How often do you think of your loved ones dying? Are you grieving right now? Do you feel like the world around you sees your mourning?
Here, in a personal essay on what death has come to mean to me, I Karolina Rusak pick up a bundle of my memories regarding passings in my family and for the first time in my life criticize what mourning has become in 21st century Europe. Remnants of traditions, in some places more celebrated than others, are getting overshadowed by a youth orientation and a growing fear of death coming from lack of understanding and education. Over the last 100 years the contact with a deceased human body has been completely lost under the fall pretense of care and sanitation, while the funerary business branch has expanded under the steady growth of capitalism.
Looking at myself, and my experiences, I think of the time between the death and burial: my fear, anger and anxiety. I cannot help but wonder, would they be here if I had mourned as my ancestors did? How has this gradual disappearance of death related rites in the contemporary Europe, in that Poland, affected our ability to process grief and maintain meaningful connections with the deceased?
Here you can find the full 2024 Interactive/Media/Design Bachelor thesis: