El lumbalú y las mujeres tejedoras de lo espiritual y comunitario / O lumbalú e as mulheres tecelantes do espiritual e comunitário / The lumbalú and the weaving women of the spiritual and community

Resumen Este artículo, de naturaleza teórica, aborda el Lumbalú, una práctica fúnebre de matriz africana en San Basilio de Palenque (Colombia). Se trata de una forma de grupalidad curadora, como potencial terapéutico con el que cuentan algunas comunidades para contener la experiencia emocional; ámbito de estudio en el que se enmarca el presente artículo. El Lumbalú es expresión de la resistencia afrodiaspórica, que conecta con lo sagrado y donde las mujeres son las hiladoras del tejido espiritual y comunitario. Invitamos a las disciplinas psicológicas y a las Ciencias Sociales y Humanas a la apertura epistemológica y descolonial hacia otras formas comunitarias de comprensión de la muerte, en contextos de guerra, violencia política, neoliberalismo y racismo, en Améfrica.

Resumo Este artigo, de natureza teórica, é sobre Lumbalú, uma prática funerária da matriz africana em San Basilio de Palenque (Colômbia). É uma forma de grupalidade curadora, como potencial terapêutico que algumas comunidades têm para conter a experiência emocional; campo de estudo em que este artigo está enquadrado. O Lumbalú é expressão da resistência afrodiaspórica, que se conecta com o sagrado e na qual as mulheres são quem fiam o tecido espiritual e comunitário. Convidamos as disciplinas psicológicas e as Ciências Sociais e Humanas à abertura epistemológica e descolonial em direção a outras formas comunitárias de compreensão da morte, em contextos de guerra, violência política, neoliberalismo e racismo, na Améfrica.

Abstract This article, of a theoretical nature, is about Lumbalú, a funerary practice of African matrix in San Basilio de Palenque (Colombia). It is a form of Curator grupality, as a therapeutic potential that some communities have to contain emotional experience; scope of study in which this article is framed. The Lumbalú is an expression of afro-diasporic resistance, which connects with the sacred and where women are the spinners of the spiritual and community fabric. We invite the psychological disciplines and the Social and Human Sciences to epistemological and decolonial opening towards other community forms of understanding death, in contexts of war, political violence, neoliberalism and racism, in Amefrica.

'Eat coffee candy and die': sex, death and Huli funerals.

BACKGROUND: Sex and death have traditionally been linked in Huli culture in the Southern Highlands in Papua New Guinea. Huli regarded that close contact with women could result in men becoming sick or dying. However, there has been rapid social and economic development in the area and Huli traditions are changing. At the same time, HIV prevalence is rising. METHODS: Twenty-five semistructured in-depth interviews were carried out with key informants during a study on HIV risk in the Southern Highlands. Interviews were conducted mostly in Tok Pisin. Interviews were transcribed and the data were analysed though thematic coding. RESULTS: Huli people use 'eating coffee candy' as a metaphor for engaging in sex at funerals. This is very new and against traditional values, where women attended funerals and men only built the coffins and buried the body. Nowadays, sex occurs at funerals. This change has disturbed older people because it has not only changed the customary meaning of the funeral space, but it has also encouraged the spread of HIV. Huli use the fatalistic expression 'Eat coffee candy and die,' to refer to funerals as a space of HIV risk. CONCLUSION: Huli community and church leaders, and health workers are attempting to deal with the situation by not allowing men to stay at the funeral site overnight, burying the dead on the same day they die and using customary village law to charge men caught having sex at a funeral. However, traditional beliefs and rapid social change in the context of an HIV epidemic need to be taken into account.

The good funeral: toward an understanding of funeral participation and satisfaction.

This study posits a model of funeral satisfaction in which religiosity predicts general funeral attitudes, which predict levels and types of funeral participation, mediating the relationship between attitudes and satisfaction in a particular bereavement context. Over a thousand respondents rated their attitudes toward funerals in general and evaluated the most recent funeral they had actually attended. The resulting model indicated that religiosity and favorable attitudes, when enacted through participation and involvement, tend to predict funeral satisfaction, in combination with favorable comparisons, and when the deceased was close and the death unexpected or tragic. Evaluations of the funeral, in turn, independently influence a person's general attitudes about funerals. Theoretical and practical implications for understanding funerals and bereavement are explored.

Perinatal grief in Latino parents.

Extensive research exists that describes the meaning of perinatal loss to some parents, but the experience of loss from the perspective of Latino parents is not clearly understood. Additionally, current perinatal bereavement practices used often to facilitate memory making for parents (such as viewing or holding the baby, taking photographs, or collecting mementos) are based on research done primarily with non-Latino families. Are these common practices appropriate for this population? Because there is a paucity of research on this topic, this article describes what has been written over the past 30 years on the topic of grief and perinatal loss in Latino culture.

Muscogee Creek spirituality and meaning of death.

This qualitative, collective case study involves interviews with 27 members of the Muscogee Creek Tribe to explore spirituality as related to death and bereavement. Results yielded that Creeks are generally open to the existence of inexplicable supernatural events. Creek spirituality encompasses awareness of spiritual beings, both good and bad. Participants believed that spirits exist alongside people and can send and receive messages from people to guide and inform them. Creeks have ongoing, though not constant, relationships with loved ones and others who have died. Spiritual attunement can occur at every point in the life cycle but seems to be especially astute in children and animals. Results are discussed in terms of continuing bonds and meaning making perspectives.

Living with grief following removal of infant life support: parents' perspectives.

Research findings reported in the literature about making life and death decisions for critically ill infants in the neonatal ICU focus primarily on the experiences of health care providers and the ethical dilemmas surrounding these decisions. Fewer studies focus on parents' experiences in making decisions about discontinuing life support for their infant, and even fewer address what life is like for parents following the deaths of their infants. This article expands on the concepts identified by parents as factors in their decision making and on the facilitators and barriers parents faced, and continue to face, in their grieving process.

Bereaved parents' experiences of the use of 'cold bedrooms' following the death of their child.

INTRODUCTION: Children's hospices have the facilities to enable a child to remain at the hospice following their death until the time of the funeral if desired by the family. The use of cold bedrooms (or beds) to reduce the rate of the body's physical deterioration enables the family to have unrestricted access and close proximity to the child throughout the 24-hour period. AIM: To explore how bereaved families experience the child remaining in a cold bedroom following the child's death in the period January 2002-March 2005. OBJECTIVE: To survey all the families whose child had been cared for in a cold bedroom in one children's hospice in South-East England (n=34). METHOD: A retrospective cross-sectional survey using a postal questionnaire was conducted. Questionnaires were sent to the 31 bereaved families who were considered eligible for participation. RESPONSE: Sixteen completed questionnaires were returned (51.6%); four families declined participation (12.9%); eleven families did not reply (35.5%). RESULTS: The experiences of sixteen families were obtained. The families expressed that they found the experience physically, practically and emotionally supportive, as they were able to continue to act as the child's parents, to choose and control how their child's care occurred, to say their farewells at their own pace and to plan the funeral of their choice. These results must be interpreted with the clear recognition that the experiences of 48.4% of the sample are unknown. Reasons for non-participation were explored. CONCLUSION: The study has methodological limitations but presents an investigation into the experiences of parents whose child has been cared for in a cold bedroom. These families all described the experience positively.

Personal reflections of funeral rituals and spirituality in a Kentucky African American family.

This article introduces the authors' experiences and observations as grief/bereavement counselors participating in urban and rural funerals. A vignette illustrates the use of rituals and spirituality of one African American family, living in a rural area of Kentucky, and their efforts to cope with their own grief and loss of a loved one. The article describes why it is important for professional practitioners to have awareness about a range of diverse funeral events and traditions that can take place in the African American community. Funeral practices and customs are discussed as well as suggestions for culturally competent practice in working with those who have experienced loss and grief.

Death the great leveller? Towards a transcultural spirituality of dying and bereavement.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: This paper aims to provide a critical engagement with the subject of transcultural spirituality and nursing practice in the context of dying and bereavement. BACKGROUND: There has been considerable interest in the subject of spirituality over the past decade, and a particular association between the study of death and the study of spirituality. The nursing literature has been at the forefront of these developments amongst health and social care professionals. Some of this literature has begun to address the issues raised for culturally competent practice and the significance of patients' belief systems in the diverse cultural contexts with which nurses must engage in contemporary health care. However, the author argues that understanding of the range of contemporary spiritualities and transcultural practice is at an early stage. METHODS: Transcultural spirituality is explored through a critical review of the literature, including the author's own published research on spiritual and philosophical issues in death, dying and bereavement. CONCLUSION: The conclusion is drawn that some common themes and approaches can be found which offer a framework to guide nursing practice with the individual patient and family. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: In the absence of guidance, nurses struggle with implementing spiritual care in the fluid and complex context of contemporary spiritualities and frequently resort to broad categorizations. This paper opens up a way of connecting with the unique spiritual position of each patient.

Evidence for healing interventions with perinatal bereavement.

The purpose of this article is to explore the concept of perinatal grief and evidence-based healing interventions for it. The loss of a pregnancy or death of an infant causes profound grief, yet society has long minimized or ignored this grief, which is among the most painful of bereavement experiences. Throughout the last century, research on grief and the special needs of bereaved parents has changed the context of professional intervention from protective to supportive. The central focus of bereavement interventions is to assist families in healing by helping them make meaning of their losses. The use of symbols, spirituality, and rituals has been shown to help bring meaning. Research has shown that memories are key to healing, and that gender, age, and relationships bring different grief expressions and experiences. While children's understanding of loss and grief differs with developmental age, they should also be given the opportunity to participate in grief rituals and practices. Professionals who care for bereaved parents have a unique opportunity to offer support by validating their grief, facilitating rituals, providing mementos, and letting the bereaved tell their stories. While no intervention can bring back their beloved children, appropriate intervention can promote healing.

The use of pastoral and spiritual support in bereavement care.

For many people, the death of a loved one can result in feelings of shock, numbness or denial, even though they may have been expecting it for some time. Pastoral and spiritual care is a vital part of an authentic, holistic health care service. Nurses need to be aware of the needs of relatives and friends of the deceased and understand their role in practical matters such as death certificates, cremation forms and last offices.

An integrative approach to mortuary analysis: social and symbolic dimensions of Chumash burial practices.

Although most archaeologists recognize that valuable information about the social lives of ancient people can be obtained through the study of burial practices, it is clear that the symbolic nature of burial rituals makes interpreting their social significance a hazardous enterprise. These analytical difficulties can be greatly reduced using a research strategy that draws upon the strengths of a broad range of conceptually and methodologically independent data sources. We illustrate this approach by using archaeological data from cemeteries at Malibu, California, to explore an issue over which researchers are sharply divided: when did the simple chiefdoms of the Chumash Indians first appear in the Santa Barbara Channel area? First we establish the social correlates of Chumash burial practices through the comparison of historic-period cemetery data, ethnohistoric records, and ethnographic accounts. The resulting understanding of mortuary symbolism is then used to generate hypotheses about the social significance of prehistoric-period Malibu burial patterns. Finally, bioarchaeological data on genetic relationships, health status, and activity are used to independently test artifact-based hypotheses about prehistoric Chumash social organization. Together, these independent data sources constitute strong evidence for the existence of a ranked society with a hereditary elite during the late Middle period in the Santa Barbara Channel area.

Grief and burial in the American Southwest: the role of evolutionary theory in the interpretation of mortuary remains.

Evolutionary theory, in consort with Marxism and processualism, provides new insights into the interpretation of grave-good variation. Processual interpretations of burial sites in the American Southwest cite age, sex, or social rank as the main determinants of burial-good variation. Marxist theorists suggest that mortuary ritual mediates social tension between an egalitarian mindset and an existing social inequality. Evolutionary theory provides a supplementary explanatory framework. Recent studies guided by kin-selection theory suggest that humans grieve more for individuals of high reproductive value and genetic relatedness. Ethnographic examples also show that individuals mourn more intensively and, thus, place more social emphasis on burials of individuals of highest reproductive value (young adults). Analysis of grave goods from La Ciudad, a Hohokam site in the American Southwest, supports the hypothesis that labor value, reproductive value, and grief contributed to grave-good differentiation. At La Ciudad, individuals between the ages of 10 and 20 possessed more and higher-quality grave goods on average than any other age group. Grief at the loss of a young adult of high reproductive and labor value may facilitate explanation of mortuary variation at La Ciudad, as well as other sites in the greater Southwest and beyond.