessary to include them here. The choice to include these posts comprised the performance and made this autoethnography impressionistic in style. The images as framed by
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH me, as showing other people, and as taken by other people (i.e., classic images and those
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showing Grandma and I together) also lend an impressionistic and even ethnographic feel. Ethically I felt bound to include these narratives as other people contributed to my mourning ritual and as Grandma states her intent in how she wants people to memorialize her. Ideally, this ethos helped me to humanize each contributor noting that while I learn from Grandmas life and death, she did not exist solely for my research purposes. Narrative Analysis and Rhetorical Criticism First, I search the narrative samples with Foss (2009) and Varallos (2009) rhetorical analysis of themes and metaphors in the poems and photographs via keywords, generic detail, and frequency (see Tables 1.1 through 1.4). This analysis strategy considers how I consciously and culturally performed fear of death and loss. I perused the blog by systematically searching for themes via keywords based on this studys concepts of concern: fear, death, life, faith, love, healing, and hope. I searched for variants of these keywords in verb tense (-ing, -ed, live, afraid, die, believe, trust), adjective (-ful), noun (belief, health), plural (-s), and synonym (compassion). For the faith/believe references, I search for God the trinity (God, Jesus, Holy Spirit). I make sense of findings by observing frequency and by drawing out repeated metaphors and themes from the poems and genres from the photographs. Metaphors include movement, light, nature, community, and seasons. Photographic genres include people/portrait, editorial, details, establishing, landscape, action, and artistic. I assess the frequency and stylistic elements and socio-cultural implications of these genres and how such informs findings. I discuss the blog as coordinating the themes, metaphors, and genres to highlight Denzins (1989) epiphanies via Riessmans (1993; 2007) and Mattinglys (1998) narrative analysis for coherence and discontinuity and Phelans (1993) performance analysis for marked and unmarked texts. Later in
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this chapter and in Chapter 5, I reframe the ways that the blog staged performing my fears of death by returning to TMTs findings to understand if and how I socially, culturally, politically, and sub/consciously narrated my death fear. Study Findings This section introduces my conscious analysis of the text via the top frequencies, which clarify the most recurring themes, metaphors, and genres. See Appendix D to review the tables. Poems The top three thematic keywords in the poems (see Table 1.1) are God (105), Love (80), and Death (49), with Faith and Fear tying for 4th (27). Nature and Community/People were the oft used metaphors (45 and 16 references, respectively, see Table 1.2). The following sections describe these themes and metaphors. See Appendix C to reference the full blog text. God theme. I referred to God the first most with 105 references such as when I wrote in Tender Mercies, Gods Grace: I thank God for sustaining me with his mercy and grace.
I thank God for answering my prayers. How poignant to explore
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH fear of death through my interactions with Grandma in my research class the same term she died. This poem refers to God as doing something, such as showing mercy and grace,
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answering prayers, and coordinating the timing of my research class. God and I do something via my interactions / with Grandma / in my research class, which suggests a conscious choice to anticipate and make poignant or meaningful her death and my emotion work by embedding the process in scholarship. By this latter observation I inferred the freedom I experienced to study this topic and a professor who supported my need to write and reflect more about my experience to perform my grief: I agree with Grandma. / God is good. Love theme. I referred to Love the second most with 80 references. Believing love to be the opposite of fear (1 John 4:18-19), love provided the virtue that I wanted to experience and express to offset my expectation to experience fear. From the graveside service post, I wrote the following in A Spirit of Love Fears Not: I wasnt afraid. I felt relieved because we three -- Aaron, Nikki, and I -tended to Grandma one last moment
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH before she laid to rest. Rest is peaceful and not terrifying.
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God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind.
God has made us His children so we can call out to him.
When Grandma died, I did not feel her death, I felt her love.
She looked pretty today. At peace, as though she were asleep. I prayed in the car on the way wishing the car would move faster Confiding in God I wanted to know deep down that love truly is stronger than death. The grave can not confine love more than I can bottle a sunrise. After all, life is not a commodity, and death,
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH while she tries, is no satisfied consumer.
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Here I refer to my deep-seated desire to know that love truly is stronger than death and that my spirit possessed fortitude from love instead of powerlessness, the opposite of stronger than, from fear. The verb confined suggests my fear of being trapped and viewing death as something that consumes. I referred to faith scriptures (1 John 3:1; 2 Tim. 1:7; Song of Solomon 8:6), which embedded the performance in my faith. I misquoted Songs 8:6, which actually says, love is strong as death suggesting that in the poem I romanticized love by willing it to be stronger than death, yet the faith-tradition in which I embed the performance acknowledges that both love and death possess power, not necessarily of equal weight or nature, but power nonetheless that pits love and death as adversaries. I felt relieved / because we three / suggests that I experienced relief instead of fear because I mourned via ritual with my family. Here relationships provided relief and a symbol for love. I also speak on Compassion (5 instances), the praxis of Love, In "Excellent Examples," Dad told me he felt excited to share about Grandma and the Lord so much so he smiled before he fell asleep the night before. I learn by such faithful compassionate
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH loving examples. I know I am not alone. There are more people to love to encourage to share. I refer to Compassion again in "Greeting the Living," I want to have their attitude of caring, kindness, and compassion made all the more bittersweet in loss.
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These references to Compassion locate my desire to have their attitude of / caring, / kindness, / and compassion to serve people in loss. These people provide comfort by reminding me that I am not alone and continuity by being more people to love / to encourage / to share. From this ethos for compassion, I turn to my leadership philosophy in the post "Remembering Grandma with Faith, Hope, & Love," section "Guiding Ethic: On Religion and Church," The following passage explains our guiding ethic in visiting Grandma:
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. ~ James 1:27
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Visiting Grandma and living for God is our religion; people who follow Christ are the church, not a building or program, but lives transformed by Jesus compassion to be the first to lay down his life and all before asking us to do the same. May learn from our experience and continue in this vein. Here I state and embed our guiding ethic in our faith that transforms us by Jesus compassion to be the first to lay down his life and calls us to continue in this vein. Compassion became a turning point where, while inferred, I focused my performance on serving others in my loss instead of voicing my fears. This turning point informed my praxis and challenged my identity as a Christian to reframe death as not fearsome or out of my control, but as a choice to die to self by drawing near to, or to look after, others suffering while I live. Death theme. I referred to Death the third most with 49 references. Death provided the historical moment and initiated the mourning rituals and anticipating and experience death of a loved one situated the performance narrative. In Rise Up, Call Her Blessed! I wrote: God let our 3rd day of mourning begin with life anew Risen, Healed,
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Whole, Glorified.
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Words speak the good news boldly, but the Kingdom of Heaven comes with power.
Precious to God is the death of His Saints. Again I refer to death as embedded in my faith, but do not directly refer to fear in response to death. Boldy provided an antonym to fear suggesting that embedding the performance in faith gave me occasion to explore alternative responses to death. This poem alludes to the movement metaphor as the resurrection, and interprets God as caring about my loss. Again I quoted Scripture (Psa. 116:15). I also perform my awareness of the limitations of sense-making through written or spoken words: but the Kingdom of Heaven comes with power. Grandma also spoke of the limit of words, Words are nice, / but love in action / is better (Love Lasts). Here I perform limitations to my efforts to heal and understand via performing in narrative, and suggest that at a future date, when the kingdom comes, will be when all things become Healed, Whole, Glorified. Until then, performativity remains imperfect. I refer to death elsewhere via anticipating an event promised by my faith, Real Power: Death truly has no lasting power over me because I believe
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Jesus died, rose again, and will return to make all things new including our bodies. Why wouldnt a Creator redeem his entire masterpiece? God will save mind, body, and spirit because of Jesus.
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Death truly has no / lasting power / over me / because I believe highlights my vested interest in performing my faith, where faith alone empowers me to take the power back. This empowerment shows an example of perceived agency in the text. Elsewhere I perform death as a bygone experience for Grandma in Gratitude: Death is a transition, Grandma said, and we hope and celebrate / Grandmas new life / without shadow or death. Again I situate death in the context of my Grandma, my, and our familys faith and perform my faith as hope in a different future, resonating with Mattinglys (1998) emphasis on healing via narrative by resolving discontinuity and seeking future goals. The text indicates that I performed, but did not necessarily feel, confidence by embedding my remembrances in a shared faith while voicing my own interpretation. In so doing, I created my own mourning ritual. I also relied on the logic frame to ask, Why wouldnt a Creator / redeem his entire masterpiece? I asked this question in response to my perception that faith overemphasizes the spirit and de-emphasizes and even reduces the physical. I included this question to offset the risk, which Adams (1979) warned against, of sentimentalizing and romanticizing death, a faux pas that can occur with an overemphasis on the spiritual. This choice shows a degree of moral
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responsibility that I perceived myself to have in creating the text concurring with this studys performance ethos (see Conquergood, 1983a; 1985; 1998; Pelias & VanOosting, 1987). Fear theme. Fear tied with Faith for fourth most references. I wrote on fear of death by referencing a scripture (1 Cor. 15:55) that spoke of deaths violence as temporary and not as inflicting as anticipated as described in, Grave, Where is Your Sting?: I used to fear the grave. Dark, cold, wet, but today God gave me special moments experiences: I then went on to describe my experience at Grandmas graveside service (see Nature metaphor section). I used to fear the grave suggests that I performed a final moment wherein I no longer feared death. Yet, did I experience the same confidence that I performed in the text? Faith theme. Faith expresses confidence by acting on beliefs even in the absence of confirmation. The audio recordings and Grandmas poem each referred to her faith, where she says that she wants her family to respond to her life by knowing Jesus as their Lord and Savior and that she did her best to speak about him. I regarded Grandma as an exemplar of the Christian faith, and often referred to her as a spiritual matriarch of her family, as in Tender Mercies, Gods Grace: I thank Grandma for preparing us by a lifetime modeling
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH faith, hope, and love so we can continue in her stead.
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I refer to Grandma as a mentor, or a coach who prepared me for my performance. Here I confirm Grandmas intent to present herself as a familial guide for her faith, yet confirm my interpretation of her by describing her as an exemplar. I perform continuance of her stead as living a life of virtue: faith, hope, and love. I did not say continue her life suggesting that in legacy matters I, to a degree, checked my expectations of what I could and could not do in response to Grandmas faith. I committed myself to continuing virtue, what I consider to be universally beneficial, but avoided committing myself to continuing her. This decision keeps with Mattinglys (1998) observation to locate and act on desire in the text and Rogers (1989; 1994) goal to foster creative freedom and contentment in ones identity and relationships. Nature metaphor. I refer to Nature metaphor the first most in the poems (45 references). The only direct reference to the word nature occurs as describing the nature of fear, and not the nature of earth, as seen here in No Fear In Love: I reflect on the nature of love to comfort in death and fears of death. I used to fear that Grandmas death would undo me as I loved her so much, wondering if I depended on her too much to define my faith and future. Are you afraid to die, Grandma? I asked once. No, she replied, referencing Psalm 34, I know God will be with me every step of the
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way. In her patient and conversational way, she gave me an example to follow where I am free to live my life though she has finished hers -- for now. [emphasis added] Here I contrast the nature of fear to love by making love the focus. This section describes the nature of love as comforting fears of death, again in the context of Grandmas faith and that she was not afraid to die because she knew that God would be with her every step of the way. I infer the nature of love as Grandmas patient and conversational way where again I regard Grandma as a virtuosa and me a supernumerary. Significantly, soil provided a motif for nature, and I referred to it eight (8) times with prominence in the entry A Bouquet for Grandma & A Handful of Soil, with three (3) references in Soft Soil: I tossed the carnation bouquet James and I have made this morning onto her casket after the grave workers have lowered Her casket into the grave. The bouquet -- coral carnations sage-trimmed and white -clanged against the metal as it landed,
While I said, Until we meet again, Grandma, I love you
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH As the grave workers stood by patiently waiting and Nikki and Aaron watched And hugged each other from behind me.
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Then I threw in a handful of soil, brown, soft, rich -- comforting -never fear some, for the soil and the flowers are the land. God fashioned people from the land and with the breath of his mouth. The land is Gods the land is ours the land is made to be beautiful. This poem shows a significant moment in my initial farewell performance and in the text. Nature as land and soft soil makes the context for this moment. In this poem, the soft soil and bouquet contrast the machinery of the grave diggers using shovels, boards, a bulldozer, and chains to lower her casket in the open grave and expeditiously dump soil on it. I also referred to
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soil in the captions of three photographs in the blog: Laying Grandma to rest with Grandpas headstone, our flower bouquet, and a handful of soil. The narrative here does not show those details, and by excluding them amplifies the beauty of nature that I wanted to see. Then I threw in a handful of soil, Brown, soft, rich -- comforting -- never fear some, a line which states that I found comfort, and not fear, in the land that did not necessarily intend to encase Grandma. That line contrasted my depiction of the grave as being dark, cold, wet. While nature is those things, I depended again on the context of faith in God as God the creator who intended for the land to be beautiful and who breathes life into the land and into the people who live there. I also quoted Grandmas oft used farewell, Until we meet again at Jesus feet. Here, I wanted to see Grandmas burial as transitory and beautiful, remembering her request to celebrate her death as a transition to life with God, and I do so by anthropomorphizing the land as beautiful and so an innocent bystander, but willing participant, of Grandmas burial. I perform nature again, but with a public service mindset, or audience awareness, by speaking to my mom at the end of the graveside service in the poem titled P.S.: Mom, they buried Grandma with Grandpa and his headstone, so they are no longer alone in that form, they sleep together. Did you see the sun stream through the trees? Remember:
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Joy comes in the morning.
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I tossed my bouquet into Grandmas grave, along with a handful of soil. I repeated I tossed my bouquet into Grandmas grave, / along with a handful of soil from the beginning and title of the poem. This repetition shows intent to highlight a significant moment in the entire performance. By addressing my audience (Mom), I assumed that she grieved more than I did about Grandmas death as my grandma was her mom. This move suggests that I performed an ethos for concern for my audience and reframes my assumptions that I performed an authentic self and emotions as individual. I redefine authenticity as keeping with Carlsons (2003) tripartite relationship between performer, audience, and socio-culture. This moment in the performance adjusted my expectations from performing my self in narrative to performing with a moral responsibility to present my self, others, and socio-culture in a caring and confirming way and so made the performance impressionistic. People and community metaphor. Perception intertwines with context: socio-cultural, political, and organizational. I referred to People/Community metaphor the second most with 16 references. The metaphor for people and community provides the context for autoethnographic narrative as the self with people. The text refers to people as those still living in No, Never Alone!: Its not good to be alone, Pastor York reminded me prior to Grandmas death. Then I thought I could
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH do life alone, but now I know better, grateful am I to continue a legacy of faith, hope, and love with loved ones in my life. Here I perform my quest to express the triad virtues (i.e., faith, hope, and love) as
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needing social support. This recognition represents another turning point for me that has since influenced my approach to relationships and career, where People as loved ones performed relationships, again, as embedded in the virtue of love and the praxis of life. This turning point of now I know better means I performed my need people, and from this knowledge I state the intent to learn from Grandma and to, again, take on her legacy as a way to continue her life and mine. Yet the, now I know better also suggests another possibility that again confounds my assumptions: Perhaps I feared losing myself in the social drama. Did the performance allow me to recognize my voice in the tumult? I again refer to people and community as exemplars in the aforementioned poem Excellent Examples: I know I am not alone. / There are more people / to love / to encourage / to share suggests that performed fear of death as not being able to love, encourage, or share with Grandma anymore. I sought comfort in knowing that people still exist in my life. I also
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH infer Community/People in the credit roll at the end of the life celebration, graveside, and viewing service posts where I list those who contributed to making the loss experience
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meaningful and who showed compassion. This credit roll suggests awareness of performance, observing that my expression on the blog came as coordinating and producing a social drama as others contributed to making my experience positive enough to appreciate and recognize. Additionally, the references to love, encouragement, and sharing (twice mentioned) highlight three possible arenas where I relate best with people and so inform my leadership philosophy to connect with people in meaningful ways via expressing creativity, leading by vocation, and communicating holism (Rosko, 2010b). Thus, this poem relates to people and community as something I envision with others through deliberate virtue and supportive action. Knowing this creative imperative gives a degree of confidence in my ability to foster relationships with others and potentially offset the unmarked social anxiety I felt about attending the rituals. This confidence as agency means that I do not necessarily need Grandma to love others, but that I learned from her and can continue expressing that love and support. In this way, the turning point allowed me to locate formative action and thus continuity. While other relationships do not fill Grandmas absence, they do continue what I learned from her and from others who knew her. Beyond that, I still sense her presence as in the poem, Love Lasts: Grandma reminds me, Words are nice, but love in action is better. These 3 remain: faith, hope, and love,
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH the greatest of these? Love. Gods virtues, Son, and people provide the continuity I want to heal and to grow.
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As in most of this study, note that I did not use the past tense but said that Grandma reminds me. She spoke those words in the past, before this studys timeline, but I chose to perform them as though she still speaks them in the present. Elsewhere, the text directly references Community once as Grandmas community service and work history. She volunteered at the Special Olympics and Rainier School given her caregiving experience with her adult daughter. I entitled this subsection as Community Service: Grandma carried her love for people and her solid work ethic to work, working 22 years in the dry cleaning industry and 12 years at King County Medical processing claims. Grandmas box of photographs and other life artifacts testifies that her life was one full of love for people as the Cedar River swells with water during the winter rain. Her bright example shines in the retirement book co-workers gave her, with testaments to Grandmas dedicated work ethic, cheerful attitude, and words of wisdom. Grandma also volunteered for the Special Olympics and served on the board at Rainier School. Her community service provided an example for me to redeem a difficult experience through service. Again, I allude to community as service and vocation as a virtue, with which I close the Remembrance timeline:
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I learned to value people not based on what they give me, or what I give them, but on the faith, hope, and love we both shared, especially during critical times. My experience as shown in these photos reminds me to keep a guiding ethic in my work and relationships: Religion that God considers pure and faultless is this: look after widows and orphans in their distress and keep yourself from being polluted by world (James 1:27). The latter verse informs my communication, leadership, and research ethos, and the I learned to value people again refers to a turning point and so a healing moment in the narrative. Photographs This section employs genre analysis to organize and simplify the many photographs on the blog by grouping them. Top photographs per post include Grandma Adelines Life Celebration Service (40) and A Bouquet for Grandma & A Handful of Soil (26) carried the highest totals of photographs, with Grandma Celebrates Life in Family, Work, Church, and Service (9) trailing in 3rd (see Table 1.3). The most frequently posted photographs by genre were People/Portrait (62), Editorial (34), and, in a tie, Detail (28) and Action (28) (see Table 1.4). Genre analysis involves understanding the socio-cultural norms for style and framing and photography (Varallo, 2009). The People/Portrait genre refers to people who face the camera and smile while being posed either by their own volition, cultural norms, and/or the photographers guidance. Editorial photos refer to those taken in an interactive moment, as seen, or a performance of an event in process. Often these photos include people and action, but show a less staged (by the photographer) effort. For instance, in the Love as an Ethic of Care post, I smile when I am looking at Grandma, whose face retained fluid as she slept with her head tilted to the side. Why did I smile? My smile seemed out of place. On another day, I asked my husband to photograph
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me from behind with my arm around Grandma as we sat on the bed. I staged these editorial photographs by cultural norms for photography, by my request to take and pose the image, and by my awareness that we were being photographed. Importantly, my intent matters in staging these aesthetic texts; I wanted to show and possess a record of our mutual care. Even so, editorial photographs do not represent reality, but the reality as I produced it to be. Detail photographs, my strong suit, show up close and macro views of things and objects, such as table centerpieces, photo collages, food, or flowers. With their artistic flair in depth-offield and different angles, detail photographs remind me of all the work that went into a special event. Photographers must remember Establishing shots, or those photographs that take a step back and view the scene as a whole, and not just up close. Establishing images give people perspective and prevent them from getting lost in the details. Action photographs often make use of shutter speed to blur or freeze action and so influence the sense of movement in the frame. I chose action photographs that froze or blurred peoples movements, such as with speaking, touching, gesticulating, and carrying and burying the casket. I lacked the ability to change shutter speed via my camera choice for the burial service, which blurred the cascading dirt and so lent a heavy, dark, and even confusing feel. Landscape photographs showing artistic view of nature, and can be either up-close or an establishing shot. My favorite landscape photographs framed light shining through trees or some variant on sunlight and the land or water. Otherwise, I do not regard them as my strong suit. Artistic photos are those that do not fall under the other genres and usually make use of cropping, framing, and different angles to give an unusual view of something. Artistic images usually appear abstract and can be used for graphic design and so remain the most loose in definition.
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To illustrate what photographs comprise each genre in my narrative sample, and to save space, I show below my favorite or representative photographs:
People/Portrait (above)
Editorial (above)
Detail (above)
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Establishing (above)
Landscape (above)
Action (above)
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Artistic (above) Each of these images, save the Action image, show culturally expected norms for loss narratives as supported by TMT: the symbols of faith, the people holding each other, and the symbolic existence, such as in nature or in maintaining connection with the deceased via photographs. I discuss the significance of the bulldozer image, the one that does not look as the others, later in the following section. Discussion of Findings: Blogging as a Produced Performance Reflection guides this discussion with epiphanies, which represent turning points or lessons learned, where a variety of epiphanies manifest character in crisis, such as epiphanies that overarch, represent, or relive an event, emotion, or relationship in a person's life (Denzin, 1989). This discussion also draws on reflexivity to take a step back and reflect on the findings as relevant to the research questions, my intent in producing the aesthetic texts (see Conquergood, 1983a; 1985; 1998; Pelias & VanOosting, 1987), lessons learned from the process, and implications to society, culture, and my ambition to engage both. Think of the blog as a stage, and the photographs, poems, and coordinating elements as characters or players. Poems The poems show a reckless enthusiasm only moderated by the childlike and affectionate tone. The childlike tone in the poems highlights my determination and enthusiasm to explain my
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feelings and thoughts about Grandmas death. The top three thematic keywords in the poems, God (105), Love (80), and Death (49), and not Fear (27), alluded to the constant turning points of looking again and again to God and love in the context of death as though fear awaited me backstage. Fear (27) tied with Faith (27), suggesting that I expressed faith in God amid death in response to my fear. In the least, this response seemed my performative effort in the text. I observed the poetry to mediate the tension between the disturbing and beautiful and learned that perhaps looking at my life through the lens of my prior fear experiences is now too flat-lined and shortsighted. I wrote on fear in dialect to love and faith in God as the response to fear. That I referenced God and love more than fear, and that I referenced faith the same amount of times as I referenced fear, suggests that I performed to respond to my fears in a virtue-based way. Yet, Death still seeds in the top three, causing me to speculate that I over-performed to force myself to believe that God and love are stronger than death. This speculation suggests that I strove to manage my death fears with worldview, as TMT states, but the text does not prove that I authentically believed that God and love overtake fear, only that I performed them to do so. Grandmas poem, At the Dawning of the Day (see Appendix C), as mine, alludes to metaphors for light/shadow and themes of God and faith. In the poem she referred to the dawning of the day as Christ her Savior coming to help her and when evening shadows gather as a time when she thanks Christ her Savior for his guidance and for answering her calls for help. Significantly, she wrote this poem soon after a surgery in 1989, which suggests she saw her suffering through the lens of her faith, which she defined as a communicative relationship with Christ her Savior. Including this information on the blog makes the autoethnography impressionistic and suggests that I wanted Grandmas performance to mediate mine, as though she were my performance coach, where I wanted to embody and in turn perform our faith. In
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH short, I performed my fear and loss experiences normatively by expecting and wanting to respond in a familial and faith-based manner. Photographs
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Turner (1987) maintained that performance genres and narrative originate in the social drama and that people continue to draw meaning and influence from the social dramas that created them. Genre analysis highlights socio-cultural norms for style and framing (Varallo, 2009). Photographs have been a main vehicle for engaging people and I have preferred photographing family events and sharing them since I was 12. I also assumed that people normalize photographs as a performance genre (Holm, 2008), and avoid words and letters unmediated by photos or even subtitles. Without the photographs, the blog would look dull and overwhelming, and, given my experience working as a freelance photographer for a local publication, would probably remain unread if the photographs were not present. In the very least, the photographs draw attention to, and beautify, the blog, by providing an aesthetic way to frame an inevitable experience to a visual culture and so simplify a complex and heavy-handed topic. These production choices highlight intent in including photographs on the blog. The photographs thrice perform various elements via the blog, frame, and production: people, nature, food, organizing structures such as the church, podium, and tables, and machines, namely the bulldozer. The photographs post-production color treatments perform my intent via color and light (as central to photograph, as in photos and graphein, or to draw with light, Bellis, n.d.; Rosko, 2004): cool (the blue and gray hues outside and the white and blue hues inside) and warm (the red, yellow, orange, and brown hues). The smiling faces, beautiful flowers, and an orderly setting at church belie the terrible image of the bulldozer dumping cascades of dirt into Grandmas grave. Peoples choice to stand arm in arm and smile for the
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH camera reflects cultural norms for how people pose in photographs (Varallo, 2009). This
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response to cultural norms performs the social ritual. Below the photographs, captions signified key players in our mourning ritual and faith, such as an image of my parents with their longtime friends who had led my dad to adopt the Christian faith shortly before I was born. Their imaged and captioned presences show my choice to perform history and a shared faith. I posted and photographed the highest concentration of photographs in the life celebration and graveside services, which suggests that I used photography as a means to make sense of and to perform my loss experience during highly emotional events in the context of socio-cultural norms and faith-based rituals for mourning. In spite of the critical nature of these events, photographing mourning rituals seems an under-represented genre in event photography. Performing the genres in loss positioned me to follow and to break Ramages (2005) readymades, where genres comprise pre-made socio-cultural norm for people to fill or to change. While it may be normal to photograph happy events such as weddings and births, it is abnormal to photograph rituals surrounding death. Here marking photographs as performance (Holm, 2008) gave me room to exercise agency, or to interpret the socio-cultural norms that contribute to silence shrouding grief (see Bosticco & Thompson, 2005) through my framing intent while potentially creating a new photographic genre. My lens choice also performs awareness of my preference as challenging socio-cultural norms. I photograph primarily with a 28-mm fixed wide angle lens, which means that I must zoom with my feet and actually interact with people by drawing close to them if I want to photograph them thereby situating a dialogic ethos in the performance. I deviated from this norm when I used my Samsung Rogue cell phone to photograph the graveside and life celebration service (before the reception) as this camera allowed me to mute all sounds,
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including the shutter, out of respect for people who wanted to grief during the service without having to hear a camera shutter interrupt or invade their reflections. I found way to negotiate cultural norms with my desire to photograph the event. Here my camera choice showed a performance ethos of care for my audiences feelings and performance awareness of sociocultural norms for grieving, and not just my preference. The frequency of photographs per post as shown in Table 1.3 suggests that photographing in tandem with mourning rituals indicated that I wanted to perform grief socio-culturally. The third-place contender, Grandma Celebrates Life in Family, Work, Church, and Service, comprised an archival post, or a post with images of Grandma interacting with people throughout her life history. This post suggests that I performed Grandmas history to contribute to my sense making experience, or to, as Hornsby-Minor (2007), continue my matriarchs performance. The frequently appearing genres shown in Table 1.4 reflect the special event approach to photography. The detail images reflect the special event nature surrounding the photographic performance and the editorial photographs reflect my photographic style. The frequency of people in the archival images, where I was not the photographer, but I restored and/or digitized the photographs, and in the special event images show my choice to perform the highly social nature of loss rituals in the context of caregiving, family, friends, and church/community, matching the poetry findings. For instance, I included a photo that shows two persons who provided rehabilitation therapy to Grandma and a long-time carer for my aunt. The significantly lower number of establishing, landscape, and artistic images may occur due to the emphasis on a social moment as with my family and again highlights my photographic style. Practically speaking, establishing shots are usually a lead-in or exit shot for a sequence of scenes and so are only used a couple of times in special event photography. Thus, the
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH photographs show performance as embedded in socio-cultural norms for loss, ritual, and
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photographic styles and genres. The frequency analysis shows how I intentionally, creatively, and, as Ive vested in this research, constructively, sought to perform my fear of death. Blog Layout and Design The blog produces and stages the performance given its design elements and modes of production. Blog layout and design influences the aesthetics of the performance and so impact audience perception of credibility, which in turn leads to socio-political power in persuading people to take my performance seriously. I copy/pasted the Remembrance tagged blog into a this study and arranged the elements to look as close as they appeared on the blog, save the sidebar, which included widgets, links, labels, and objects (see Appendix C). The blogs topdown style lends a linear and even open-ended (or unending) feel, where the images are centered with captions beneath them and the poems centered with subtitles and large emboldened titles. The technology (Bloggers WYSIWIG and the template) that I used to design the posts influenced this layout and so the open-ended feel. This open-endedness relates to performance as ending (in a spatial-temporal moment) and not ending at the same time. Adding to the blogs revisory nature, I updated my blog with a new template and layout three-quarters of the way through my thesis seminar and changed tags. The essentials remained: The comments, posts, and content in a linear post-by-post format with the same colors. The blog looks more professional now, and so may carry more persuasive appeal via readers perceived credibility in the design. Metrics may indicate this appeal as, to date (December 7, 2010), there are nine total Likes besides mine and seven total fans on the blogs Facebook page. The text colors of red and black on a white background show a stark and vivid contrast. It seems a pitfall to assign emotions to peoples choice of colors as people choose colors for the
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aesthetic texts even while the colors comprise cultural symbols. My blog breaks cultural norms for the color red in the United States, which views red as a sign of anger. I prefer Asian signifiers for red such as purity as used in weddings and Judeo-Christian meaning for redemption. Mostly, I like red. Here, the blog shows a production or choice-driven moment in terms of style and taste. So the colors do not highlight my mood, but perhaps my preference to create clean and bright work amid a difficult and urgent time. This clean and bright look contrasts the dark and black-and-white images that temper the blog in their tone and seriousness. These production processes emphasize that I selected what to post and what not to post and in what way about my loss experiences with Grandma. The blog coordinates the poetic themes and metaphors and the photographic genres through coherence, discontinuity, and marked and unmarked texts, or what the blog says in what it includes and excludes. For instance, I did not post photographs of Grandmas dead body from the viewing, but instead posted flowers, a culturally accepted symbol of death. Flowers are not normally fearsome. Grandma asked relatives to photograph her deceased family members, such as when I photographed my aunt and when another family member photographed my grandpa, a precedent which gave me permission to do the same of her body. I photographed at least two images of Grandmas deceased body, but I chose not to publish them on the blog. In the poems, I also chose to not refer to her arm feeling cold when I touched her, or to her waxen look; though she still looked pretty, Grandma had died and so her body looked as what my dad called a shell. Excluding such details risked romanticizing death as poetic and aesthetic. However, in considering my audience, especially my mom, I decided that posting such images or words would most likely disturb and not benefit them. Besides, from my conversations with Grandma and from her poem and audio in this text, I knew that she wanted me to perform her death as a
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transition to be with God. I assumed that she would not have wanted me to post images of her dead body or write about how her dead body felt to my touch. These decisions demonstrate a public service ethos in performing loss and a decision to perform a participants expectations and beliefs again lending to this studys impressionistic approach. In these cases, I did not perform my fear of death; I performed based on what I assumed the progenitor and audience expected, wanted, and needed. Even so, instead of putting words into peoples mouths, the blogged performance puts text and pixels before their eyes, mine included. Embedded Interactivity The text as an artifact means that people follow cultural norms in how they use and design blogs and so embed those norms into the text. Titles, captions, the copyright footer, and the date and bylines organize the blog and show socio-cultural norms in blogging and protecting online content. The captions and titles in the blog highlight audience awareness, and coordinate the performance. For instance, Morning has broken... captions a photograph of the sun and blue sky backlighting fir trees at the burial service. This caption refers to a song that my mom likes and that I know touched her at a family friends funeral in the past. Comments through Blogger and Disqus along with the About me section contextualize the blogged performance. The social context in the comments shows interaction and the social context in the About me section names and identifies the performer. One comment from my mom, who had commented to the post, Grandma Celebrates Life in Family, Work, Church, and Service suggested that sharing my loss experience through the blog narrative comforted me and benefited others, Dearest Dena, Thank you so much for putting together moms (your grandma), life memories of family, church and work. Its beautiful and a lovingly [sic] tribute of your grandmas life. I replied, Dearest Mom, Youre most welcome it was my comfort and
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pleasure to share. Im glad you will treasure this. Your mom and my grandma live on in us as we honor her by living by her example [italics added]. Thus, the blog comments in particular allowed for a degree of confirming and comforting conversation with each other. Even so, cultural norms for expressing grief also embed in the text. Grief accounts reflect the cultural norms for expressing emotions, understanding the loss, and for healing (Dennis, 2008). Grief accounts cultural shift from moral and religious to personal narratives make it more challenging to navigate grief in modern times given the lack of an overarching story, an absence that exacerbates the isolation people feel when grieving (Hawkins, 1999). Referencing the God theme the most may have contributed to the oft employed Community/People metaphor; in the context of a faith narrative, I sought a symbolic and spiritual connection that assured me beyond the limitations of my own perception, mortality, and performance. While the blogs embedded interactivity and production elements influenced the performance, cultural norms and performer intent may influence the text to a greater degree. In any case, the text suggests that I succeeded to encourage others and my self through my performance, though I recognize that more work must be done to increase my reach. Un/Marking the Self in the Texts Performing voice does not necessarily mean that silence does not speak (L. Mazzei, personal communication, October 15, 2010). Silence speaks in part by marking and unmarking the text (see Phelan, 1993). Given the emphasis on performer intent, staging my own ritual in the blog allowed me to find my voice and center, such as in rehearsing faith and performing a creative self, and provided a way to connect with people through a culturally salient medium. In so doing, I marked myself in certain ways. That my performance agrees with some of TMTs findings suggests that the texts do reveal my fear of death, though Ive vested this study in
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assuming that performance allows a constructive, meaningful, and ethical way to respond to fear of death. It was not just the performance that provided such an alternative, but nine years worth of effort, reflection, and decisions to change thinking habits, to grow in faith, to develop skills, and to be mindful that I am here with help. The mind is not a void, a pastor once advised me (D. Lunsford, personal communication, August 2001). Since 2001, I took on the challenge of replacing destructive habits (e.g., withdrawing in fear) with constructive ones (e.g., performing the fear). This prior reflection influenced my intent to create a research text with constructive hermeneutic discourse. This approach helped me to unmark my sense of failure when I experienced fear around the time of Grandpas death. Resolving this unmet expectation in performing the narrative allowed for greater confidence and healing (Mattingly, 1998). Yet, I unmark these efforts in the text by not referencing them, which may give the inaccurate impression that I had everything under control and was more confident about my faith and performance than I felt. The childlike tone alludes to vulnerability and so potentially offsets the possibility that I donned the blog as a mask to perform my experience in character, and in so doing, unmarked my vulnerability at the same time. I marked myself by emphasizing the voice of the academic, the writer, the artist, the Christian, and the affectionate, enthusiastic, and hopeful granddaughter and child. In all of this marking and unmarking of the self, where is there room in the self to just be? A production leaves no room to withdraw from performance, and this must be so because the self as performer must perform. The intent to mark or unmark myself in the text shows me in tension between searching for agency in the performance and experience a situation outside of my control. This search demonstrates a healing ethos as I replaced lack of control in fear and death to producing the performance. Thus, I adopt a degree of confidence in the production, but did I always perform
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my voice? Again, I write in a childlike voice in my poems and in this research describe my initial performance on the grave as childlike. Did I choose childlike because I perceive my audience to regard me in such terms? Did the text allow me to express how I felt to my public, or how I perceived I should feel in view of their gaze? Remembering Carlsons (2003) tripartite relationship, I, too, am the audience. Did I use the text to express an expectation of myself? The text seems to keep me in a childlike voice. Did the text show fear in this vulnerability? Did the text empower, or did it confine? This possibility shows a flipside to the emphasis on People/Community; again, perhaps I feared losing myself to the social drama, and perhaps the text, without this awareness, threatens to keep me there. This possibility differs from fear of death; perhaps I feared a symbolic death, as though I could not stand up to others voices in the ritual. As a sponge, the performance leaks agency at the same time it absorbs it. I perform based on what and who I perceive my audience, my socio-culture, and myself to expect me to be. Further possibilities exist outside of the text, such as when Dad thanked me for the photographs after he watched the slideshow at Grandmas life celebration service reception. Without you, we wouldnt have any of these pictures, he said. I felt recognized, confirmed, and most of all, appreciated as though I could exist as I performed myself to be, and that key people valued my contribution. I just love you! my cousin declared at the burial service. You just be you, she said (B. Mathisen, personal communication, January 29, 2010). The night before the burial service, she had read my blog post on Remembering Grandma with Faith, Hope, and Love. Her verbal response to my blogged performance affirmed my performed person as unique. In these ways my audience gave me permission to perform my loss with the assurance that they loved and appreciated me for the performance and for who I was as I revealed through the performance. Pursuing symbolic existence post-death became secondary
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH to communicating confirmation now, which allowed me to perceive Rogers (1989; 1994)
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psychological safety and creative freedom among my relationships and so resulted in greater contentment with my self. This process fostered healing. In chapter 1, I spoke about withdrawing from future goals and being as a deer frozen in headlights. This performance process did not solve that temptation, but has required me to journey through it. This performance and program have given me confidence to communicate in person so long as I can rehearse my ideas and voice in writing, whether online, in photographs, or in my journal. Here I find a flipside of experiencing fear but not needing to cling or defend. Fear anticipates the unknown, but performing loss challenged me to situate myself in the moment and to reflect as my rehearsal, rather than to predict a future event or rehearse a feeling. Impressionistic autoethnography helped me to find Kabat-Zinns (1994) mindfulness of my inner world and awareness of the outer. In the least, I engaged instead of withdrew, a key finding. Yet, I no longer need say instead of withdrawing in fear, as referencing the past only keeps me there. I remember advice nine years ago when I first sought guidance in my journey with fear: Learn to rest in Gods grace. As my cousin declared, I just love you! Youre just you, this performance has given me the opportunity to just be me. Am I faithful, courageous, afraid, loving, creative, expressive, or kind? Yes and no. So I land on this imperative: Perform not to wrangle an experience, but to love and be loved, to see the performance through, and then when all is said and done, to simply be. This finding implicates a need to add self-care and performing via love amid mortality awareness to my research ethos. Overall, un/marking my self in the texts gave me agency where my decisions to do so empowered me with agency in loss even though this agency
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also risks misrepresenting the initial event by including and excluding details thereby persuading readers that I experienced loss in certain ways, such as with fear/love. Symbolically Exchanging Expectations Months later in the Veterans Day post, I wrote that it helps to exchange tangible and physical losses with symbolic gain, resonating with MacDougalls (2005) observation that blogging increases identity and self- and audience awareness via symbols, and Miller and Shepherds (2004) view that blogs perform the self with others and as embedded in culture and a history. Yet, even these notions limit because I can not write the loss or the fear away. While I wrote with confidence in the blog that I wasnt afraid, that fear may have been reduced in degree, but not completely removed. Though I experienced less or no fear in that moment, working through loss and fear remains a moment by moment experience and it may be impossible and unbeneficial, and thus even inhumane, to assume that I can remove my death fears entirely. This symbolic exchange of expectations resonates with Mattinglys (1998) distinction that a healing narrative heals by helping persons to find an in-between space to reconcile the ways that their expectations and experiences conflict. Narrating change or freedom? Therapeutic narratives show how and why a person changes amid broken expectations and experiences (Mattingly, 1998). Given this framework, I expected to find change present in the text. Instead, the text shows Movement, my measure for transformation, as the second to last referenced metaphor with only 3 instances. Through reflexivity, or taking a step away from the text via reflection, perhaps emotions have seasons, too. On the day of the graveside service, a cousin commented that she thought I would be the worst off of everyone, and while she did not explain why, I assumed she referred to my history with fear and my attachment with Grandma.
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What once oppressed me in the past need not oppress me now, for that memory is but a shadow of what once was. Fear becomes a misguided experience that loses its power when I decide to believe something else. The performance aspect of blogging showed me that creating content provides a context in which I can situate myself and in which others can choose to come and go as they please, but did I give myself the same freedom? I have found fear to be the enemy of freedom (Pyszczynski, 2004, p. 845). I respond to fear by focusing on growing and learning instead of clinging to [my] old ways of thinking (p. 845). I know freedom by allowing myself to opt -in or -out of staying in the rhetorical space that I created. This choice to create a rhetorical space for myself lends agency and so empowers me in loss. I reference my frustration with feeling stuck when I say I am trying to move on with my life and yet honor my grandma and family at the same time. I referenced free to live my life, which suggests an uncomfortable possibility that I viewed Grandmas death as a hindrance to my life. Perhaps I feared the disruption to my trajectory. If this possibility is true, then I feared someone elses death to preserve my own life, uncomfortably echoing TMTs findings. Yet, this text challenges a culture that believes it selfish to declare grief (Irwin, 1991); even this self-preservation in the findings empowers me to give myself freedom to move on in part by changing my expectations of the text. Thus, my movement, as freedom to live, concurs with Mattinglys (1998) imperative for people to locate desire and adjust their expectations for a healing narrative to occur: I want to live my life and affirm this desire as good answering Grandmas occasional Ive lived my life; you live yours. This movement contrasts cultural views that frame such declarations as selfish and even wrong in loss (see Irwin, 1991) suggesting that performance outcomes challenged cultural norms that silence grief and judge the bereaved.
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Performing hope or love?
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When I began this study, I adopted Denzins (1997) view that performance ethnographies should symbolize hope and the guiding ethos to nurture hope in end of life (Hudson, 2006). Hope amid loss heals (Snyder, 1998). Yet, the text shows only 15 instances of the theme of Hope, falling second to the last in frequency, with Love as the oft referred to virtue. While I obligated myself to reach in to reach out, the text does not reveal me consistently reaching out by performing hope; I reached out via other virtues and art-forms. The absence of hope suggests hope to be lacking where Grandmas text performed hope for me, and now I can choose whether or not I hope and extend that hope to others. Disappointingly, performance narrative cannot alone comprise the object of hope, for narratives provide but a symbol to shape how people assign meaning to their experiences and a process to locate their desires. Performing hope in loss assumes hope to be a sought-after experience, and the object of said hope, just out of reach. This notion lends a pretense to approaching performance with an ethos for imparting hope; perhaps people need to experience love in loss. The text and initial event reveal that taking courage to perform my farewell on Grandmas grave highlighted my experience. I had wanted to perform hope, but instead I performed farewell. As I described this farewell as tending to Grandma one last time, this farewell constitutes an act of tender affection, or an ethos for love. If love lasts (1 Cor. 13), then love remains a worthwhile endeavor in performance and loss. Writing as healing or service? Performing a loving farewell became the primary function of the text, which suggests that I accepted the finality of my situation and evidenced that I performed Mattinglys (1998) and Polkinghornes (1989) healing in the narratives. I do have a penchant to write (whether in poems, photographs, journals, or blogs) as a way of knowing and being. Yet, in the research
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process, I learned that my writing style unwittingly borders self-centric, which conflicts with my definition of holism as self in socio- cultural and political, as an ethic of care, and, in light of findings, as embedded in a spiritual and loving way of knowing. I learn by writing, but may fail to make sense to readers by overemphasizing my thinking process. This way of being challenges the leadership philosophy that I created midway through this program and that drives my work: connect with people in meaningful ways through communicating creativity, vocation, and healing amid loss or change (Rosko, 2009 October 17; Rosko, 2010b). I reduce connection with audience by making it difficult for readers see the connections, coherence, and to stay with me. While I appreciate the writing process as healthy for me, I am now aware that it can be easy to don verbosity as a veil behind which to hide or as a process by which to be. This possibility resonates with the self-preservation motif in TMT and performances ontology framework. To perform well, I must learn how to write with a public service ethos. These areas show the limitations of performing narrative in loss. As I wrote in Grandmas viewing post: Sometimes the abstract is not enough. Sometimes symbols are not enough. Writing and photography provide symbols that remind me of Grandma and my shared interaction and conversations. However, more is needed in loss. I need a continuance. I will have that when Jesus returns because then he will breathe life to create new bodies. I dont know what that will look like.
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH I know it will be new.
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In symbolizing my experience in text and pixels, I found newness by not needing to power-hold my expectation that I would be afraid. This finding allows for liberation. As I moved by exchanging experience with symbols, I learned to love myself, and in doing so, discovered a way out from staying situated in fear, thus making it possible to love others. Continuity: Digitizing Community & Presence I performed that I needed continuance. In what ways did I symbolize and digitize continuance in the blog? Technology as a way of knowing provides another way to perform, both embodied, such as in the initial experience or in production (see Peterson, 2008), and mediated, such as with others in the comments. The blog as a communication technology mediates the in-between, or the ethical and uncertain gray spaces, where the design influences the outcomes, much as the systems people create to communicate in turn influence the communication processes and outcomes (Conrad & Poole, 2005). Mediatized performances benefit death studies assuming that text and pixels, to a degree, replaces or even becomes the body as a site of knowing. I find constraints in performing story as embedded in family and social norms, such as when family members tell stories based on their age or rank, while younger members listen to them and carry them on (Peterson & Langellier, 2006). In autoethnographic impressionistic narrative, I performed my, Grandmas, my familys, and socio-cultures story for loss and ritual, instead of only carrying on her expectation that I tell her story. Performing my narrative in the blog and in this study allowed me to reframe our story through my experience, lending agency, and potentially offsetting the social norms and control in storytelling in family contexts. To restate, blogging provides a sense of belonging by sharing knowledge and empathizing with another persons experience as she performs her mediatized stories and so
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signifies her experience (see Bess, Fisher, Sonn, & Bishop, 2002; Miller & Shepherd, 2004). This blog and research avoided compartmentalizing my passion or area of study, my family or professional life, my faith or scholarship. In this way, blogging and researching loss gave me a sense of wholeness and confirmation, where I enjoyed a supportive learning environment that wanted me to apply my gifts and grow (Gonzaga University, 2010a; Jesuit Colleges, 2005). On community, this blog coordinated what it means to be situated in relationships with family, friends, church, and colleagues who come together and then disperse due to the loss of one of their own. The blog as a production showed me the importance of involving other voices in the performance, such as in the playlist that a church volunteer had created, and which I posted from Grandmas life celebration service. Friends and family posted supportive comments on the blog transforming what could have been an isolating and fearful experience to a communitarian one. These examples suggest that blogging gives occasion to perform digipresence and community on a shared stage. Rituals require people to participate with others suffering (Russell, 2004), which this autoethnographic impressionistic performance narrative allowed me to do, namely in performing my own suffering in the context of social relationships and cultural norms for grief. Instead of only clinging to survive via social affiliation and worldview defense, I also referred to compassion and gained empathetic understanding by participating as close as possible with my loss experience, such as at the edge of the grave and in sharing the performance with others. Thus, the performance empowered me to create a mourning ritual from my gifts and intent that influenced my bereaved network. Regarding audience response, I performed my role as a researcher by taking a step back and even persuading people of the value in normalizing a 21st-century and culturally engaging way to express grief and fear to a collective who in turn may or may not confirm my experience
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as valid. The text asks people to read and consider it if they share an interest in the topic and reading another persons stories on loss and life as a graduate student. Yet, on a blog, readers confirm my voice by reading the text. Even with my enthusiastic effort, I still experienced loneliness via the amount of creative and scholarly work that Id invested in the blog and research text does not always yield the same size return, meaning that of all the people to whom I sent the blog, only a handful responded. While these responses were quality, from important people in my life, and no less meaningful due to their size, I was still struck by a paradox of camaraderie and loneliness in performing my loss ritual, a paradox that confounded the connection that I felt and, importantly, wanted when I performed in the blog. This loneliness contrasted Bess, Fisher, Sonn, and Bishops (2002) finding that blogs fostered a sense of belonging and influence and so signified community. It was not enough to perform a loss on a blog. I learned to confirm my own voice through performance. I needed to integrate my digitized performance with face-to-face interaction by participating with people in ritual. On presence, resonating with Rogers framework (1989; 1994), I learn to perform loss narratives to communicate and lead authentically, where the media provides a safe place because it mediates; the texts express creative freedom and provide symbols to better understand my life. The mediatized performance differs from my initial experience as I use symbols to mediate my descriptions of the experience and as I use the technology of a blog as a way to reconcile and then produce those experiences for an audience. My intent to create aesthetic texts as mourning ritual shows this constructive hermeneutic behind my work and so demonstrates Andersons (2007) ethic of care. Constructive behaviors counteract the control-based or defensive postures that TMT hypothesized and found people to express when they feared death. Constructive behaviors show a creative process by which I engaged and interacted with others via texts, which
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came about from an on-ground experience. Experience builds confidence. Perhaps I lacked experience engaging with ritual and death to know a healthy way to anticipate death. Perhaps I feared feeling my fears. More deeply, perhaps I lacked confidence in myself as a person, or that I had value, gifts, and ideas worth sharing. I perform a confident character in the blog as mediated by a service ethos, such as my reference to tending to Grandma at the grave when I said farewell. I tended first, necessitating courage, and then performed the act as tending, necessitating creative freedom. Thus, the performance mediates a dual-pronged effort. I performed an expressive and enthusiastic voice, which I had not allowed myself to publicly express before, concurring with Howards (2008) finding that bloggers asserted agency as influence and power, and Stavrositu and Sundars (2008) appraisal that bloggers empowered themselves with confidence, voice, agency, and competence. This blog, then, allowed me to become confident in a new way of being as responding to loss and fear by performing instead of succumbing to TMTs subconscious-driven survivalist tendencies. I recall again the significant moment on the edge of Grandmas grave. On that performance, I want to emphasize a moment prior when my husband helped me to make the bouquet. I think of his love and commitment to help me through this process. I experience continuity as moving forward in my commitment to my marriage and education, to relationships with colleagues, family, and friends, and to investing in my circle of faith, all for the purpose of building each other up in a world of bulldozers. I rehearsed my farewell performance with my husband and again with my camera in the backyard before I stepped foot on the graves soil. The performance continues as I continue to perform and as people participate with the text. Yes, I attached to my husband, resonating with TMT, yet I did more: I responded to death fear by rehearsing and producing my presence in creative and aesthetic digital texts.
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Performing Farewell
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Significantly, the bulldozer photograph breaks socio-cultural norms for photographing mourning rituals and stands out from all the rest. Did the bulldozer manage or prove my death fear? To answer that question, I take a reflexive step back to remember my initial performance on the edge of Grandmas grave before the bulldozer filled the hole with dark dirt. As I stood on the precipice of the grave with my toes hanging over the edge with my cousin and sister arm-in-arm crying and watching behind me, and with the grave workers the grave diggers standing by holding their shovels, heads down, and with the bulldozer at the head of Grandmas grave, I felt awkward yet determined: awkward because the grave workers, while patiently waiting, watched me perform my farewell, yet determined to fulfill my mission. My familys supportive presence provided the backdrop for my successful goodbye performance on the edge of Grandmas grave. Twice I asked the grave crew above the din of the bulldozer, its wheels dusty sidewalls nearly touching nearby headstones, to give me a minute to say goodbye. My audience contributed flesh and spirit behind the machinery, and the grave precipice my stage. I stood situated in a moment where I intended to say goodbye, where I wanted to take courage to see the process through, instead of avoiding Grandpas service in 2001 by staying at home afraid. At that time, my camera gave me a degree of courage and performance awareness. After I returned home from undergraduate studies, I struggled most heavily with fear, and so took up photography again. Photography became my way to frame the world as aesthetic instead of fear some. At the grave site, I held the bouquet that my husband and I made. My goodbye, camera momentarily in pocket, became a performance, or a way of reframing a frightening experience. I learned to perform as situated in between instead of only as in a duplicatable twodimensional frame. At Grandmas grave, I felt tension as I called attention to my farewell by
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disrupting the grave digging ritual at the military cemetery, where my cousin observed the burial process moves people in and out much as the photograph of the entryway sign that scrolled the last name of the deceased and their service time in half-hour increments. I experienced some comfort in the presence of technology and expedience, as though this was just one moment in the history in which I would pass through. Even so, my farewell performance felt as a paradoxical uneasy and hurried pause. I called out to one grave digger, who did not hear me, and so approached the man who looked as though he were in charge and tapped him on the arm and said, Excuse me, I wanted to say goodbye, could I please have a few minutes? He hollered above the bulldozer and asked his cohorts to stop, Stop! She wants to say goodbye! effectively illuminating my presence with stage lights. They stilled their hurried shovels, took a step back, and bowed their heads reverently. The scene felt somewhat comical, yet I felt endeared to them for their reverential effort to make do with their process and my interruption of it. I do not remember if the bulldozer engine was on or off, that is if I had a moment of quiet to say goodbye, but I stood with my toes on the edge of Grandmas grave and tossed in the bouquet that James and I had quietly and affectionately made with Grandmas favorite flowers, carnations, and which that morning I had photographed in my back yard with my red bathrobe on, knowing full well that later that day the carnation bouquet would be buried in dirt. I wanted to keep the beauty in images, and this keeping helped me to let the beauty go to the earth. The bouquet clanged against the metal of her casket, I declared, Until we meet again Grandma, I love you. Feeling as though I needed to say more, yet aware the performance neared its end as the gravediggers waited to return to their work, I threw in a handful of soil, Brown, soft, rich -comforting -- never fear some, for the soil and the flowers are the land, and the land is Gods and ours, its made to be beautiful. Later I asserted in my journal that I wasnt afraid. I felt
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relieved because me -- Aaron, Nikki, and I -- tended to Grandma one last moment before she laid to rest. Rest is peaceful and not terrifying, and, quoting 2 Timothy 3:16-17, God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, [and] a sound mind. Interestingly, I observed that I felt relieved in the presence of my family, or my in-group, as though we were the faithful ones who tended to Grandma one last moment. Performing narrative ritualized loss in a graceful and tender way as opposed to ending with a bulldozer. Here I observed more than just clinging to my family for comfort in loss, for I was the only one who stood on the edge of her grave, while the others stepped back and the rest of the family either strolled elsewhere searching for my aunts headstone, or had climbed into their cars on the street several yards away. I wanted to see the process through and to gain comfort and courage from my performance. Standing on the edge of Grandmas grave became a defining moment for me where I framed my experience as not just me performing my fear of death by photographing and writing about my family, or the mourning rituals, or our faith. On this brief moment I remembered a service ethic to tend to a person, though deceased, but a real person one last moment before she laid to rest as I learned to set aside expectations and tend to myself. I had not expected this sense of responsibility would carry me through Grandmas burial service, but I am glad that it did. This sense of responsibility carried me through the times when I took care of Grandma and Judy and did not have a camera or a pen or a computer handy. This timeline suggests it important to practice an ethic of care amid ones daily social drama so that the caring becomes a habit and can support a person in loss. My audience witnessed my farewell. While I earlier described my voice as childlike, this single experience helped me to grow up. It became the substance of my memories and the most substantial blog posts for me in terms of compelling content. The performance process allowed
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me to rehearse and perform my farewell as a courageous and loving act. It takes courage to tend, or to confirm with tender loving care, especially in end of life. Through this blog I performed awkward, vulnerable, tender, empowering, and potentially hidden moments to people I knew, did not know, and may not ever know. On the graves edge I confounded TMTs predictions that I would have avoided that which I feared and clung to people or worldview instead. An open grave ranks high with mortality salience. Yet, I did not cave. I stepped outside of the clinging and faith-defense roles when I stepped on the edge of the grave by myself in the presence of an audience and simply said goodbye. I finally met an expectation for my new self: to take courage and draw near, rather than to avoid, scary situations, and in meeting this self-elected expectation, experienced healing in the performance. TMT and Curtain Call I still find TMT a reductionist and even dehumanizing theory that assumes that people, as though they are creatures without choice or intent, live by unconsciously fighting to survive. Yet, Ive also found TMT to apply to my experiences. Even I, Christian, artist, researcher, and family member, am not immune from fear of death and the temptation to strive to preserve myself in the very identities that I believe save me from such power-holding behaviors. Performing an end to a story, such as ending the posts tagged Remembrance, has yet to occur as I endeavor to continue performing fear and death studies in text and pixels, as evidenced in the Veterans Day post on Grandmas demolition of the house and our visit to her grave site. Contrary to TMT, I communicated more, not less, and drew near, instead of withdrew. I performed on-ground, embodied, and mediated. Performance narratives mediate emotional and loss experiences by hosting a safe place and by producing a filter to create and communicate symbols and vulnerable experiences in the
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text. This process invokes agency. These narratives made it possible to reframe the death experience as a performative one built iteratively from the initial reason I enrolled in this program in the first place. At my late aunts viewing in March 2008, I recognized that my life was short and felt ashamed that I had not yet demonstrated the courage to consistently and successfully complete important goals. I decided to act now for my future. That summer I had read Morelands (1997) book on living by a Judeo-Christian vocation, and desired to validate my choice to return to school with a gifts-based and faith-inspired imperative. In these ways the performance narratives made it possible to birth life as I learned to take responsibility over my life choices and to express my gifts to love God, people, and my self. This study shows that I fashioned a different experience than when my grandpa had died in September 2001, at which time I had stayed home in fear of drawing near to the social requirements and visibility of ritual at his graveside services. While I had attended the reception, I had abstained from attending the graveside service. As I compare my choice then to my choice now via the record of my performance text, I see that I have chosen life in death by performing my identity as embedded in faith, culture, relationships, and vocation. Perhaps here shines the bright inference behind TMT: find constructive and loving ways to symbolically exist. Theres greater risk in withdrawing and sitting on the bedroom floor afraid than there is to go where I, as the adage goes, lean into the heat. Again the performance texts reveal that I did not withdraw, but that I engaged with people, with ritual services while creating ritual, and confronted my own fears via the safe medium of a blog and by writing and performing photographs and poems. In so doing, I broke the cultural silence shrouding grief (see Bosticco & Thompson, 2005) by employing the cultural norm of speaking of transformation in loss (see Hawkins, 1999). I also
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH made the story mine while honoring Grandmas and so effectively negotiated normalized
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storytelling hierarchies in families (see Peterson & Langellier, 2006): now I share a story. These findings suggest that TMT needs adjustments, that is, a framework that reframes the question from how people use relationships and faith to respond to their death fears, to how and why do people choose life in light of death by engaging in mourning rituals via their performative voice, and what virtues, desires, or choices do people locate from the performance to move through their fear? This paradigm shift emphasizes choice as the intent to create aesthetic texts (see Conquergood, 1983a; 1985; 1998; Pelias & VanOosting, 1987). I approach fear, techno-cultural, cyber, and death studies by reframing the management motif and control assumptions to regard loss experiences as dialectic, such as considering love as a dialectic response, and not as a separated opposite, to fear. In other words, TMT overemphasizes negative tendencies. The experience is both/and, and not one or the other. I seemed to will faith, hope, and love, as performative verbs and not nouns, into existence by declaring them, and then validating the performance through a formal research process. However, not even my faith allows such a feat, where I live and do not by might or power, will or effort, but by Gods Spirit and mercy (Rom. 9:16; Zech. 4:6). So I acknowledge that I need mercy to end this performance. The performance needs to end to save me from staying in the role of a granddaughter who lost, a daughter who worried, a woman who feared, a student who strove, a partner who sat on my bedroom floor afraid, or a childlike voice embodied in an adult experiencing loss as situated on the edge of a grave. Much as Grandmas death was not the only event that happened in her life, so also fear is not the only experience in mine.
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Findings Summary
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The text shows that I experienced fear of death as I referred to those terms in the text and as I behaved in ways that kept with TMTs findings: social/in-group affiliation, clinging to my in-group, and worldview defense (see RQ 1, Chapter 3). However, the text stepped beyond TMT as I demonstrated choice by performing my farewell in the presence of in and out group members, or my audience, when I stood on the edge of Grandmas grave. I also performed other virtues or characters more frequently, such as God, community, faith and love. That I coordinated and produced my fears in an aesthetic text demonstrates a process by which I discovered agency in communicating my loss in an intentional and culturally relevant way. Such intent and artistry made my experience constructive. Fears flagged that which I valued (Pugmire, 1994), and I responded to my fears by performing. Performance called me to respond to people (including my self), which confirmed my experience. I shared the performance with people who commented in the blog, a normalized medium, and so realized Carlsons (2003) relationship with the performer, audience, and socio-cultural norms. I performed with a dialogic and confirmation ethos for my, Grandma, and others experiences in her end of life and subsequent mourning rituals. The text embodied my and even Grandmas presence (see Peterson, 2008), and readers interacted with the text and responded to it in their own way. In these ways, I performed presence, community, and continuity by mediating the performance in a digitized text, which continues as people interact with the text (see Chvasta, 2003). This continuity suggests that computer mediated performance narrative in end of life, caregiving, and mourning rituals provides a mode to produce a dialogic bridge that draws people together to tend to each other in loss, instead of separating them into in- and out- groups.
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In all, the blog staged Turners (1987) social drama, or the relationship between peoples thoughts, emotions, and experiences. This social drama created and derived from an existing socio-cultural genre from which I drew meaning and communicated influence in loss. Technology provided a space to mediate my death fear and so experience creative freedom and perceive psychological safety, or central conditions of a psychotherapeutic process (see Rogers, 1989; 1994), where death as a final and threatening experience did not dissuade me from producing my performance. In the performance, I experienced healing in several ways: (a) agency in the creativity, (b) decreased fear by choosing the experiences that I wanted to convey such as closeness, continuity, audience awareness, cultural impact, and presence, (c) an ethic of care by viewing my farewell as tending to Grandma, (d) taking courage in being present and contributing to a shared experience, (e) exchanging physical loss for symbolic gain fostered continuity and meaning, (f) an opportunity to encourage others through digital storytelling, (g) locating desires that informed life goals, (h) and embedding the experience in current worthwhile pursuits. Each experience of which helped me to resolve unmet expectations or disappointments of my past, namely, when I avoided Grandpa's services due to fear and my ongoing challenge to reconcile living and producing a life amid illness. In keeping with Mattingly (1998), this process also fostered healing by challenging me to reconcile unmet expectations to continue living in the text because at some point those safe and creative spaces will end, too. The text shows that I processed my fears of death and my loss in general by integrating technology and performance narrative as embedded in my self-reflection, Christianity, and sociocultural mourning rituals (see RQ 2, Chapter 3). In performing my social experiences (see Conquergood, 1983b; Turner, 1987), I performed without a clear demarcation from the performance (see Blau, 1982/1983; 1990), both creating and expressing my identity as a
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mourner, granddaughter, Christian, woman, wife, academic, family member, blogger, and artist (see Carlson, 2003; Conquergood, 1981; Scheibe, 1986). I voiced my identity and exchanged physical loss with symbols. The bulldozer image became central to understanding how my performance differed from cultural norms for grief expression and so suggested that I broke free from former patterns in my life. This photograph provided a record that I courageously said farewell on Grandma's grave and so need not refer to fear as the only emotion in my life history and trajectory. Yet, I mediated that terrifying photograph with normalized images of people holding each other, of flowers, and other details. These images show intent to image mourning ritual in keeping with audience and socio-cultural expectations. This intent to create an aesthetic text became my praxis, or action, in creating the text for an audience, which changed my focus from fear to production. The production provided a turning point that allowed a formative narrative to take place. The design elements in the production demonstrated agency, where the intent alone allowed me to move past reacting to fear via TMTs socio-subconscious realm as I selected and directed how I wanted to experience my loss, fears, and mourning rituals. Virtue declarations of faith in and love for and from God and people countered my mortality awareness, or the context for my fear. I learned how to live amid mortality awareness as I found other backdrops, costumes, and characters from which to choose. These efforts engaged me to care and reduced TMT signifiers thereby challenging me to love myself as I shared my experiences. Realizing my intent rewarded me with greater agency and allowed for empathetic understanding. Thankfully, at least for the short term, I created a formative narrative in part by discovering a beneficial and constructive way to live.
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I return to living by love and a public service ethic to challenge the tendency, as TMT found, to behave unjustly and subconsciously when afraid to die. Grieving with love moved me through death fear. I gained a communication ethos to respond to my loss experiences and fears authentically, creatively, and in a way that encourages people and engages culture. I remind myself that death cannot separate me from Gods love (Rom. 8:28-30). I found that embedding the performance in a faith narrative allowed me to perform my loss as a quest for love, as in, I did not feel your death / I felt your love (January 20, 2010). More than rehearsing death (Blau, 1982/1983; 1990; Phelan, 1997), I performed to love and be loved in the world. In this sense, performance in the blog and in this study has provided a loving way for me to extend myself in end of life where I can now appreciate past memories and choose life for my future.
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH V: SUMMARIES AND CONCLUSIONS
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Ten months after Grandmas burial service (Veterans Day, November 16, 2010), I blogged about my visit to Tahoma National Cemetery to see her headstone for the first time and, on the same day, witnessing Grandmas house being demolished. This blog post provided a reflexive moment to reflect on this study. Grandmas grave, now covered with thick grass instead of upheaved soil, no longer felt as a precipice, but almost as an anticlimactic, yet needed nod to the name carved in stone as a last objectified and symbolic reframing of her existence. Importantly, I noticed that a service ethos carried through to that moment as I listened to my mom recite Grandmas favorite verses and the poem that Grandma had written, each of which Mom read from Grandmas service program. Now was Moms moment to perform her loss, which she chose to do through Grandmas voice: At the dawning of the day, when darkness fades away, Christ my Savior comes to say, Ill be with you and guide your path today. As evening shadows gather, and darkness starts to fall, I say to Christ my Savior, thank you for your guidance, and [for] being at my call. Though Mom recited Grandmas poem, Moms intent to do so when situated atop Grandmas grave performed Moms farewell. I gained empathetic understanding for Moms grief expression as she leaned on those words more readily than her cane, even keeping the program in her car. I realized that each person performs their loss in their own way and time. So performance therapies that work for me may not work for others. I gain the central insight to demonstrate empathetic understanding and compassion, and I can do so with greater confidence because Ive undergone my own performance ritual for grief. I am grateful that Mom shared her performance moment with me. Later that day we drove by Grandmas house and witnessed the last possible moment of demolition when a steam shovel tore down the last standing part of the house: the deck. My
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husband and I had helped Dad to build the deck, which Dad had designed. My uncle often joked that the deck would outlast the house. Indeed it did, and as we drove away that steam shovel was still trying to take the deck down. I photographed the steam shovel gnawing at the deck railing, and later made one of the photographs black and white. That image reminded me of the bulldozer image, yet another mechanical technology used to remove, take down, or bury what had once existed before and so reframe a life history. I framed the bulldozer image horizontal and the steam shovel image vertical. These images juxtaposed the tender social and detail images that I had photographed at the burial and life celebration services. My cousin told me she cried in the library when she saw the demolition images, but that she liked seeing pictures of the inside of the house. She thanked me for preserving these memories for the family. What a beautiful tribute (L. Lawrence, personal communication, November 19, 2010). Here I learn that performance ethos will always carry a flipside. While it comforted her to see the house intact and brought back memories of visits with my grandma (her aunt), it brought her to tears to see it torn down. While it benefits society to see loss, it also hurts. Yet, ethically, I cannot mark the culturally sanctioned or happy images and leave out the mechanical and disturbing images as Id misconstrue and perpetuate inaccurate and disconfirming portrayals of loss. As Dad said, Its sad. Its like an end of an era. Then he perked up. Perhaps Jesus will resurrect houses, too! I agree with Russell (2004) that performance must show compassion by participating with others ritual and suffering. Otherwise, the performance borders self-centric without any salve of love for the hurt that performing loss may procure. In chapter 1, I clarified how I experienced fear of death, or at least how I speculate that I experienced fear of death in terms of isolation, lack of commitment to future goals, and health challenges such as experienced through dismissal in medical organizations, subsequent
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH avoidance of physicians, social stigma of being a neurotic or unhealthy female, social
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avoidance (e.g., to ritual or formal occasions), and a general sense of uncertainty as to what precipitated the illnesses Ive experienced over the years, and then of course the physical and emotional pain from the illnesses themselves. These health challenges seemed to feed my sense of isolation and lack of commitment to future goals because the health and stigma hindered me from satisfactorily carrying out my commitments and engaging socially. Here performing loss experiences in the context of this research as a partial requirement for a Masters of Arts degree at a reputable institution shows that in the very least I have committed to a sanctioned future goal. Ive found a new way to interact with people in a mediated way, or via the hybrid delivery format of the degree and my blog. While this studys performance narrative does not fix or resolve my health challenges, the text reveals a process by which I sought to validate my loss experience in a research context as embedded in my commitment to a future goal and by socially engaging with people in a culturally relevant medium. Yet even my perception borders on speculation. Here I see the difference between awareness of the bias that I have vested in this research by wanting to discover that blogging my loss experiences provided a healing process. I interpreted this performance through TMT and vice-versa as coordinated by a current communication technology and my faith, both internal and external expressions. TMT provided a framework to understand how I approached Grandmas death and my anticipated fear her death through social identity, social group affiliation, and faith (or out-of-this-worldview). TMT, as I observed in chapters 2 and 3, provided a limited way to understand peoples death fears, namely by framing death fear through hypothetical and labbased scenarios and social relationships (i.e., in-group affiliation, out-group paranoia, and attachment) and beliefs (i.e., worldview defense, cultural norms) resulting in social injustice
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(e.g., ageism), a relevant concern. While the first-level analysis this study seems to confirm TMT, the second-level analysis suggests that TMT assumes too much and fails to explore how intent and choice intersect to influence peoples experiences with death terror, and more generally, anxiety and loss. Though poetic keywords, themes, and metaphors and photographic genres revealed my conscious attempt to signify my experience, such analyses provided only one step to understand how I unconsciously performed my fear of death in the blog. Perhaps TMT stops too soon and needs to move to a second level analysis, such as via performance. Mediating loss and fear of death via a blog awkwardly exposed vulnerable experiences that culture silences, such as death or the emotional world, as in Western culture. Performance narrative theory provides a way to reframe fear of death through creative expression and a way of being in the world as juxtaposed with mortality awareness (see Blau 1982/1983; 1990; Phelan, 1997). Moreover, performance provided a framework to explore how I intended to create aesthetic texts (see Conquergood, 1983a; 1985; 1998; Pelias & VanOosting, 1987). The modes of production highlight intent and influence implications for blogging as empowerment, voice, community, a path to civic action and cultural engagement, or a formal process by which to communicate the self. My choice to perform fear of death through a blog confirmed my experience and voice as valid contributors to a larger socio-cultural and political sphere. From this study I created The Living Memorial, an online website and Facebook discussion board where I invite people to share their loss experiences. While it remains to be seen if people in this culture feel comfortable sharing loss online (P. Tormey, personal communication, October 11, 2010), I lead by example by sharing my loss narrative. I designed an audiovisual presentation of many of the images in this study. I coordinated the images with sound excerpts from interviews with Grandma and speeches given at her services. In this
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audiovisual, I included the bulldozer picture, and in thinking about my audience, especially my mom, the only place that such a surprising and terrifying photo seemed appropriate was to sync it with the audio of Pastor reading Grandmas favorite chapter from the Bible, Isaiah 12, which declares, I will trust and not be afraid... This declaration challenged the thick darkness of the dirt spilling into the open grave. I remember Grandma quoting this verse to me when she told me that she feared falling asleep at night. This was the same woman who, when I asked her if she was afraid to die, replied, No, because I know the Lord will be with me every step of the way, and then referenced Psalm 23 (A. McIntyre, personal communication, May 25, 2006; June 7, 2006). This was the same woman who consistently stated that she lived and died just to see my Savior first of all. She quoted this line from a favorite unknown hymn, which read, Ill open my eyes and make heaven my home / Just to see my Savior first of all... Thats what I look forward to, Grandma said. I will open my eyes and make heaven my home (A. McIntyre, personal communication, July 5, 2008). Yet, Grandma told me, after returning from the hospital, that she feared going to sleep. While Grandma looked forward to seeing Jesus, she knew that there remained, as she labeled, a transition when she closed her eyes and then reopened them. She believed this transition to be instantaneous from earth to heaven, referencing Jesus promised, Today you will be with me in paradise (Luke 23:43). She even told the head nurse on her last night on earth that she was talking to Jesus (D. Claudon, personal communication, January 19/30, 2010). We live situated in responding to fear of death with trust: both/and. When I see the black-and-white image of the bulldozer dumping cascades of black dirt en masse on the fragile precipice of her grave, it is in that image that I most feel the heaviness of death and even the fear of death. I see the dirt as a veil of darkness. Thus, in the audiovisual I think of that photograph with its counterpart, the declaration of Pastor, Grandma, and my husband, who also
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read Isaiah 12 to Grandma during our last live visit with her on December 13, 2010, I will trust, and not be afraid! This declaration does not necessitate the absence of fear, but demands the presence of it, for why else must we trust and not be afraid? This research and performance experience showed me that I can understand and glean beneficial insights from a struggle, but with that understanding comes the need to be willing and flexible to continue living life knowing that this life as I know it remains temporary. I have come to appreciate key people in my life, and though I still struggle, the struggle reminds me to rest in the knowledge of Gods grace and love. From this experience I know it at least possible to experience life by grieving with hope and living with love. By performing narratives in loss, I confirmed or validated the experience through my interpretation of it, and so broke, for a bloggers time-stamped minute, cultural silence shrouding death and grief. If I want to challenge and reframe such a culture, then I must first find ways to voice the silence in myself. Implications for Communication and Leadership This study informed my philosophy for vocational development, holistic leadership, and creative and responsive communication. I envision communication as imparting life to people in end of life by loving them via responding to and confirming them in part through sharing their stories in digital art. Leadership that acknowledges the relevance of emotion, belief, and vocation in end-of-life caregiving contexts behaves in ways that allows people to experience wholeness, or holism. Leading via techno-cultural and mediated approaches to emotional intelligence, healing, creativity, and vocation make a difference in crises, trauma, and change such as loss. Leadership virtues include encouraging people with faith, hope, and love in loss and allowing them to express their agency creatively.
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Leadership involves being mindful of peoples inner world (Palmer, 1990; 1998; 2000; 2004) by emotional (Goleman, 1998) and spiritual (Guillory, 2000) intelligence and being aware of peoples outer world by empathetic understanding (Rogers, 1989; 1994). This imperative challenges leaders to cultivate public service awareness in all a leaders actions, even those presumed private (Cooper, 1998; Welch, 1997). Leading holistically requires willingness and tact to communicate therapeutically. Rogers (1989; 1994) psychotherapeutic conditions provide such a framework. As I perceived a psychologically safety by mediating my experience online, I responded to such freedom by reframing my social drama. This process helped me to discover and be content with an authentic self (Rogers, 1989), or performing as a way of being. Leading to grow in loss requires reflection, which requires awareness. Inner loss motivates people to seek inside-out (Palmer, 1998; 2000; Wheatley & Kellner-Rogers, 1999) healing as lasting wholeness (Laszlo, 2001; Naisbitt, 1984), but to do so leaders must first challenge their own false beliefs (see Garner, 1997), such framing my life through fear. This research process challenged my assumption that performing loss in a blog contributed to wholeness. While I benefited from the process, I did not solely heal due to the performance. I marked and unmarked the self and others in the texts by choosing to include and exclude details, I showed intent to create an aesthetic text, which filtered and signified the rituals, and I nearly buried myself under a cascade of narrative samples, theoretical frameworks, and methodological assumptions and imperatives. Climbing out of the narrative hole, I discover the ethos to write to serve my audience and so support my leadership philosophy to connect with others in meaningful and beneficial ways via expressing creativity, leading by vocation, and communicating healing (Rosko, 2010b).
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Leading for healing means helping people to find the courage to stand on a stage and on which to adjust their expectations and perform their own outcomes. Rogers (1994) conditions for such constructive personality change match Mattinglys (1998) assertion that resolving unmet expectations bring about healing. While I expected that fear would devastate me (again), I performed with intent to find and express confidence, faith, and creativity. I came in psychological contact with others, aware of incongruence between my beliefs and feelings, and so desired to integrate others views, such as Dad and Grandmas Christian faith. Carrying out this process in a blog helped me to become more congruent and to communicate positive regard about myself and others; I learned empathetic understanding by sharing my experience. Leadership implications include finding medium, such as blogs, and processes, such as writing and performance, to help constituents resolve unmet expectations as situated with others, and so learn to communicate regard and empathetic understanding. Such a framework will prove essential in impeding TMTs findings and so benefit communication in caregiving and end of life contexts where people face constant mortality reminders. Death remains the one experience that people cannot consume, but people create. Caregiving contexts can benefit from elevating the ways that people learn through creative processes (see Csikszentmihalyi, 1994; TEGS, 2010). People lead by expressing creativity. Introducing creativity in loss facilitates a therapeutic process for participants, and beyond that, a joy of discovery that runs counter consumer-culture. Leadership means performing well in the cultural arena to experience intrinsic joy independent of external rewards and recognition (Csikszentmihalyi, 1994). Storytelling as a leadership behavior (Denning, 2005) supports rhetorical leadership (Olson, 2006) and creativity as ways to learn, innovate, and confront
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cultural norms (Csikszentmihalyi, 1994). Performing loss well provides at least momentary satisfaction and exchanges the loss for a symbolic gain. Combining creative expression with vocation may yield a saving grace in death, as in their works follow them (Rev. 19:8). Leaders can benefit from guiding vocation in organizations (Moreland, 1997; Palmer, 1998; Tillapaugh & Hurst, 1997) and education (Buford, 1995). Building on Palmers principles for vocational leadership (1990; 2000; 2004), vocational leading motivates persons to commit to a meaningful course in life especially in seasons of suffering. Vocational leadership sees the value in spiritual and faith-based decisions and behaviors and answers Downs (1999) call for Christians to relate their faith to culture via the arts. Devoting oneself to vocation imparts the focus needed to choose life and peace and to move forward in difficulty (see Moreland, 1997; Schultze, 2000). To lead by vocation, persons must move beyond the self by responding to others suffering regardless of the seeming futility or cost (see Young, 2004). Vocational leading means listening for the voice that calls in the wilderness to discern ones life course (Moreland, 1997; Palmer, 1998; 2000). As with ritual (Russell, 2004), the wilderness exacts human participation with suffering, such as end-of-life. Leaders do well to resist compartmentalizing their life or losses as separate from themselves, others, or the texts that they create. Leaders must know that dialectics exist to each communication effort, and so show grace to others, including themselves. After all, you may not know what loss or inner world narrative that your colleague brings to work on a given day. Yet, regarding loss as a leadership opportunity may be too broad for suffering alone does not bring about growth (Schwab, 1979, p. 430). An ethical leader maintains a willingness to suffer with others, or to have compassion (Kouzes & Posner, 2003b), and to take courage for and with them (2003a). This study idealized Russells (2004) performance and Kouzes and
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Posners (2003b) leadership ethos to show compassion by suffering with others through ritual, and performance narratives imperative to take social and moral responsibility over ones intent to create aesthetic texts (Conquergood, 1983a; 1985; 1998; Pelias & VanOosting, 1987) and to consistently deliver quality results in the process and texts (see Kouzes & Posner, 2003b). This study emphasized Hydes (2004) dialogic ethic to draw near to people in suffering by first drawing near to myself, and to communicate confirmation by acknowledging my experience as valid via my rendition of it. Confirmation ethos needs agency, where performing loss voiced agency for me as I wrote my experience in text and pixels. Adversity and death as equalizers threaten to strip us of agency. Such mindfulness helps me to support others in our shared loss experiences by communicating sensitivity and responding to others. This study's findings benefit social justice by countering hate speech and the survivalist tendencies that TMT found. Hate speech involves wishing people to be dead and communicates judgment, or comparing situations, motive, and people's inner world without inquiry and over arbitrary reasons, such as group affiliation, age, belief, or health status. If behaving hatefully situates people in death (1 John 3:15), and if behaving lovingly imparts life (1 John 3:14), then it must be possible to counter TMTs results by finding loving ways to communicate in end of life, such as by confirming others and the self (see Laing, 1961; 1963; 1990) as in, We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death (1 John 3:14-16). I lack love for myself and experience symbolic death when fear drives my communication. I learn to communicate for love of myself so I can better love others. I started Text and Pixel Reflections, initially named Graduate Student Reflections, as a result of a computer mediation communication class in this program and have continued this blog as a portfolio of my work. On this history I felt it appropriate to include the
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Remembrance posts because I embedded them in a formal program that supported my
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research. Otherwise, I may not have posted or shared them, as I had deprecated my prior blog, R Abode, in 2008 and no longer wrote about family affairs (see Rosko, 2006). Resonating with holism, I feel satisfied to integrate, rather than compartmentalize, facets of my life, which include my loss experiences, faith, relationships, and scholarship. Again, I am grateful to this Communication and Leadership Studies MA program for its emphasis on scholarship rigor, creative freedom, and transformation (see Gonzaga University, 2010a; Jesuit Colleges, 2005). This context gave me the opportunity to realize the value in responding to my perceived fear of death by performing fear of death through a research method and blog. I am grateful to share such a significant life experience in a research environment with people who care about the quality of my work and who have not muted critique, but who critiqued with respect, care, and with a standard of excellence. Overall, I recognize my achievement as from Gods grace to coordinate my life and my performances in researching loss these last 2.5 years. Leadership in loss sees the benefits of mortality awareness by drawing humility and making a life exemplar. Schwabs words still ring true today, Important in the process of healing is an element of hope or faith in the future (p. 431). While I remember most performing my rituals and affective experiences through photographs, poems, and the blog, findings indicate that I integrated the performance with faith, family, and culture, each of which effectively redirected me to the One who came to free people whose fear of death enslaved them their whole lives (Heb. 2:14-15): Whoever believes in me, though she dies, yet shall she live (John 11:25-26). Ideally, I intend to make my life an aesthetic text by choosing to live amid mortality awareness via the triune ethic to love God, people, and myself (Deut. 6:5; Luke 10:27; Matt. 22:36-40; Mark 12:30). Current health uncertainties confront me to apply this studys findings to choose life by living by
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faith, hope, and love: Act on my love for myself, others, and God (and vice-versa), and hope. The findings little mention of hope challenges me to find some. Thus, encouraging peoples hearts in loss remains the leadership imperative (see Kouzes & Posner, 2003a) that requires leading by consistent and excellent example (2003b) to envision a future different than now (Block, 2009), and so communicate a life-giving, peaceful (Schultze, 2000), and loving kind of leadership, where faith, hope, and love remain, but the greatest of these is love (1 Cor. 13:10). Lerner (2004) advised persons to explore fear as an opportunity to change, to relate, to grow, and to make meaning out of a painful experience. This advice calls leaders to communicate fear as an opportunity to make formative choices and so avoid focusing on the object of their fears, such as death. In The Living Memorial I wrote about my response to hearing the news of Grandmas death: Who will love me now? In 2001, a mentor directed me to this scripture: Perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with judgment, and the one who fears is not made perfect in love (1 John 4:18-19). If fear is a dialect to love, then perhaps the nature of fear is the absence of love. Without love, death is fearsome. In the text I said, I did not feel your death / I felt your love. This moment came some hours after I had heard the news that Grandma had died. I mark this experience more clearly in The Living Memorial, which I have developed since September 2010. Reflecting on the experience over time and through a formal research and production process gave clarity. Ultimately, the communication and leadership implication involves encouraging peoples hearts (see Kouzes & Posner, 2003a). I accomplished this imperative to a degree via this study, and hope that my work encourages people who interact with the narrative in the future. Focusing on love as a spiritual transformation from fear encourages my spirit. Most encouraging, then, remains the virtue of love, as I wrote on the night of the day that I learned that Grandma had died:
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH To live love means to Love life to live. Live your life, Love your loves You love to live. Its not so entangled as that. For love is stronger than death. When you died, I did not feel your death, I felt your love. ~ DMR 1/20/2010 In loving memory of Grandma Adeline McIntyre. Study Limitations
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While special, performing life amid mortality awareness as a way of being in the world (see Blau, 1989/1990; Chvasta, 2003) and to persuade with artistic texts (see Hunter, 1999) limits. While the text references fear of death, the text does not only perform that one experience. Besides the direct references to fear, the text references by inference, and so at times unmarks the research topic. Perhaps this unmarking comes as I worked to initially order a disorderly experience, assuming that loss is a kind of trauma (see Leavy, 2009; Polkinghorne, 1988). My research audience can only rely on my word and what I said in the text and so suspend disbelief that I experienced fear of death entirely during my Grandmas end of life, though the RQs made no such claim. While I wrote about others and myself not fearing death, perhaps I feared other things. Again this study lacks internal validity, and so the findings lack a
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degree of reliability in addressing the research question. The benefit of this limitation includes approaching experiences as multi-faceted and not confined to one emotion. After all, a social drama involves many players and production elements that coordinate the performance. Of my fears, I wrote elsewhere that I looked over my shoulder and wondered where my faith went. I learned that even faith has its limitations; after all, as the apostle Paul observed, ... but the greatest of these is love (1 Cor. 13). Try as I might, I failed to bring the good to pass (Rom. 6); even though I may want to experience full-blown confidence in my eternal life in Christ, and therefore no longer fear death, such a feat seems impossible if not self-centric. The apostle Paul observed that God saves people through their faith, which is a gift from his grace, and so not just an act of power or will, but by his sovereign choice (Eph. 2:8-9). God gives me gifts that he wants me to express in Jesus name and by Jesus example (Eph. 2:10). This belief reminds me to acknowledge the limitations of my abilities and perception; acknowledging my mortality means humbling my self, which does not necessarily sit well with performing my experience online. Even so, I discovered that I could renew commitments to my goals, but that I must be willing to confront my assumptions and let go of them, and to still trust my God, but not through the lens of my efforts in divining a perfect faith, whether that effort be performing my faith in a blog or elsewhere. As Jesus said, Whoever keeps his life loses it, and whoever loses his life for my sake gains life (Lk. 9:24; 17:33; Matt. 10:39; 16:25; Jn. 12:25). Even a leadership ethos for transformation has its limits. This faith-based performance teaches me that I cannot control death or even my emotions, but I can communicate the confidence that I felt I lacked, and ironically gain confidence in what I learn: invest in what lasts (see Rom. 8:28-30). Other limitations include understanding audience reach. An important proof in a blog is its public. A private company, Google, hosts my blog, and I create the blog as an independent
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contributor. I call the blog my, but, building from Carlson (2003), the blogs public is a tripartite relationship with its owners, content creator, and culture. The blog has open access, though I moderate comments, and finding the blog online may be a filter process in itself. Currently I have five followers via blogger, nine Likes on Facebook, and eight fans on a Facebook page, each of whom may or may not be the same person. Facebook emails me analytics each week to show how many Likes I have since last week and month on my Text and Pixels Facebook page. I embedded an RSS feed box into Dena Rosko and Text and Pixels websites. Thus, I worked to integrate each of my online presences, most prominently with the use of Ping.fm, with which I announce updates and embed shortened links of my blog. Readers can leave comments via Disqus, a script that I loaded in the blogs footer, and from which I added a widget to the left sidebar to publish the most recent comments. So the public can interact with my blog through different channels. This layout shows readers that I value interaction with the text and even gives me a sense of confirmation. Yet these metrics for my public limit as my public may be more than those who leave such a trail on my blog. My public is anyone who reads the blog, whether or not they follow or like it, as not everyone jumps on the social network bandwagon and wants to leave a bread crumb trail where they go on the Internet. The followers become my in-group regardless of the faith affiliation or familial connection, though friends and family comment on my blog on occasion. So the performance limits to my public, such as families, friends, colleagues, and persons interested in healing, loss, including those who have experienced loss of a loved one. So I must know my publics identities and interests, and to the ways that my public interprets the performance and so also performs. Notice how the latter limitation offsets the implications with voice and so may be an asset instead.
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Research becomes performance by persuading readers and the self about my experiences with loss as fear of death and with responding to loss as a creative expression of my learning process, social identity, skills, and my faith. This finding implicates my research expectations, as shown in the choice of research questions, and reframes my blog. While this study sought to draw nearer, the study itself distances the experience by filtering it through research discourse. For instance, TMTs implications that fear of death unconsciously influences people to act in power-holding, worldview-defending, and social-clinging ways obscures the element of choice, or fails to explain how people respond to said fear-based behaviors once theyre aware of them. Uncomfortably, TMT applies to me, too, but the blog did not totalize my performance as TMT; this research process did. Thus, this studys text veils understanding about my experience. Additionally, performing loss through a blog and then researching that performance may conflict with my ethic for humane research approaches given the process is difficult; revising chapters 4 and 5 particularly felt as though I re-experienced the burial service, though I felt satisfied later on to see the work as a whole via the editing process. Yet, is it wise or fair to approach research as therapy? Historically, Ive felt that when I share a unique experience verbally in-person that people inadvertently, and yet summarily, ignore, dismiss, or interrupt my voice. Yet, Ive enjoyed 10 months of active research on this thesis, over 4 years of blogging, and 2.5 years in this hybrid delivery Masters program. I am grateful that current technology and a supportive program have allowed me to return to school and so no longer feel isolated, uncommitted, and unhealthy. This technology is twofold: my hybrid degree program, and my blog. I needed, and perhaps still need, a format to rehearse my ideas and experiences, to engage people, and so give me confidence to communicate those ideas and ethos in person.
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The healing process remains unfinished. In keeping with the theme in this program and in performance narrative, making sense of life is open-ended, and this is the way that research should be. For if I am going to say that I want to approach sensitive life situations with empathetic understanding, transformation, creativity, and love, then I cannot declare that there exists a final way for people to in this life eradicate their fears of death, for such a declaration sounds beyond the scope of what mortals can attain, and thus constitute an act of futility and so be inhumane to ask of myself and others. Yet, I can draw on my faith to hope for a future wherein death does not leave my life open-ended to sense-make and perform life amid loss. Now, I choose to perform in the moment with my past and future in mind. Knowing this does not remove the fear, though I find comfort in the performance. Overall, this study limits as marking will always carry an unmarked text. My mediated efforts to salvage loss and understand fear fall short as only God possesses power to completely exchange the temporal and visible with a lasting gain (Rev. 21:4-5). Relying on performance as performativity, or performing something into being, limits. As a mortal, I can not conjure my fear away just as I cannot raise the dead. While I relied on my faith, as evidenced in my the poems, my faith declarations did not remove doubt as at times I worried that I did not always believe them. Here, faith means acting on what I believe, and not just talking about it (James 2:17, 26). While TMT suggests that I may have performed my social and faith-based identities to continue existing after I die, the texts do not necessarily reveal my motives or feelings at the time; the texts only perform my interpretation of them and my choice to describe them as such. Moreover, blogging loss does not represent or clarify my entire experience, but remains one part of the performance process because I did not rehearse my farewell performance in the blog; I
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posted my rendition of it after I performed my farewell on the grave. Where choice and behavior intersect and influence performance in loss remain key dynamics to explore. Recommendations for Future Study Moving forward, death studies must transition from cultural, stage-based, and predictable adaptations to loss to tune into what remains unknown about post-bereavement and adaptation and so inform a new research agenda (Neimeyer, 2004). Loss studies research in general must open its lens to include arts-based approaches with which people navigate loss, complex emotions, and socio-cultural rituals. This study provides a new media approach for narrative healthcare and an opportunity to support people in end-of-life caregiving contexts. This studys findings inform and constitute narrative medicine, an emerging and qualitative approach for healthcare (T. Long, personal communication, September 10, 2010; Charon, 2006; Charon & Montello, 2002) and caregiving (Morgan-Witte, 2005). Narrative medicine, or what I call narrative healthcare, desires to make healthcare more personable and effective through sharing clinicians and constituents stories. Persons in healthcare contexts must engage with each others stories (Ragan, Mindt, & Wittenberg-Lyles, 2005) because suffering requires appreciation for story (Mattingly, 1998). Thus, this study may contribute new communication approaches to healthcare and may help narrative healthcare to grow (see Charon, 2006). Arts-based research allows for knowing and experiencing the in-between, such as exploring ethical implications, inference, cultural norms for aesthetics, modes of production, and the ways that each of these and more influence in socio-political and cultural realm. The research process changes the performance, such as in formatting the thesis differently than on the blog to match this thesis font. Relegating the blog text to the Appendix, while convenient, infers an order of importance, where the research text becomes primary, and changes the
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performance. As Hunter (1999) observed, the arts and humanities must sustain critique over the ways that its own research operates as texts before the fields can sustain critique over the natural and social sciences. The blog coordinates the performance, I perform in the blog, and the blog performs me and so embodies the rhetoric of me. Quantitative and qualitative differ in many ways, but the research symbols, or the letters, words, and photographs, as do numbers, amount to symbolic ways to perform knowledge and experience. Future research can study how the research text changes or continues the performance, and how the research performance persuades and so inform how academic discourse and reframing impact voice. There may be no such thing as a wholly good technique, strategy, or genre to initiate social change (Felski, 1989), so creative studies can triangulate theoretical frameworks, ethical assumptions, and narrative samples to enhance credibility, possibilities, and depth. Future research must move towards interdisciplinary partnerships assuming that all research functions as creativity and art. For example, software development and other technology industries construct written texts that constitute a creative act and a performance. Such research turns benefit cross-disciplinary collaboration, pave the way for designing interdisciplinary programs, reconstruct social norms for research, and integrate the arts and sciences for an applied sociocultural and political good. This approach assumes Oshrys (1995) and Werhanes (2002) systems thinking, or acknowledging the imaginative ways that people integrate and differentiate each other in organizations. Rhetoric as a bridge across disciplines requires a leadership-oriented praxis (Olson, 2006) to dialogue with, rather than to separate, other research orientations. These steps may help researchers to work together for a common vision and mission, such as partnering with healthcare and community organizations to benefit peoples experiences with health or loss.
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Ellis and Bochner (1999) recommended bringing personal narratives and emotion into medical social science such as when public health researchers do emotion work in qualitative research (Dickson-Swift, James, Kippen, & Liamputtong, 2009). If researching sensitive topics qualitatively is emotion-work (Dickson-Swift, et al., 2009), and if emotions provide a filter or framework for knowing (Carey, 1999; Pugmire, 1994), then academia must create a supportive climate for researchers to bring emotional awareness to the forefront. While autoethnography provides one means to do that, other studies can incorporate emotion assessments with arts-based research, such as a photographic survey that I designed, which asks participants to associate an emotion with a loss image. Gubriums (2009) digital storytelling workshop provides a worthwhile format for educators to teach students to integrate storytelling and technology into their research. Whatever the approach, I suggest that researchers seek emotional support given the demands of research as emotion work, such as when autoethnographers open up their loss experiences for critique (see Ellis; 1999; 2004; 2008; Leavy, 2009). When researching the inner world, variables may be at work other than those perceived. Perhaps death was not the object of my fear, or the operational variable, but other emotions or concerns. Respondent bias and the problem of memory add to the challenge to perceive complex emotions and circumstances to fish out the red herrings. People fear death for many reasons (Florian & Mikulincer, 1997b) and so identifying those reasons through research may inform researchers to integrate psychotherapeutic, relational, arts-based, and faith-based interventions to connect with culture (e.g., Downs, 1999). I recommend fear and death studies integrate computer mediated communication and performance arts to better understand how digitally mediated arts contribute to grief work in various cultures. I also recommend that healthcare, trauma, fear, and death studies researchers embed a dialogic, confirmation, and performance
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH narrative ethos into their research design. Future research can consider other virtue-based
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declarations to know how people perform loss. By performing narratives in loss, the researcher confirms or validates the experience and so breaks the self-censorship that reinforces the cultural silence shrouding death and grief. Such praxis potentially realizes Schultzes (2000) communication imperative to foster and realize peace. Therapeutic research as peace-centric requires reflection: to create peace, one must first be peaceful (J. Caputo, personal communication, September 28, 2010), and to be peaceful, one must first rest in peace. Blogging, techno-cultural, and cyber studies should seek ways to honor Carlsons (2003) tripartite relationship between performer, audience, and socio-cultural norms by studying the ways that bloggers integrate audience participation and contribute and respond to socio-cultural norms. Such findings apply to narrative healthcare to unearth the socio-cultural norms that drive assumptions about fear, death, loss, and healthcare and so influence peoples experiences. Such research may benefit from re-tuning duoethnographies and impressionistic autoethnographies as research with participants, and not just with other academics, via collaboratively writing narrative samples, findings, and conclusions. This move will help the field to account for the researchers power in framing, naming, and writing (Chase, 1996) what constitutes as data. As of now, duoethnography (see Lund & Nabavi, 2008; Sawyer & Norris, 2009) and impressionistic autoethnography (see Leavy, 2009) still keep researchers central and so fail to fully address the implications of voice, marking, and reframing via research as a persuasive text. Narrative healthcare must improve by merging constituent and clinician narratives if it wants to keep its ethos for communicating confirmation and humanizing healthcare. Such a progression will respond to Charons (2006) assessment that narrative healthcare has much room to grow.
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Some writers have suggested that research that emphasizes relationships, spirituality, and narrative benefit healthcare constituents (Charon, 2006; Charon & Montello, 2002; Dossey, 1991; 1993; Mattingly, 1998; Mayeroff, 1971; Noddings, 1984; Roach, 1987; Rosenwald, 1996; Watson & Smith, 2002). Future research can explore how people perform in response to mortality awareness as an act of (or not) healing. Future research can compare peoples narratives to learn what benefits they found in their loss or fear of death. Did their narratives, as mine, reveal a choice to mediate death fear through relationships, beliefs, virtue, vocation, creativity, and/or technology? The performance and production processes, including this research, have given me an occasion to voice and even take courage from my loss. Do others loss narratives reveal a similar experience? Also, future TMT, death, and fear studies will benefit from understanding the role that choice plays in determining outcomes. After all, while fear may seem a fierce foe, as a pastor once advised, I have a choice (D. Lunsford, personal communication, August 2001). TMT may have predicted that I would have been too busy clinging to people similar to me, showing social injustice to the aged, and defending my worldview than to have taken the time to stand on the edge of Grandmas grave or beside her open casket, the ultimate death reminders. TMT may have predicted that Id have made an active choice to avoid the grave errantly believing that doing so would let me survive. What other frameworks account for choice in death studies? Cultural norms for communicating loss and fear bind blogging to perform in kind. My own challenge in this study involved writing in an accessible way for my readers while keeping the scholarship rigor and precision at the same time. Another challenge in constituting blogging as performance includes determining impact. Impact remains important even in autoethnographic studies, and especially in impressionistic autoethnographies, which blend
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voices. If I am suggesting that blogging provided, at least for me, a culturally relevant way to engage people in vulnerable and loss situations, then there must be a way to determine the efficacy of such an effort. This study lacked metrics on that helped me to understand its reach, save the interactive metrics of comments on the blog, Facebook, and e-mails. Comparing those handful of responses to the many people to whom I had emailed the blog and shared on my social networks seems disproportionate in terms of impact. While the reach seems limited and at times discouraging, I know the reach benefits me as, in the least, the text confirms me. Yet, if I were to perform with expecting reach or impact, then I would expect reciprocity, or receiving something in return from my audience, potentially reducing the performance to an economy. Performance research metrics, then, must honor Carlsons (2003) tripartite relationship. Performance and narrative do not exist as separate entities because both embody and express the person. To be authentic, I perform as a way of being. While at times I felt embarrassed to perform my experiences on the blog, I felt confident about my performance because the blog and its cultural norm allowed me to connect with people inside and outside of the arenas that I know and value: scholarship, writing, photography, and Christianity. Future research can explore how people become through performing, and apply such a framework to a multimodal, media, and channel digital world. For instance, I performed faith in God when I wrote a status update on my social networks via a micro-blogging platform Ping.fm. I wrote, Church tonight: God drawing near; do I have courage to do the same? (November 20, 2010). As with this studys ethos, I situate into my identity the imperative to respond. I become via communicating. In what other ways do people use computer mediated communication to perform identity and virtue, thought and praxis, in end of life, loss, suffering, or fear?
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH When it comes down to it, there remains an uneasy tension of voice in all research
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because inevitably some voices will be left out, misrepresented, misinterpreted, or misapplied. Regardless the method, the researcher remains central in initiating, analyzing, and writing the study (Chase, 1996); to a degree, all research becomes autoethnographic as all research must respond to the self-filter. If we try to resolve or remove this tension of voice, then we also remove the need to admit the limitations of our perceptions. Dialogue reminds us as researchers to sit in this tension. Thus, research must be imperfect to account for the limitations of our perception and the political implications of our work. Beyond that, it may be beneficial to approach modality prima facie, or learning to apply which method per context and situation and in a way that best supports the research questions, the social utility, and ethical praxis. If knowledge puffs up, but love builds up (1 Cor. 8:1), then the challenge for academia involves leading by dialogic example via inviting people into the conversation who use different approaches to ask and answer their questions, and then apply findings in a timely, socially beneficial, culturally relevant, and loving manner. This performance did not fully expose my fear death or even manage it, but showed a layered narrative that mediated the inner world and the outer world of grief and loss ritual. Future research may benefit from reframing its approach to death and fear studies by not framing people as trying to rid or manage their death fear, as it may not be possible or humane to do so. Instead, future research must compose creative and culturally engaging ways to talk about peoples experiences. For my next research, I continue seeking ways to connect with people by expressing creativity, communicating scholarship, and leading by example in difficult life situations. As I have ended many such reflections online, thank you for reading.
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Conclusion
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Performance through writing, photography, and blogging helped me to communicate loss (see Bosticco & Thompson, 2005; DeSalvo, 1999; Glazer & Marcum, 2003; Pearce, 2008). Performing impressionistic autoethnographic narrative on a blog within the psychotherapeutic tradition (see Rogers, 1989; 1994) fostered a safe place for me to communicate in end of life and so empowered me with agency (see Howard, 2008; Stavrositu and Sundar, 2008). While Terror Management Theory remains a valid and substantive theory on fear of death, performance contributes a humanizing response to one of humanitys most critical life experiences. Overall, I found that while it remains human to experience fear of death, I need not stay there. The performance decreased, mediated, and ameliorated death fears by allowing me to create and share my mourning ritual online and embed the performance in a faith narrative. The performance empowered me to relate to myself, my audience, and to culture by producing creative and quality images and narrative and by my intent to present myself, Grandma, and my experience as responding to fear with courage, faith, and love. As Bochner and Ellis (2006) wrote, people do their best to deal with the blows that fate sends their way. I found that performing loss in text and pixels helped me to believe my faith, to express my identity, and most of all, to challenge my expectations about who I am and who I will become when situated in loss. As a result, I experienced a degree of healing from this process. I hope that my work here will give others the courage to perform their farewells on the edge of their loved ones grave and find it not only possible, but vital, to continue performing their own life story until it is their turn for someone else to say farewell to them.
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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Appendix A: Biography Release
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This is a digital copy of the biography release that Grandma had signed. I have deleted full name and address to preserve confidentiality. Please see Appendix B for the form that I used to disclose this study to persons whose photographs I posted on the blog sample used. The below release lacks clarity that I was writing about my story, too, or that her story helped me to explore fear and death. While I gave this verbal knowledge to Grandma multiple times, its best to have this understanding in writing for future research projects with other participants in impressionist autoethnography. Also, I gave this release to Grandma halfway through this program (3/29/2009) and prior to applied research class (January, 2010), so I needed more information on designing an informed consent form and I needed more understanding on my research focus, which I have gleaned from this class. As both Grandma and my aunt are deceased, I cannot make these corrections. Biography Release I, [FULL NAME], release Dena Rosko to write, publish, copyright, and sell a biography about me and conversations we have had about my experiences, such as, but not limited to, during childhood, college, marriage, employment, church, and as a senior citizen. I, the above named, am aware that Dena Rosko will also write about her own memories of me during her growing up years to the present date. I, the above named, also release Dena Rosko to write about my property, which she will include in her biography about me, at [STREET NAME] [CITY, STATE ZIP] I, the above named, am the legal co-guardian of [DAUGHTERS FULL NAME], and I give Dena Rosko permission to write about her as related to conversations we have had about motherhood and raising a developmentally disabled child. I also release Dena Rosko to publish pictures of me and my family and to include our names in reference to the pictures in this publication. Signature: ___________________________________________________________________ Print Name: ________________________________________ Date:________________
Authors Signature: ___________________________________________________________ Print Name: ________________________________________ Date:_________________
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Appendix B: Print and Mail Version of Study Disclosure
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This study disclosure can be printed and mailed as needed to persons whose image(s) I posted on the blog sample used. As this study samples are post scriptum, it made sense to simplify the disclosure form to read as an advisory with the option to contact me if any concerns. As a last textual resort, I can mail this printed disclosure with appropriate reference links to persons for whom I had contact information. In the absence of contact information, I verbally disclosed the study face-to-face. Ethical imperatives to disclose research include fidelity to relationship, fairness and honesty in use of personally identifiable information (PII), responsibility to researchers power in research, and an ethos for care, participation, and service via humility and the knowledge that my research is both public and private. For reciprocity, I shared images with impacted and accessible persons in advance or at the time of disclosure via CD, blog post, Facebook album, and/or email file attachment.
[MONTH, DATE, YEAR]
Hi [FIRST NAME], Good news! I recently finished a thesis for a Master of Arts degree with Gonzaga University. I wrote about how I used a blog, photographs, and poems to see if and how I experienced fear of death when Grandma died. I wanted to know if and how writing, photographs, and blogging helped me to heal from my fears and/or loss. For future work, I desire to help people to heal amid loss using the creative arts and my faith. To that end, I created The Living Memorial at http://www.thelivingmemorial.org/, a website with a Facebook page where people can share their loving memories. Be free to visit that site. Once printed and bound, the thesis will be available for checkout to Gonzaga students and faculty at Foley Center Library in Spokane, Wash. I also posted the thesis on my blog at http://www.textandpixelreflections.com/2010/11/masters-thesis-performing.html. I copy/pasted the blog posts with photographs and poems in Appendix E in the thesis. The blog posts provide an optional reference for people who read the thesis. The photographs include those of Grandmas services and family and friends. Im writing because I recognize loss can be difficult and private for people and want to be sensitive to others needs to grieve publically and privately. Part of my research process includes disclosing the research to people, especially when people contribute their identity via photographs. I also want to share the good news about creating research from our loss that I
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hope will help others with their difficult experiences. To see the images, be free to visit the blog and thesis, http://www.textandpixelreflections.com/2010/11/masters-thesis-performing.html. Be free to contact me at the signature below with any questions. To learn more about my work, go to denarosko.com. To learn more about my masters program, visit http://www.gonzaga.edu/Academics/Colleges-and-Schools/School-of-ProfessionalStudies/Degrees-Programs/Communication-Leadership-Studies/default.asp. Be free to view the blog that I studied at http://www.textandpixelreflections.com/search/label/Remembrance and download images of you for your personal use or enjoyment. Thank you for reading. Kindly,
Dena M. Rosko Masters of Arts Candidate in Communication and Leadership Studies Gonzaga University
Connecting with Colleagues who Share a Vision to Encourage & Heal in Organizations via Expressing Creativity, Developing Vocation, & Leading Holistically ~ Dena Roskos Mission Statement We hope that all our graduates will live creative, productive, and moral lives, seeking to fulfill their own aspirations and at the same time, actively supporting the aspirations of others by a generous sharing of their gifts. ~ Gonzaga Universitys Mission Statement
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Thank you for taking time to read this Study Disclosure Form. Should you have questions or concerns, be free to contact Dena M. Rosko c/o Gonzaga University 502 East Boone Avenue Spokane, WA 99258-0102 United States denarosko@gmail.com (e) http://denarosko.com (w) 206.963.9508 (c) End of Study Disclosure Form Study Disclosure Form 2010 Dena M. Rosko.
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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Appendix C: Email Text Version of Study Disclosure
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I disclosed this text version via email message to persons whose image(s) I posted on the blog sample used. As this study samples are post scriptum, it made sense to simplify the disclosure form to read as an advisory with the option to contact me if any concerns. I emailed this disclosure with appropriate reference links to persons for whom I had contact information. In the absence of contact information, I verbally disclosed the study face-to-face. Ethical imperatives to disclose research include fidelity to relationship, fairness and honesty in use of personally identifiable information (PII), responsibility to researchers power in research, and an ethos for care, participation, and service via humility and the knowledge that my research is both public and private. For reciprocity, I shared images with impacted and accessible persons in advance or at the time of disclosure via CD, blog post, Facebook album, and/or email file attachment. Hi [FIRST NAME]! Good news! After 2.5 years of study and 11 months of research, I recently finished a thesis for a Master of Arts degree with Gonzaga University. I wrote about how I used a blog, photographs, and poems to see if and how I experienced fear of death when Grandma died. I wanted to know if and how writing, photographs, and blogging helped me to heal from my fears and/or loss. For future work, I desire to help people to heal amid loss using the creative arts and my faith. To that end, I created The Living Memorial, a website and Facebook page where people can share their loving memories. Be free to visit these sites: The Living Memorial: http://www.thelivingmemorial.org/ Thesis: http://www.textandpixelreflections.com/2010/11/masters-thesis-performing.html Once printed and bound, the thesis will be available for checkout to Gonzaga students and faculty at Foley Center Library in Spokane, Wash. I also posted the thesis on my blog, http://textandpixelreflections.com. I copy/pasted the blog posts with photographs and poems in an Appendix in the thesis. The blog posts provide an optional reference for people who read the thesis, too. The photographs include those of Grandmas services and of family and friends, many of which I have shared with you on Facebook, on the blog, and in the CD I mailed. I'm writing you because I recognize that loss can be difficult and private for people and want to be sensitive to your needs to grieve. Part of my research process includes disclosing the research to people, especially when people contribute their identity via photographs. I also want to share the good news about creating research from our loss that I hope will help others with their difficult experiences. To see the images, be free to visit the blog and thesis, which you may have already seen given prior announcements in Facebook.
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Be free to contact me with any questions. To learn more about my work, go to http://denarosko.com. To learn more about my masters program, visit http://www.gonzaga.edu/Academics/Colleges-and-Schools/School-of-ProfessionalStudies/Degrees-Programs/Communication-Leadership-Studies/default.asp. Be free to view the blog that I wrote and studied at http://www.textandpixelreflections.com/search/label/Remembrance. Finally, if you see anyone in the images who you think will want to know about this research, please email me their contact information so that I may email them this disclosure. Thank you, and thank you for reading. Kindly N Love you! Dena M. Rosko Masters of Arts Candidate in Communication and Leadership Studies Gonzaga University Connecting with Colleagues who Share a Vision to Encourage & Heal in Organizations via Expressing Creativity, Developing Vocation, & Leading Holistically. ~ Dena Roskos Mission Statement We hope that all our graduates will live creative, productive, and moral lives, seeking to fulfill their own aspirations and at the same time, actively supporting the aspirations of others by a generous sharing of their gifts. ~ Gonzaga Universitys Mission Statement Thank you for taking time to read this Study Disclosure Form. Should you have questions or concerns, be free to contact Dena M. Rosko c/o Gonzaga University 502 East Boone Avenue Spokane, WA 99258-0102 United States denarosko@gmail.com (e) http://denarosko.com (w) 206.963.9508 (c) End of Study Disclosure Form Study Disclosure Form 2010 Dena M. Rosko.
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Appendix D: Facebook Text Version of Study Disclosure
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I disclosed this text version via Facebook message to persons whose image(s) I posted on the blog sample used. As this study samples are post scriptum, it made sense to simplify the disclosure form to read as an advisory with the option to contact me if any concerns. I Facebook messaged this disclosure with appropriate reference links to persons for whom I had contact information. In the absence of contact information, I verbally disclosed the study faceto-face. Ethical imperatives to disclose research include fidelity to relationship, fairness and honesty in use of personally identifiable information (PII), responsibility to researchers power in research, and an ethos for care, participation, and service via humility and the knowledge that my research is both public and private. For reciprocity, I shared images with impacted and accessible persons in advance or at the time of disclosure via CD, blog post, Facebook album, and/or email file attachment. Hi [FIRST NAME]! Good news! After 2.5 years of study and 11 months of research, I recently finished a thesis for a Master of Arts degree with Gonzaga University. I wrote about how I used a blog, photographs, and poems to see if and how I experienced fear of death when Grandma died. I wanted to know if and how writing, photographs, and blogging helped me to heal from my fears and/or loss. For future work, I desire to help people to heal amid loss using the creative arts and my faith. To that end, I created The Living Memorial, a website and Facebook page where people can share their loving memories. Be free to visit these sites: The Living Memorial: http://www.thelivingmemorial.org/ Thesis: http://www.textandpixelreflections.com/2010/11/masters-thesis-performing.html Once printed and bound, the thesis will be available for checkout to Gonzaga students and faculty at Foley Center Library in Spokane, Wash at http://www.gonzaga.edu/Academics/Libraries/Foley-Library/. I also posted the thesis on my blog, http://textandpixelreflections.com. I copy/pasted the blog posts with photographs and poems in an Appendix in the thesis. The blog posts provide an optional reference for people who read the thesis, too. The photographs include those of Grandmas services and of family and friends, many of which I have shared with you on Facebook and on the blog. You can download the image(s) in question from the blog or Facebook for your personal enjoyment or use. To aid in this process, I can tag the photo(s) in question. I'm writing you because I recognize that loss can be difficult and private for people and want to be sensitive to your needs to grieve. Part of my research process includes disclosing the research to people, especially when people contribute their identity via photographs. I also want to share the good news about creating research from our loss that I hope will help others with their
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difficult experiences. To see the images, be free to visit the blog and thesis, which you may have already seen given prior announcements in Facebook. Be free to contact me with any questions. To learn more about my work, go to http://denarosko.com. To learn more about my masters program, visit http://www.gonzaga.edu/Academics/Colleges-and-Schools/School-of-ProfessionalStudies/Degrees-Programs/Communication-Leadership-Studies/default.asp. Be free to view the blog that I wrote and studied at http://www.textandpixelreflections.com/search/label/Remembrance. Finally, if you see anyone in the images who you think will want to know about this research, please email me their contact information so that I may email them this disclosure. Thank you, and thank you for reading. Kindly, Dena M. Rosko Masters of Arts Candidate in Communication and Leadership Studies Gonzaga University "Connecting with Colleagues who Share a Vision to Encourage & Heal in Organizations via Expressing Creativity, Developing Vocation, & Leading Holistically." ~ Dena Roskos Mission Statement "We hope that all our graduates will live creative, productive, and moral lives, seeking to fulfill their own aspirations and at the same time, actively supporting the aspirations of others by a generous sharing of their gifts." ~ Gonzaga Universitys Mission Statement Thank you for taking time to read this Study Disclosure Form. Should you have questions or concerns, be free to contact Dena M. Rosko c/o Gonzaga University 502 East Boone Avenue Spokane, WA 99258-0102 United States denarosko@gmail.com (e) http://denarosko.com (w) 206.963.9508 (c) End of Study Disclosure Form Study Disclosure Form 2010 Dena M. Rosko.
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Appendix E: Blog Remembrance Full Text Text and Pixel Reflections On Communication, Leadership, and Faith Showing newest posts with label Remembrance. Tuesday, November 16, 2010 Veterans Day and an End of an Era: Goodbye Grandmas House
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Grandpas hat hangs with flag chimes at Grandmas house (above)
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Fall, Grandmas favorite season, at Sunrise, Renton, Wash., 2010 (above) On Veterans Day, we paid our respects twice this year: once at the cemetery, and once at Grandmas former house. I used to call Grandpa on Veterans Day to thank him for his WWII service as a B-26 Maurader Flight Engineer. Now we visited the cemetery, though our plans differed slightly. This was the first year we visited Grandma there, too. Mom, my niece, and I went to Tahoma National Cemetery, a gorgeous cemetery with vistas of Mt. Rainier, evergreen trees, and flag-lined promenades.
Grandmas high school senior portrait, ~1942 (above)
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When World War II erupted, Grandma was a senior in high school in the small eastern Washington railroad town of Sprague. She graduated in June of 1942, and as the class Salutatorian, gave a salutatory address entitled, The Morale of Youth in Time of War. At the time of World War Two, Grandma told me years later, the youth tended to want to move away from the family, home, church. But when war erupted, it brought everyone together under a common cause. The home, family, country, community, and church became important. In 1943, to save money for college, Grandma involved herself in the war effort as a scalar at the Lake Washington Shipyards, which was located between Bellevue and Kirkland, Washington. Lake Washington Shipyards employed nearly 9,000 men and women who built 29 ships for the Navy and repaired nearly 500 vessels over the course of the war. Grandma earned a hefty 90 cents an hour, and worked 8 hours a day 6 days a week. As a scalar, she climbed through a little hole and down into a large room to clean the gas and oil tanks of new ships before the ships were commissioned and the tanks filled with gas and oil. She also cleaned the water tanks that would soon be filled with fresh water. She also cleaned double bottoms. Double bottoms are tanks built at the bottoms of ships that can be used for ballast, or for stabilizing the ship, by filling them with water, oil, or other liquids. Since double bottoms are closer to the hull of the ship, they can be considered a potential pollutant for hazardous waste in waterways in events such as oil spills. Either type of tank were as large rooms, and Grandma and her cohorts used vacuums and drills with motorized brushes to sand off the welding bilge. Navy personnel wore white gloves to inspect her work for residue. If residue was found, then she and her co-workers had to clean the tank all over again. This re-cleaning did not commonly occur for Grandma. I used to dream, even years after the war was over, of standing in the gas tank, trying to get into the little room that provided a way out of the tank. But I could not get up out of the tankI was trapped! Now, to honor their service, Grandma and Grandpas bodies rest at Tahoma National Cemetery, where Judys rests, too.
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Judys headstone, 29 Jan. 2010 (above)
Mom reads Isa. 12, Job 23.10, and Grandmas poem (above)
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Grandpa and Grandpas stone (above)
Grandpas artifacts (above)
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Our niece walks the Promenade after Grandpa died, 2001 (above)
Flag chimes and flag on Grandmas porch (above)
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Grandpas old stone with flag from cemetery volunteer on Memorial Day, 2004 (above) Grandma worked at the shipyard for one year, and with her earnings left the shipyard in October 1943 to enroll at Multnomah School of the Bible in Portland, Ore., which was called Multnomah Bible College and Biblical Seminary when I attended the school in 1996-1997 and grew in faith, character, and service, and what is now called Multnomah University. Grandma graduated from Multnomah in 1946.
Grandmas senior portrait, ~1946 (above)
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Grandma with Multnomah roommate (above) Grandma and Grandpa married November 9, 1946, the same day as Great Grandma Kuppingers birthday, at St. Johns Lutheran Church in Sprague, Washington, and Grandpa drove to Sprague from Seattle for the last time. Going with the temporal theme of this post, the church Grandma and Grandpa had planned to marry in had burned down, so they married across the street at St. Johns. The newlyweds first lived in the (ironically named) Bachelor apartments in the Highlands, a neighborhood in Renton, Wash. The Highlands became an apt place name for their start given Grandpas Scottish roots (Per Ardua).
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Post-wedding portrait, ~Feb. 1946 (above)
St. Johns Lutheran Church, Sprague, August 2005 (above)
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Grandma at the Bachelor Apartments (above) Three years passed in the Bachelor apartments, at which time the married couple with their first and second child settled into their first and only house on August 30, 1949. This little house started small, but Grandma and Grandpa made it work and raised four children there. Built in 1943, the single-story 1290 square foot house underwent two remodels, one in April 1953 when Aunt Judys room and the living room were added, and another in July 1969, when the dining room was added. The 1969 remodel was left incomplete and left that wing of the house in a state of disarray as remodels often do. To top it off, the contractor failed to finish the job per Grandmas request, and Grandpa decided to leave the room as it was, and Grandma made do. Over the years I enjoyed many visits to Grandmas house, such as for our classic movie nights, for holidays such as Halloween, when Grandma counted the trick-o-treaters, and even to clean the place. Here are some inside-out photos of the house:
Dandelion bouquet by our niece as presented on the apple tree stump (above)
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Apple blossoms (above)
Daffodils drenched in Spring rain (above)
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Grandmas favorite: Daphne o Dora (above)
Roses below window (above)
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The infamous cedar deck that Dad designed/built and we assisted (above)
Front view of Grandmas house (above)
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Front porch through red railing (above)
Chair by window in front room (above)
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Front door flanked by flag, porch, and adjacent to pot belly stove (above)
I sat at this table w/Grandma many-a-night (above)
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The kitchen (above)
Eastern side of house by alley (above)
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Front of house as introduced by blue bells (above)
Guest room without the usual towers of Christmas gifts (above)
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Grandmas favorite (discontinued) Avon perfume, Cotillion, on vanity (above)
Judys former room (above)
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Kitchen table and dining room (above)
Fir tree and yard illumined by sun (above) So the house remained until November 13, 2010, when I watched the steam shovel grab the rail of the deck, causing the cedar wood and nails to creak and moan, that James and I had helped Dad to build. In complimenting Dads craftsmanship, as Uncle Alan said, That deck will outlast the house. It did, still standing, with the rest of the house sprawled in the front yard in a rubble
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heap, and as we drove away with rain splattering our windows, that hungry steam shovel was still trying to take the deck down.
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Grandmas former house being torn down (above 3 photos) Its sad, Dad said. Its an end of an era. It is sad. Its easy to attach memories, history, and people to things and place. Its sad for a society to need residents to sell their inheritance to pay for healthcare. After all, Grandma prided herself that she and Grandpa had paid off their 25 year mortgage in 22 years instead of 25. Yet, the house did its job: it provided a place for Grandma and Grandpa to raise their family, for Grandma to take care of her adult daughter until Grandma was 80 years old and could no longer live in the house on her own, and, after Grandma died, the house provided the means to pay for Grandmas healthcare for her final 4 years of life here when she lived at Talbot Center for Rehabilitation and Healthcare. On our rainy gray Veterans Day this year, we paid our respects by visiting Grandpa and Grandmas headstones at the cemetery, and by watching Grandmas house be torn down. As I walked through the cemetery with Mom and our niece, reading names and dates as far back as 1919, I couldnt help but think of the ranks of generations gone before me and now swathed by earth and their spirits still... waiting. Now, as I reflect on our Veterans Day experience this year, Im grateful for the moments of deliberate and caring interaction that I shared with Grandma in Grandmas house. I marvel at Gods faithfulness, especially in the timing of driving by at the last possible moment of demolition, to answer a prayer that I had forgotten that I had prayed years ago. I always intuited that Id photograph the house being torn down as I had wanted to stay with the process from start
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to finish. Grandma often said that God is on the throne. On this matter of faith, Im grateful for Grandmas perspective: this life is a transition to the next.
Sun shines through trees at Tahoma National Cemetery, 2001 (above) Blogging this story helps me to work through loss in part by exchanging a physical and tangible loss for a symbolic gain. The former must go to bring about the new. The story reminds me to return to my faith-outlook on life and lends a new perspective to blogging as communicating healing. I experience a degree of healing as I blog stories of history, people, faith, hope, and love in text and pixels (e.g., photos). I find encouragement and affirmation as I share the story with others, who in turn share their own responses. The story benefits and continues each time someone reads it. The story as embedded in national remembrance holidays contributes to a sense of communal mourning, where we are not alone. Ultimately, I heal via grieving with faithinspired hope. Still, the tangible and physical losses are real, and no symbolic pencil can write those losses away. Otherwise, why would Jesus need to return to raise the dead? Dad perked up, Well, maybe Jesus will resurrect houses, too! As Grandma often declared on any declarative-worthy matters of faith: Amen!
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Grandma smiling hello/goodbye from the front porch, as was her custom (above)
Grandma in the backyard during a painting party, August 2001 (above) For more about Grandmas remembrance services, click here. For more about Judys life and services, click here (R Abode blog 2006-2008). To share your own Veterans Day and loving memories, visit The Living Memorial. Thank you for reading, Dena Written and photographic content copyright Dena Rosko. Please see Creative Commons license for terms of use. Adapted from a manuscript-in-progress. All rights reserved.
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Credits The credit roll has many, but for this post I focus on thanking

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James for your enthusiasm for my work and for reminding me of Gods timing; Mom for inviting me to visit the cemetery and for driving by the house at the right moment; God for orchestrating the timing in our lives history; Nikki for affirming my work in your immediate response to this post; Our niece for your pleasant company; Family and friends for your prayers; and, Colleagues for your on-going interest and support in my stories and work.
Posted by Dena at 11/16/2010 03:40:00 PM 0 comments Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook Share to Google Buzz Labels: Christianity, Death Studies, Digital Storytelling, Faith Reflection, Family Life, Grandma, Griefwork, Remembrance, Veterans Day Friday, March 12, 2010 Loving Each Other as an Ethic of Care
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Enjoy these special images that my husband photographed of my grandma and I nearly 1 month before she died (13 and 25 December 2009). These photos remind me to love Grandma based on the beautiful person she was, and in her new life now, will become. I learned to value people not based on what they give me, or what I give them, but on the faith, hope, and love we both shared, especially during critical times. My experience as shown in these photos reminds me to keep a guiding ethic in my work and relationships: Religion that God considers pure and faultless is this: look after widows and orphans in their distress and keep yourself from being polluted by world (James 1:27). Thank you James for the photos, and thank you for reading, Dena Posted by Dena at 2:29 PM 0 Comments Labels: Autoethnography, Grandma, Photography, Remembrance
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Thursday, February 25, 2010 Grandma Adelines Life Celebration Service Playlist
Hi, Click the link below to access the playlist of Grandma Adelines Life Celebration service audio tracks. Special thanks to Marcus for making these files available. Grandma Adelines Life Celebration Service Playlist ~ powered by 4shared.com ~ Thank you for listening, Dena Posted by Dena at 5:04 PM 0 Comments Labels: Audio, Digital Storytelling, Grandma, Remembrance Saturday, January 30, 2010 Grandma Adelines Life Celebration Service
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Dad speaks (above 2 photos)
My sister and cousin share (above)
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Whispering Hope, a favorite hymn (above)
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Pastor Jensen speaks (above 3 photos)
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My God and I, another favorite (above)
Dick sings Precious Lord (above)
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Dick and lovely friend (above)
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Mom with dear friends we met at the rehab center (above) Grandma was roommate with LeeAnns mom.
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Mom with physical therapist and rehab center staff who cared for Grandma so we could visit! (above)
Mom with Helen, Aunt Judys caregiver and our dear friend (above)
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Church supporters and friends! (above)
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My parents with longtime family friends (above) Ray led my dad to the Lord.
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Longtime Skyway Baptist Church friends! (above) Grandma was a charter member there.
Childhood pastors and family friends, Pastor and Thelma Jensen (above)
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We love cousins and friends! (above 3 photos)
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Grandmas graduation documents (above 3 photos)
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My parents (above) They planned such special services for us to celebrate Grandma and her faith in Jesus. Thank you Mom N Dad! I love you! Today we celebrated Grandma Adeline McIntyres Life. Why do you celebrate Life when someone has died? Many reasons. Family. Faith. Hope. Love. A call to focus on the living. A call to know Jesus.
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3 days in the grave the 3rd day Jesus arose, Hallelujah! Christ arose! Its always darkest before the dawn, Grandma said often. Though weeping last for a night, Joy comes in the morning, the Psalmist said. Rise Up, Call Her Blessed! God let our 3rd day of mourning begin with life anew Risen, Healed, Whole, Glorified. Words speak the good news boldly, but the Kingdom of Heaven comes with power. Precious to God is the death of His Saints. Excellent Examples Dad told me he felt excited to share about Grandma and the Lord so much so he smiled before he fell asleep the night before. I learn by such faithful compassionate loving examples. I know I am not alone. There are more people to love to encourage to share.
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Saving Grace I asked God today to help me know without doubt I am a Christian as I want to be. Dad spoke at the service, We make it far too complicated. If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, then you will -- you will -be saved. How special to receive affirmation and answered prayer from my dad. A New Confidence Pastor Clements compared the body to a tent -- leaky and stinky -a fair trade To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:8). I now know confidence believing this to be true. Real Power Death truly has no lasting power over me because I believe Jesus died, rose again, and will return to make all things new including our bodies. Why wouldnt a Creator redeem his entire masterpiece?
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH God will save mind, body, and spirit because of Jesus. Fear Not I dont fear death. I used to as a non-believer, but I dont now, especially with being around my mother-in-law. Grandma encouraged me to not fear anything Satan threw at me. Do What You Can Pastor Jensen spoke also. Of Mary, Jesus said, She did what she could. Thats all God asks of us, is that we do what we can, just like Adeline. Know Your Path He knows the way I take, wrote Job, and quoted Grandma often. Pastor reminded us, Theres a way that seems right to a person, but that way leads to death. Be sure you are on the right path. Photo Gifts Dad later thanked me for the photos. I realized almost all those photos are because of you, He said. I told him thank you, that meant a lot to me.
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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Design Flowers, Give Gifts Grandma used to design flowers for church. Now it was our turn. We made flowers for her. Grandmas death affirmed my gifts in writing and photography are best used to comfort to encourage and to heal myself and others in loss. Gratitude Im proud of my dad, sister, and cousin for speaking. Dick sang, Precious Lord, and flowers and photos decorated the sanctuary. Im grateful for the church who volunteered to sing, cook, speak, and pray for us to honor Grandmas life and Gods life in Christ inside of her. I appreciated the pastors closing prayer that prayed for comfort for our family and joy as we hope and celebrate Grandmas new life
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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH without shadow or death. Death is a transition, Grandma said. Be Glad I told James that valued his cheerful candor with family and friends today. I dont want to mourn her anymore, he said. He told me earlier he wants to celebrate her life thats what this service is for, he reminded me. Weve mourned more in the last 2 days than she would have wanted. Love-Kudos On that note, my dad reminded us that she would not want us speaking of her. Any compliment you gave her shed shrug her shoulders, and turn it around on you. Its true, Grandma did not relish in any praise focused as she was on trusting and loving her Savior. Sing-spirational! Grandma liked music. We sang her favorites today. I enjoyed being with old friends from church that I had known all growing up! Greeting the Living My parents humbled me as they cheerfully
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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH greeted guests passing out programs and the photo favors I had made. I want to have their attitude of caring, kindness, and compassion made all the more bittersweet in loss. No, Never Alone! Its not good to be alone, Pastor York reminded me prior to Grandmas death. Then I thought I could do life alone, but now I know better, grateful am I to continue a legacy of faith, hope, and love with loved ones in my life. Love Lasts Grandma reminds me, Words are nice, but love in action is better. These 3 remain: faith, hope, and love, the greatest of these? Love. Gods virtues, Son, and people provide the continuity I want to heal and to grow.
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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH All in All Pastor Jensen said Grandma used to reply, He is my all in all when they spoke about Jesus. You were right, Grandma. He is our all in all. Only Jesus gives Life. Arise to the Sweet Light of Heaven Grandma had told me one day last May, Im here for as long as God wants me to be here. When hes finished with what he has for me to do, then he will take me to the sweet light of heaven. I dont want you to weep and wail, but to say, Hallelujah, shes with the Lord! Grandmas trust worked in tandem with her pragmatic personality. Why waste time worrying when you could pray, and why waste tears when you could praise? Welcome to the land of the living, Grandma. We shall look for Gods goodness, as you did, in ours!
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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Awakening to Joy I awoke the morning following Grandmas service and realized I experienced Joy -- Joy in fellowship -just as Grandma... enjoyed! How fitting to rise after the 3rd day of our mourning reflecting on Joy. Mourning and Living We mourn only because we miss her here. We live because Jesus lives. So we grieve with hope. Just as the hymn Whispering Hope sings: making my heart in its sorrow rejoice. I welcome the distinction! Tender Mercies, Gods Grace I thank God for sustaining me with his mercy and grace. I thank God for answering my prayers. How poignant to explore fear of death through my interactions with Grandma in my research class
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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH the same term she died. I agree with Grandma. God is good. I thank Grandma for preparing us by a lifetime modeling faith, hope, and love so we can continue in her stead. Grandma Adelines Life Celebration Service: James shared that being alive, existing, is not enough. Its what we do with the lives were given that matters. As Pastor Jensen once said, The best way to honor someone is to follow their example. A Call to a Legacy! Thank you, Grandma! Thank you, Lord Jesus! Thank you for reading, for your prayers, kind words, support, and for sharing the journey, Dena Posted by Dena at 8:22 PM 0 Comments Labels: Digital Storytelling, Faith Reflection, Grandma, Poem, Remembrance
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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Friday, January 29, 2010 A Bouquet for Grandma & A Handful of Soil
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Burying Grandma at Tahoma National Cemetary, Kent, Wash., 29 January 2010 (above)
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Pastor Clements (above 2 photos)
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Singing My God and I (above 2 photos)
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Dad speaking (above 4 photos)
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Pastor Jensen speaking (above 2 photos)
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Our nieces corsage and our bouquet on Grandmas casket (above)
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Laying Grandma to rest with Grandpas headstone, our flower bouquet, and a handful of soil (above 3 photos)
Aunt Judys grave (above)
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Morning has broken... (above)
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Today we buried Grandma. Covered by a hazy soft sun soft Day. Today I prayed, Deliver me from every evil deed, from the lions mouth, and enter me safely into your kingdom, to you be the glory and honor forever. Today I remembered, Our bodies are members of Christs body, and of each other. Later I read, part of Grandmas poem, from her service program, When evening shadows fall, I say to Christ as Savior, Thank you for your guidance and for being at my call. I know Grandma is safe. Grave, Where is Your Sting? I used to fear the grave. Dark, cold, wet, but today God gave me special moments experiences: Scented Bouquets, Soft Soil I tossed the carnation bouquet James and I have made this morning onto her casket
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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH after the grave workers have lowered Her casket into the grave. The bouquet -- coral carnations sage-trimmed and white -clanged against the metal as it landed, While I said, Until we meet again, Grandma, I love you As the grave workers stood by patiently waiting and Nikki and Aaron watched And hugged each other from behind me. Then I threw in a handful of soil, brown, soft, rich -- comforting -never fear some, for the soil and the flowers are the land. God fashioned people from the land and with the breath of his mouth. The land is Gods the land is ours the land is made to be beautiful. A Spirit of Love Fears Not I wasnt afraid. I felt relieved because we three -- Aaron, Nikki, and I -tended to Grandma one last moment before she laid to rest. Rest is peaceful and not terrifying. God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind. God has made us His children
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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH so we can call out to him. ReUnited Grandma is not alone because shes One with Christ part of us and the land shelters Her form until Jesus returns and the Angels trumpet shall resound louder than any machine used to bury her. Indeed, loud enough to wake the dead. Triumph The dead in Christ Shall rise first, and we Shall reunite with them and Christ in the clouds. Speaking to Serve Mom and Dads pastor Clements spoke about knowing and following Jesus, a message we knew Grandma would want us to share. I appreciated this pastor showing compassion to my mom by hugging her and telling everyone that it was okay to cry. Pastor Jensen read from 1 Thessalonians, speaking on the resurrection, having known our family since he buried Great Grandma Marie. Dad spoke on this life being short, So follow Jesus, Who was the only one who endured separation from God. We wont know that fate,
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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Dad said. As Grandma once said, This life the only hell a Christian will experience. Singing My God and I Pastor, Dick, and Melody sang one of Grandmas favorite hymns, My God and I, We walk through the meadows hue together We walk and talk, just as good friends do. This earth shall pass, but my God and I We remain. Yay, Grandma, You made it, You are with the Lord! Knowing Love is Stronger than Death I felt joy to feel love to comfort, to give and receive hugs and kisses with family and friends. I know again that Love is stronger than death, More unyielding than the grave. When I was afraid, I didnt know that. When I fear, I forget. Perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with judgment. If love is greater than death, then love gives and keeps life.
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Death, Where is Your Victory? If judgment means death, and fear comes from judgment, but love casts out fear, then love is present at death, So death is not such a scary final thing is it? Restless Sleep I had struggled to fall asleep last night because when I saw Grandma at the viewing, and rubbed her arms covered in her pretty blue floral dress, I realized for the first time that she couldnt raise her arms to embrace me. That realization hit me hard before I fell asleep, and I wrestled with my thoughts, bidding the tears stay inside, and leave me be, so I could sleep. Grandma does not want such sorrow for me. Yes, I miss her hugs, that open, loyal, caring, and yet practical love. I had wrestled with my thoughts, Think of something else -- anything -does not it get easier? I prayed. Ebbing Grief, Stemming Tide Then I remembered what Grandma said, Grief lessens over time, but it does not go away completely. This assures me on two counts: The grief will lessen,
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH So I can live, and move forward with my life, and the grief will stay, so I can remember with love. Living Memories Live On I want to remember her alive, believing this to be her true form now and when Jesus returns. Look up, Grandma said, Dont fear, for your redemption draws near. This moment isnt so far away. Beauty Beholds A New Face Even though I miss her, her hugs, conversation, smile, vivid eyes, and her person, I realized -- I almost missed it -that she wasnt wearing her oxygen tube anymore. And her face looked beautiful without it. Rousing Dreams Last night I had struggled to fall asleep. As I drifted twice to sleep, a dream startled me awake. I saw her face as it was at the viewing, and her eyes snapped open to look at me. I gasped out loud, and the second time I told God I didnt know whether to feel startled, disturbed, or happy. Ive chosen the latter. She will wake up. This I know for certain.
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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Supernaturally New Still its unnatural to bury a person in the earth because we werent made for that. God made a way so I look forward to a new creation, new heaven, new earth, when the old passes away instead of people. Anyone in Christ is a new creation the old has gone the new has come. So weve a bit of paradise inside us now And is name is Immanuel, God with us, Jesus. God Remembers the Sparrows This morning I had worried how I would feel when we lowered Grandma in the earth today. A bird chirped, sweetly and simply, outside the office window. It told me the earth is not such a bad thing, reminding me that God cares for even the Sparrows that fall. Grandma was sweet, and she sang sweetly. Grandma has died. God cares for her, too, as he does those who remain. After all, the birds need a tree with branches to make a home and to sing. Trees grow from seeds,
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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH and the seeds must first enter the earth to shed its hull, and so transform to a new form, a shelter, larger and more life-weilding than before. A tree never wished to return to a seed. Growing Gods Kingdom Jesus was right when he compared the kingdom of heaven to a seed. Healing Hearts, Kindred Spirits God is close to the brokenhearted, and save those crushed in spirit. The Spirit gives life to the body. If Gods Spirit is within Christians, and our spirit goes to be with God, leaving the body behind, then our spirits are much closer than we think. This can be a comfort to those who intensely feel a chasm, who see Deaths facade as permanent. As in a Mirror, As By a Shadow Make our faces reflect your joy to deliver us from our sorrow, God and Grandma! We behold his glory as in a mirror. This life is as a shadow
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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH cast by a tree the tree is real, yet we believe the shadow. Feeling Love When Grandma died, while I cried, I did not feel her death, I felt her love. So, too, with God. Together, our love yields life and continuity. New Address No more beautiful name to look for on her door at Talbot in hospitals Adeline McIntyre Room 256A 206A. Its all part of the process, I heard her say a couple times today, just as she said to Grandpa. A practical faith helps me to find my way. I still have a place to visit her, though its a new place now, and so different, its quiet, natural, and beautiful, and though I know such things are temporary, theyre symbols, a place that I can go to reflect and pray. More importantly, When I pray, God hears me, and Grandma is with God, So shes not so far,
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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH and her residence now is Sweeter than any here this world could provide. Prayer I love you, Grandma. Sleep well in form, rejoice in spirit as you see Jesus face first of all, just as you wished, the Day you joined Him in Paradise. God keep her safe, Pass her through The fire unscathed, the water uncovered, and enter her safely into Your kingdom. Fulfill Your purpose for her, continue Your purpose through and for us. Make room for your good news in our hearts, minds, the work of our hands, -- our very lives. Reunite us again to worship you in spirit and in truth: Let us believe today, without doubts shadow, as we peer from behind Deaths shadow, that Jesus, You are our Way, our Truth, and our Life, and we come to God with and through you.
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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH P.S. Mom, they buried Grandma with Grandpa and his headstone, so they are no longer alone in that form, they sleep together. Did you see the sun stream through the trees? Remember: Joy comes in the morning. I tossed my bouquet into Grandmas grave, along with a handful of soil. Credits Thank you to

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Tahoma National Cemetery and Faull-Stokes Mortuary staff, Pastors Clements, Jensen, Thelma, Melody, and families, the landscape staff for promising to take good care of Grandma, the volunteer veterans, Dad for speaking (Im proud of you!), and my parents for planning a special burial service for Grandma today.
Thank you to

Cousin Barbi, for asking how I was doing and complimenting me on my progress; Cousin Aaron, for watching them bury Grandma with Nikki and I (we got your back, too, Cousin!); Cousin Tonia, for seeking me out for a hug; Cousin Amy, for being smart, cool, speaking my language, and be accepted to law school (Congratulations!); Uriah, Paige, Cody, Cody, and Meredith for being part of our family; Aunts Dora, Yvonne, and Laura, for supporting me in your unique way; Aunt Dora, for bringing Aunt Judy pink flowers; Uncle Alan, for giving me a handkerchief at Grandpas wake years ago (I still have it); Cousin Jason, for saying hello with a friendly smack, Ruthie and Ron, for being faithful friends to Grandma and our family through the years; Andy, for supporting me and my family by coming; and so many others for being there. I am so grateful to have a family. Its wonderful to feel centered on love and unity again. Its difficult to fall to pieces in a nest of family called home. Lets keep in touch.
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Lastly, Thank you to

James, for remembering, procuring, and helping me style the flowers, one for Grandma and one for Mom. The drive was beautiful today, wasnt it? Grandmas pallbearers, Dad, Uncle Alan, Cousins Jason and Aaron, Ron, and James. Grandma, for mentoring and preparing me for this moment; and to God the father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, for sticking with me after the festivities quiet down and for helping me to fall asleep last night. Im glad were not alone because of you, God with us.
Thank you for reading, Dena Posted by Dena at 6:30 PM 0 Comments Labels: Digital Storytelling, Faith Reflection, Grandma, Poem, Remembrance Thursday, January 28, 2010 Grandma Adelines Viewing: Reflections
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Grandma used to say, Come as you are, you dont have to bring anything. Today, we brought flowers. A bouquet of pink carnations, Grandmas favorite, attentively placed in a heart-shaped glass vase with a card that said I love you. Sometimes the abstract is not enough. Sometimes symbols are not enough. Writing and photography provide symbols that remind me of Grandma and my shared interaction and conversations.
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH However, more is needed in loss. I need a continuance. I will have that when Jesus returns because then he will breathe life to create new bodies. I dont know what that will look like. I know it will be new. So in the meantime Im satisfied. Im content knowing that Grandma and I shared a loving relationship, and a faith-based connection, that lifts up our heads For our redemption draws near. This is why God will redeem the body. This is why God sent Jesus. Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love God with our heart mind and body. The body houses spirit and the Spirit gives life to the body. She looked pretty today. At peace, as though she were asleep. I prayed in the car on the way wishing the car would move faster Confiding in God I wanted to know deep down that love truly is stronger than death. The grave can not confine love more than I can bottle a sunrise. After all, life is not a commodity, and death, while she tries, is no satisfied consumer. Before we went in I spoke a brief prayer. I thanked God for giving us life, and asked God to show me that love was stronger than death. I ignored the construction on the street that has changed the place since I had last visited no more trees the street a wide-open, yet crowded feel. Last time I had attended and Judys viewing.
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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Then I had felt deaths heaviness pull me down, and I had struggled to recognize the face I had once known. Even so, that moment taught me just as all moments do. I knew I had a short lifespan a life to live and I wanted to live my life centered on Gods unique design for me. So I enrolled in graduate school at Gonzaga to finish the work Grandma, God, and I had begun. Continuance, Moving forward, and Growing, just as Grandma wanted. Today, Grandmas hair was brushed and sprayed in place. She looked so pretty. She used to go to Center Coiffure with my aunts Judy to get their hair done every Saturday. Grandma still teaches me to enjoy the little things in life. Good night and God bless, Grandma, I repeated her for a while as I had many times before. Until we meet again at Jesus feet. I love you so much, Grandma. Take comfort knowing that farewells can be sweet. While its better to love in life, Sometimes you need to say Goodbye. Sometimes you need flowers. They help. Credits
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A special thank you to my husband and sister for helping me to go. Thank you Mom and Dad for creating such special services for Grandma. You truly will have another jewel for your crown as Grandma used to say. Thank you to Faulls-Stokes Mortuary staff, especially Lyle and Agnus, for your compassion and showing respect to people and their families post-death. You teach a society to care, just as
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Talbot staff, to the last.
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Thank you to Tiffany at Safeway floral for making such a nice bouquet (with a bow) for us. I value both you and Gail. Thank you to pastor and Thelma, Jim and Sharon, and anyone else who supported us by attending Grandmas viewing today. I know such events can be difficult, but its important to accept the reality of what is so we can live. Thank you James for saying I was sweet. Thank you for holding Moms hand. And Thank you Jesus for giving us hope. Thank you for reading, Dena Posted by Dena at 8:52 PM 0 Comments Labels: Digital Storytelling, Faith Reflection, Grandma, Poem, Remembrance Wednesday, January 27, 2010 Grandma Adelines Poem My grandma Adeline wrote this poem after she had a surgery: At the dawning of the day When darkness fades away Christ my Savior comes to say Ill be with you and guide your path today. As the evening shadows gather And darkness starts to fall I say to Christ my Savior, Thank you for your guidance, and being at my call. ~ AMc 7/5/1989 Grandma had this poem printed on special light pink paper and folded as a card. She gave copies to family and friends. A Multnomah University (MU) classmate read this poem for her in her absence at her graduating class (1946) 50th Reunion. She was unable to attend that year due to illness, but my MU roommate and I did in her stead as I was a student at the time. It was a privilege meeting her college friends! Thank you for reading, Dena
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Posted by Dena at 1:31 PM 0 Comments Labels: Digital Storytelling, Grandma, Poem, Remembrance Monday, January 25, 2010 Grandma Celebrates Life in Family, Work, Church, and Service
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Marriage Portrait, taken ~ 1947 (She was married on November 9, 1946).
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Grandma and her family. ~1960s.
Singing in the Choir at Work.
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Grandma and Grandpa on their 25th Wedding Anniversary. November 9, 1971, Seattle, Wash.
Grandma holding my aunt Judys hand. Mothers Day, 2003. Seattle, Wash.
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Grandma reading on one of our classic movie nights. ~ 2003/4, Seattle, Wash.
Grandma holding the Easter basket she had made for Judy. April 8, 2004. Seattle, Wash.
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Grandma at Christmas, 2004. Seattle, Wash.
Grandma on Thanksgiving, 2007. Seattle, Wash.
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Church and Family Grandma continued her Multnomah influence to church by being a charter member for Skyway Baptist Church and a Sunday school teacher. She loved to design flowers for Sundays and special events (even corsages/boutonnieres) and to sing in the choir. She served her husband (whom she married on November, 9, 1946) and family of four children faithfully in prayer and example, especially her developmentally disabled daughter, for whom Grandma cared until Grandma was 80 years old. Grandma enjoyed talking on the phone, and often called family each night to say, Good night and God bless. Work and Community Service Grandma carried her love for people and her solid work ethic to work, working 22 years in the dry cleaning industry and 12 years at King County Medical processing claims. Grandmas box of photographs and other life artifacts testifies that her life was one full of love for people as the Cedar River swells with water during the winter rain. Her bright example shines in the retirement book co-workers gave her, with testaments to Grandmas dedicated work ethic, cheerful attitude, and words of wisdom. Grandma also volunteered for the Special Olympics and served on the board at Rainier School. Celebrating Life Grandma loved to celebrate her hope in Jesus with her family on Christmas and Easter. She told me her favorite childhood and adult memories were with family at Christmas (A. McIntyre, personal communication, 2008, May 25). She enjoyed reading Christian inspirational books (even dipping in romance novels) and the newspaper as a past-time, and is amusingly infamous for her leftover dinners. Her favorite flowers were pink carnations, and she recalled Grandpas tradition to give her the number of roses to match their anniversary year. She wore the watch he gave her in the 1950s until the day she died. Cheerful Memories Grandma enjoyed telling stories about Multnomah, her senior thesis (on the virgin birth), and the tiny pink daphne o dora flowers that were planted outside her college room and, later, her house in Seattle. I recall fondly our classic movie nights where we popped popcorn and Grandma shared cookies we had baked (plus chocolate candies and hot chocolate, a chocolatieres or granddaughters paradise). Grandmas sing-song voice and cheerful smile showed us what it means to celebrate life with people and because of Jesus. Thank you for reading, Dena Images and content (c) Dena Rosko, personal use permitted. Posted by Dena at 8:32 PM 0 Comments Labels: Digital Storytelling, Faith Reflection, Grandma, Remembrance
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Grandma and My Multnomah University Days
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Grandma Adeline McIntyre (Kuppinger), Multnomah Senior Portrait. ~1946
Grandma with a friend at Multnomah, ~1946.
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Class of 1946 Reunion. October 1996, Portland, Ore. (c) Dena Rosko. Adeline McIntyre, my grandma, spoke often, and always spoke well, of her days at Multnomah School of the Bible in Portland, Oregon. Grandma attended Multnomah School of the Bible in 1943 and graduated in 1946 with a degree in Bible and a certificate in evangelical teaching. Saving for College at the Naval Shipyard After graduating high school, which she had finished one year early, Grandma moved to Bellevue, Wash. to work at the Lake Washington Naval Shipyard to save money to attend Multnomah. She had turned down Washington State University, who had offered her a full-ride scholarship, and Central and Eastern, who had also offered her scholarships. Lasting Friendships Grandma, along with her friends at Multnomahthree seniors and three juniorstogether earned the reputation as the seven little sinners saved by grace. I was the lowly freshman, Grandma said. If there was anything unusual that happened [on campus], like the garbage cans on the porch of the boys dorm, they [students and staff] blamed it on the seven sinners saved by grace. Grandma chose Multnomah due in part to what is still considered a Multnomah hallmark: the people. She met Multnomah students when she competed in the Christian Endeavor Bible Quiz Competition as a high school student in 1940 and 1941, and it was these students whose friendship influenced Grandma to attend Multnomah. Grandmas Multnomah friendships were lasting friendships and she kept in touch with her classmates as best she could, and appreciated visits from the Alumni Relations department staff. Singing in the First A Cappella Choir Grandma loved to sing, and while at Multnomah, she toured Pacific northwestern cities in Multnomahs first a cappella choir, which was entirely composed of women due to World War
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH II, as a first and second soprano.
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Academics and Influence Grandma excelled academically at Multnomah. Grandma valued the instruction she received at Multnomah, and with fondness and humor recalled the professors who taught her there. Grandma liked Dr. Lees view on marriage. When youre married, be sure you dont neglect the goodnight kisseven if its a cold potato! Another favorite professor, Dr. Sutcliffe, told her class, God looks down from His Mountain and sees mans choice and His salvation. After Dr. Sutcliffes lecture, Grandma felt peace and assurance in her salvation. I never questioned my salvation again, she told me, confiding that she had doubted her salvation before she came to Multnomah. Shared Legacy Grandma portrayed Multnomah as a school grounded in biblical faith and truth and a place to connect with other people. Grandmas portrayal of Multnomah led me to attend the school during 1996-1997, and that year I was privileged to meet some of her friends at the 60th Anniversary Celebration of the school under the slogan, If its the Bible you want, then you want Multnomah! I have always appreciated Grandmas influence that led me to attend Multnomah for my first year of college. She showed me in her story telling and by example the value of prayer, biblical study, hard work, friendship, and the enjoyment of special times, and while at Multnomah, I experienced such merits for myself. Yet another treasure to appreciate with God and Grandma in mind! Thank you for reading, Dena Content copyright Rosko, D.M. (2010, January 25). Grandma and My Multnomah University Days. Posted by Dena at 4:15 PM 0 Comments Labels: Digital Storytelling, Faith Reflection, Grandma, Multnomah University, Remembrance
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Sunday, January 24, 2010 Grandmas Obituary in The Seattle Times Click the below link to access Grandmas obituary in The Seattle Times, and to leave a comment in the guest book: Adeline McIntyres Obituary: In Loving Memory 09/01/1923-01/19/2010 Thanks for reading, Dena Posted by Dena at 4:08 PM 0 Comments Labels: Digital Storytelling, Grandma, Remembrance
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Saturday, January 23, 2010 Recorded Interviews with Grandma: On Family and God Understands
Click the below links to access an audio file [MPEG] of an interview I enjoyed with Grandma on 24 May 2008: Family Memories and What Grandma Wants Her Family to Know Verse to God Understands Hymn Instructions: After you click the above links, press the little triangle button to play the file on the gray bar at the top of the page, or click Download Now to download the MP3 file to your computer. Note: I say new paragraph in the audio file as I was testing integrating audio files with dictation software at the time. Thank you Grandma for sharing, and readers for listening! Dena Posted by Dena at 4:44 PM 0 Comments Labels: Audio, Digital Storytelling, Grandma, Remembrance
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Wednesday, January 20, 2010 Remembering Grandma with Faith, Hope, & Love
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Wedding Portrait, 1947 (They hired a photographer friend to take this portrait after their wedding. Actual wedding date November 9, 1946. Trivia: Grandma is pregnant with my mom in this portrait!)
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Senior Portrait, ~1942/3
At Multnomah School of the Bible with a friend (Grandma is on our right), Portland, Ore., ~1946
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My and James Wedding Day, November 2005 Grandma carried the Lovers Knots Im holding in her wedding.
Visiting Grandma, 2009
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Christmas Day, 2008
Easter, 2009
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How I Remember Grandma: Welcoming me with her sing-song voice. Private Residence, Seattle, Wash., 2004 Remembering Grandma with Faith, Hope, & Love: 09/01/1923-01/19/2010. Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame from God. ~ Song of Solomon 8:6 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. ~ 1 John 4:18 Reaching Out Grandmas example continues to guide me. I learn from her to trust and credit Gods timing and purpose for my life. I learn to reach out to others, such as she did when she called rehabilitation staff by name, having recognized their voices, into her room simply to tell them she was praying for them. She was faithful to the last in her mission field, having graduated from her four-year stay at the rehabilitation center to a place sweeter than we could ever provide for her.
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Jell-O, Pudding, and Precious Promises
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Thank you for feeding me, she said, reminding me to humanize persons vulnerable to pain and loss, such as the last day I saw her. I fed her Jell-O and pudding for lunch, occasionally running my hand and fingers through her hair, and wondering at her persistence to clear her nose from blood clots. Once that business subsided, I asked James to read a portion of Scripture to her, and she requested Isaiah 12, one of her two favorite passages that she has inscribed in many gifts over the years. James read, In that day you will say: I will praise you, O Lord. Although you were angry with me, your anger has turned away and you have comforted me. Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. The Lord, the Lord, is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation. With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. In that day you will say: Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known among the nations what he has done, and proclaim that his name is exalted. Sing to the Lord, for he has done glorious things; let this be known to all the world. Shout aloud and sing for joy, people of Zion, for great is the Holy One of Israel among you. Her eyes alight, she became animated as she spoke with her hands, expressing her love for Isaiah because of its promises interspersed amidst ill tidings. She mined those verses for those promises, her treasures, which I pray she continues to experience in spirit. I imagine this passage is called a song of praise for this very reason. When Thank You becomes Goodbye I said goodbye three times, as was my custom, hugging and kissing her as she lay in her bed one more time for the road, as I often joked. Each time, I looked her square in the eyes and told her I loved her so much. She thanked us for visiting her, and said simply, It helps. Of course, I replied. Thank you for being you, for letting us, praying for us, and visiting with us. Truly it was our pleasure and highest honor. Grandma used to say youll have another jewel
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in your crown in appreciation for our visits. I muse now, No more than you, Grandma, no more than you! Lasting Gifts Before we left, I showed her the Christmas presents we got for her, which she had already opened, but I learned years back to make deliberate efforts to express love. After all, weve no guarantee of tomorrow. On that note, I appreciate Grandmas lasting gifts. She loves her family, even praying from her bed in the middle of the night and ordering Christmas presents for the grandkids, and she loves her Savior, Jesus, desiring to see His face first of all. She shared this faith with anyone willing to take a moment to speak with her. I want to catch the flame from her torch onto mine as I now realize with startling clarity I want to live out my life purpose, faithful to the last as was she. Im Talking with Jesus Im told the head nurse spoke to Grandma the day she died, and she told him she was talking with Jesus. He asked her if she wanted to see a chaplain. She said no, and asked him to just sit there with her. He did, and held her hand, while she told him she was talking with Jesus. Im grateful that though I was not there with her when she died, Jesus was, and she could tell her stories to Him, and He could listen, and perhaps debrief her and give her pep talk before her next step in her journey. This chapter in Grandmas story comforts me and affirms the merit of storytelling as a means to know our elders hopes and fears. After all, Grandma told me she wanted to see Jesus face first of all. Torch Flames I wish I could run, Grandma once said to James as he shared his running adventures. I can hardly walk! And we three laughed. For me, our final earthly moment for Grandma confirms Jesus as a worthwhile center of my faith, and motivates me to continue my educational and vocational pursuits to explore our shared narrative with our shared faith as a way to comfort persons in end-of-life care-giving contexts. She can run now. She has passed us by and has crossed the finish line. Let us catch her torchs flame onto own. Say I Love You We hugged and wept in front of the photo Grandma and us take in at Christmas in 2008. We three smiled back at us, now two, from that once happy place.
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Not a contrast; a continuance, a reminder.
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Later I kissed her face in that photo.I love you so much, Grandma, I said, just as my dreams told me to say one year before she died. Both God and Grandma were kind to prepare us for this moment. You see, I dont have to stop saying it. Still, its hard. No Fear In Love I reflect on the nature of love to comfort in death and fears of death. I used to fear that Grandmas death would undo me as I loved her so much, wondering if I depended on her too much to define my faith and future. Are you afraid to die, Grandma? I asked once. No, she replied, referencing Psalm 34, I know God will be with me every step of the way. In her patient and conversational way, she gave me an example to follow where I am free to live my life though she has finished hers -- for now. Restless Days, Centered Hearts It was a restless week. A fit-full week filled with wind that beat the branches against the sides of our house at night. after the New Year, I had struggled with loss of motivation, anger, and fear over a variety of things before I received the news that Grandma had died. Strangely, upon hearing the news, my life seemed to come back to its center. Im grateful for Gods grace in answering so many prayers on our part regarding Grandmas life and passing. Guiding Ethic: On Religion & Church The following passage explains our guiding ethic and visiting Grandma: Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. ~ James 1:27 Visiting Grandma and living for God is our religion; people who follow Christ are the church, not a building or program, but lives transformed by Jesus compassion to be the first to lay down his life and all before asking us to do the same. May learn from our experience and continue in this vein.
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Poetry
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I will close, for now, with this poem I wrote the night of the day I learned Grandma had died: To live love means to Love life to live. Live your life, Love your loves You love to live. Its not so entangled as that. For love is stronger than death. When you died, I did not feel your death, I felt your love. ~ DMR 1/20/2010 Our family appreciates your ongoing prayers for our healing and for God to accomplish His purpose as we grieve with hope. In loving memory of Grandma Adeline McIntyre. Posted by Dena at 5:34 PM 0 Comments Labels: Digital Storytelling, Faith Reflection, Grandma, Poem, Remembrance Newer Posts Older Posts Home Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)
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Recent Comments denarosko Thank you Michelle for your thoughts and prayers! I received your call and email so appreciative for you and MUs support. Will share on her service soon, Love, Dena A Bouquet for Grandma & A Handful of Soil: On Burying Grandma vor 9 Monaten Michelle Peel What beautiful thoughts...what beautiful memories. Thanks for sharing! Praying for you and your family today, Michelle A Bouquet for Grandma & A Handful of Soil: On Burying Grandma vor 9 Monaten denarosko So sweet Tareena thank you! Thank you for your prayers much appreciated as God hears, and let me know next time youre in town would love to get together. Love, Dena Grandma Celebrates Life in Family, Work, Church, and Service vor 9 Monaten denarosko Dearest Mom, Youre most welcome it was my comfort and pleasure to share. Im glad you will treasure this. Your mom and my grandma live on in us as we honor her by living by her example. We have...
Grandma Celebrates Life in Family, Work, Church, and Service vor 9 Monaten Tareena Johnson Well that really means a lot coming from such a lovely family! I absolutely wish I could be there Saturday, but I now live in Winchester, VA so it would be difficult for me to get there. You all...
Grandma Celebrates Life in Family, Work, Church, and Service vor 9 Monaten Maria Claudon Dearest Dena, Thank-you so much for putting together moms(your grandma),life memories of family,church and work.Its beautiful and a lovingly tribute of your grandmas life. What a blessing you...
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Grandma Celebrates Life in Family, Work, Church, and Service 9 months ago
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denarosko Hi Tareena, Youre most welcome and thank you for reading and for sharing how Grandma touched your life. You also have a special place in our hearts, and wed love to share your company at...
Grandma Celebrates Life in Family, Work, Church, and Service 9 months ago denarosko Thank you for reading and for your encouraging words Angela!
Remembering Grandma with Faith, Hope, & Love 10 months ago Angela B What a gift you have given us to share your Grandmothers gift of faith!
Remembering Grandma with Faith, Hope, & Love 10 months ago Powered by Disqus
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About I currently study Communication and Leadership at Gonzaga University. I graduated with a BA in English and Communication with emphases in Mass Media Studies and Creative Writing from the University of Washington. I want to wholly pursue my vocation (1 Tim. 4:14-16) to share creativity via writing, photography, and scholarship as a pathway to encourage people to heal and to grow amid loss. I want to collaborate with academic organizations to design innovative advanced degree programs for todays students, to partner with computer mediated communication (CMC) organizations to design healthcare communication systems that yield more ethical spaces, to write/publish books, and to teach writing, storytelling, ethics, communication theory, and organizational leadership to International and graduate students. I desire to love Jesus with my life and to live by a vocation. I am married to James. I eat my veggies and I <3 Tea! View my complete profile Creative Commons License Works by Dena Rosko, founder of Text and Pixels, are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License as denoted by this Creative Commons icon and link (click for more information): . Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://textandpixels.com/copyright.html. Attribute Rosko, D.M. [(PostYear, Month, Day)]. Text and Pixel Reflections. Retrieved [MonthName Day, Year], from http://www.textandpixelreflections.com Content (c) Dena Rosko. All rights reserved. Picture Window template. Powered by Blogger.
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Appendix F: Study Tables Table 1.1 Poem Theme Variants and Frequency Theme Variants Fear Fear (23), Afraid (4) Death Life Faith God Love Heal Hope Death (30), Die (19) All frequency for live, verb form, not noun Faith (27), Trust (0), Believe (5), Belief (0) as context for belief in Jesus and no longer fearing death God (69), Jesus (35), Holy Spirit (1) Love (74), Loving (6) Heal (7), Health (1) in About me
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Frequency 27 49 23 27 105 80 8 15
Table 1.2 Poem Metaphor Detail and Frequency Theme Detail Movement Historical reference, temporal, life perspective, call to live and Light Dark Nature chose the right path Faith reference to the sweet light of heaven Death reference to the grave and isolation from people and life Nature (1) as the nature of love; soil (8) as describing when I said goodbye to grandma at her grave and reframed death as seeing the land as living, natural, made by God, and so not fear some; land (12) as the land of the living; bouquet (11) and flowers (13) as Seasons Community expressing vocation and relationships with people and God Season (0), winter (1) as imagery in the winter rain in the context of Grandmas community work and service. Community (1), People (14), loved ones (1); community as serving
Frequency 3 4 4 45
1 16
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Table 1.3 Total Photographs Post Title Love as an Ethic of Care Grandma Adelines Life Celebration Service A Bouquet for Grandma & A Handful of Soil Grandma Adelines Viewing: Reflections Grandma Celebrates Life in Family, Work, Church, and Service Grandma and My Multnomah University Days Remembering Grandma with Faith, Hope, & Love Photographs Overall
Total 6 40 26 4 9 3 8 94
Table 1.4 Photograph Generic Detail and Frequency Genre Detail People/Portrait Love as an Ethic of Care (6) me with Grandma 13 and 25 December 2009 sitting with her, feeding her, reading to her; Grandma Adelines Life Celebration Service (22) people speaking and singing during the service and people interacting, sitting or speaking with, hugging and posing with each other, and ending with my parents hugging and smiling at the camera; A Bouquet for Grandma & A Handful of Soil (18) people speaking and singing during the service, standing around with each other, standing near or carrying the casket, and burying the casket; Grandma Celebrates Life in Family, Work, Church, and Service (5) of Grandma with Grandpa on their anniversary, wedding day, a family portrait, of Grandma smiling and holding the Easter basket she had made for my aunt, and a portrait I took of Grandma and Thanksgiving 2007, which we framed and displayed at her life celebration service; Grandma and My Multnomah University Days (3)
Frequency 62
Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH of Grandmas senior portrait, of her with her roommate, and of her alumni reunion in 1996, the year in which I was an undergraduate (she could not make that event due to illness and gave my roommate and I her tickets to go in her stead); Remembering Grandma with Faith, Hope, & Love (8) of Grandmas senior portrait, Grandmas wedding and anniversary portrait, does my husband and my wedding portrait with Grandma and our flower girl, of Grandma and I at the rehabilitation center, and my favorite portrait of Grandma, or her smiling through her front door. I printed the latter portrait on 4 x 6 paper and my parents passed the portrait out to guests as a favor at her Editorial life celebration service. Love as an Ethic of Care (6) that has been to these images of meat interacting with grandma during our last two visits before she died. The images show me feeding her, reading to her, laying in her bed, and sitting on her bed with my arm around her; Grandma Adelines Life Celebration Service (9) other my dad and pastor preaching, of people singing, and of people interacting at the reception; A Bouquet for Grandma & A Handful of Soil (16) of people carrying the casket, preaching, singing, and standing around, and burying Grandmas casket; Grandma Celebrates Life in Family, Work, Church, and Service (3) of Grandma singing with the choir, holding my aunts hand, and Details smiling at Christmas; Grandma Adelines Life Celebration Service (18) of flowers, food, even cake, photograph displays, diplomas and awards, the American flag,
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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH and a song sheet Of Grandmas Favorite Hymn, My God and I; A Bouquet for Grandma & A Handful of Soil (6) of the digital sign that listed the burial schedule of the day in 15 minute increments with Grandmas service at 1pm; musical instruments, the bouquet my spouse and I had made and the corsage my mom had made for my niece sitting atop the casket, my aunts headstone with flowers, the American flag, flowers, and the casket in the back of the car; Grandma Adelines Viewing: Reflections (4) flower standards with Beloved Grandma and Beloved Mother and bouquets at Grandmas viewing, one of which my husband and I brought, namely pink carnations with a little card Establishing with a note to Grandma. Love as an Ethic of Care (1) of my grandma and I sitting on her bed with my arm around her, taken from the back; A Bouquet for Grandma & A Handful of Soil (4) of the pallbearers taking Grandma postures casket to the graveside building, of people standing about the graveside building as framed through the window panes, and of Grandmas casket Action and bouquet in a hole in the ground. Love as an Ethic of Care (5) of Grandma eating, me feeding her, have me touching her and reading to her; A Bouquet for Grandma & A Handful of Soil (11) of the pallbearers unloading and loading the casket, gravediggers burying Grandmas casket, and of people singing or speaking, and so gesturing with their mouths or hands, and of the grave crew dumping soil into the open grave; Grandma Adelines Life Celebration Service (7) of people singing or speaking, and so gesturing
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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH with their mouths or hands; Grandma Celebrates Life in Family, Work, Church, and Service (3) of Grandma singing, laughing, and reading; and Remembering Grandma with Faith, Hope, & Love (2) of Grandma and I hugging each other laughing and of her amid hello smiling Landscape through her door. A Bouquet for Grandma & A Handful of Soil (2) of the cemetery digital sign framed left in the expensive yard with a backdrop of fir trees and of the perjury silhouetted by the blue sky and brief appearance of the Artistic sun. (2) Pastor holding grandmas Bible and pull them. I framed this image to overemphasize his hands and the objects he held. The other artistic image shows grandmas letter award from Sprague high school, the framing of which gives the impression that the papers together feather; (1) the creative told with the guitar case and floral bouquet, a contrast between the event and the happy feel of saying a guitar case covered with stickers at a musical event.
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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Appendix G: Mentor Agreement
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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Authors Note To learn more about healing in loss via faith, remembrance, and the digital and
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performance arts, please visit The Living Memorial at http://thelivingmemorial.org. To access this blogs text, visit http://www.textandpixelreflections.com/search/label/Remembrance.

Dena Rosko - Master's Thesis

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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH

ComL 680, Section A3 Professor Nobuya Inagaki December 17, 2010

Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Table of Contents

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Gonzaga University Master of Arts Program in Communication and Leadership Studies

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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH II: LITERATURE REVIEW

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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Fear of Death

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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Research Assumptions

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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Autoethnographic Imperatives

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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Dialoging We

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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Analysis Framework

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Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH IV: THE STUDY Introduction

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I thank God for answering my prayers. How poignant to explore

God has made us His children so we can call out to him.

Running head: EXPLORING FEAR OF DEATH Whole, Glorified.