In Loving Memory...

Image: We English

I watched a really interesting programme last night on BBC Two about contemporary ways of dealing with the grief of losing a loved one. ‘In Loving Memory’ examined how, as an increasingly secular country, we are moving away from the traditional setting of the church and graveyard as the locus of our grief and mourning to more individual, and often public, displays of loss. The programme features a myriad of interviewees and the ways in which they have coped with the loss of someone close – from roadside memorials to bedroom shrines and Facebook groups to memorial tattoos. An extremely emotive documentary that probes the complex emotions and needs of those who are left behind, as well as the inevitable friction caused when private grief spills into the public domain as with the case of roadside tributes, I highly recommend catching this on iPlayer if you can.