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Living with the Aftermath: Trauma, Nostalgia and Grief in Post-War Australia
This very moving book, based on oral testimonies, focuses on the shifting patterns of mourning and grief in the experiences of Australian women who lost their husbands during the Second World War and the wars in Korea and Vietnam.
250 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2001
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September 5, 2014
I read this as part of my research for the book I am currently writing about a military accident which killed 26 men in 1945. The focus is more on the aftermath of the tragedy. Damousi's book fitted neatly, was illuminating and moving. At times, I wondered whether another editing hand might have tightened the text up by reducing the repetition, but it is an academic treatise above all.
Damousi relates and reflects upon the experiences of widows of servicemen who died in the Second World War, in Korea and in Vietnam, and after those conflicts. Despite the academic nature of the project, Damousi does convey the depth and diversity of the losses suffered by our war widows. Her conclusions resonate closely with the experiences narrated in my own project.
Firstly, with regard to grief, we have changed. Sometime in the seventies-eighties-nineties, the balance shifted towards an understanding that a full expression of grief is necessary for a person to be able to move on towards a full life. As a clear example, she points to the Port Arthur massacre/tragedy, the quality of the reportage and the offered support of counseling for anyone caught up in it. Attempts to ignore grief only stifle it; I would add that silence and repression postpone and wreak their own havoc in the interim. Official gaps in our History, episodes forgotten, have the same effect: what is silenced does not disappear but will return at some point, with interest.
Secondly, she suggests that the act of commemoration serves a number of important purposes for those personally affected. It creates a sense of belonging, a sense of community around the tragedy, and it offers a connection with the past.
Finally for me, she offers some insight into the question of why some deaths and events seem to continue with undiminished intensity for those involved:
"traumatic events are traumatic because they are re-experienced (not just remembered) repeatedly and well after the actual time of the event.' (p115)
What is triggered afterward is not the reconstruction of the event (memory) but the complete experience. The social expectation of the war years and afterward was to bury the past, forget it, get on with life. Getting on with a full life is precisely what burying the past will prevent. Sooner or later it will rear its head made uglier in the darkness.
I have often wondered why some deaths leave such ragged holes in the lives of the grieving. Damousi's book has helped me understand a little more of the answer. For that, I thank her.
Damousi relates and reflects upon the experiences of widows of servicemen who died in the Second World War, in Korea and in Vietnam, and after those conflicts. Despite the academic nature of the project, Damousi does convey the depth and diversity of the losses suffered by our war widows. Her conclusions resonate closely with the experiences narrated in my own project.
Firstly, with regard to grief, we have changed. Sometime in the seventies-eighties-nineties, the balance shifted towards an understanding that a full expression of grief is necessary for a person to be able to move on towards a full life. As a clear example, she points to the Port Arthur massacre/tragedy, the quality of the reportage and the offered support of counseling for anyone caught up in it. Attempts to ignore grief only stifle it; I would add that silence and repression postpone and wreak their own havoc in the interim. Official gaps in our History, episodes forgotten, have the same effect: what is silenced does not disappear but will return at some point, with interest.
Secondly, she suggests that the act of commemoration serves a number of important purposes for those personally affected. It creates a sense of belonging, a sense of community around the tragedy, and it offers a connection with the past.
Finally for me, she offers some insight into the question of why some deaths and events seem to continue with undiminished intensity for those involved:
"traumatic events are traumatic because they are re-experienced (not just remembered) repeatedly and well after the actual time of the event.' (p115)
What is triggered afterward is not the reconstruction of the event (memory) but the complete experience. The social expectation of the war years and afterward was to bury the past, forget it, get on with life. Getting on with a full life is precisely what burying the past will prevent. Sooner or later it will rear its head made uglier in the darkness.
I have often wondered why some deaths leave such ragged holes in the lives of the grieving. Damousi's book has helped me understand a little more of the answer. For that, I thank her.
Displaying 1 of 1 review