Object Repertoires That Evoke Memories For Mothers And Fathers Who Have Lost Children. Tenerife. Spain

Abstract

This qualitative study, with a phenomenological focus, explores the use of objects that evoke memories held by mothers and fathers mourning the death of their children. The objects that facilitate a closeness to the children who are no longer there. In this analysis of these objects, we pay particular attention to understanding their description and to the meaning that they have for mothers and fathers, revealing the existence of a repertoire of objects that connects parents with mourning through a daily spatial link, which is, on occasion, a relationship charged with creative and dynamic meaning. As such, these objects, together with physical spaces, are preserved or created by parents who incorporate them into their lives, defining them as spaces of existence, presence or absence, making them shared, liveable places. The continuity of living in the spaces that a loved one once occupied becomes an experience of reinhabiting, of reconstructing the environment. An experience of newly adopting a space and being able to do things there that define and determine it.