MOURNING DENIED

by Ginevra Lamberti

Every morning we wake up and know that our day will be marked by a series of unavoidable commitments and small rituals. We don’t think about it because we are not allowed to think about it, but living in a prison, together with the natural passage of time, blurs the concepts of past, present, future and, with them, that of ritual. It is therefore appropriate to ask ourselves what it means to inhabit an eternal present that is devalued and emptied of the contents that make up a society. What happens, in particular, when death and mourning break into this eternal present.

Even those who have never been through prison have seen it to a minimal extent. With the pandemic and the lockdown we have experienced the loss of loved ones and relatives together with the forced stay within the walls of our homes and the abrupt interruption of the ritual. People found themselves separated first from the sick and then from their bodies. The funeral rite, among the many activities too risky to be carried out as usual, was first prohibited and then severely limited.

Safeguarding has prevented the closeness of loved ones in dying and death, undermined the ceremonies that mark the timeline and define living in society. Only time will tell what the psychological consequences will be in the individual, family and collective dimension. The certainty remains that in the public debate the great absentee continues to be the prison population, subjected to the same traumas inserted in a more complex context, forgotten in its right to mourning since well before the Coronavirus reminded us of the importance of the funeral rite.

In an economic West where – despite the pandemic years and the advance of wars and bloody conflicts – the general denial of mortality still rages, it is almost not surprising that the topic of mourning experienced from within the prison institution is marginalized. However, the almost total absence of research and scientific literature on the subject should be surprising. With the exception of a few reports, it seems that no one has so far explored the topic of what happens when an inmate loses an external loved one due to a death. Since this research base is lacking – or rather non-existent – ​​we will have to proceed with a sort of reverse path, that is, consider why the processing of mourning through closeness, presence, exchange and ritual is of enormous importance for an individual deprived of their freedom, and inserted into a path that is supposed to be one of recovery and/or reintegration.

An experiment that can be attempted in everyday life is to ask the question: for whom do we do what we do in moments of crisis? For whom do we endure the harshness of life?

The most contemporary answer will be that we do it only and exclusively for ourselves, for individual development and well-being. A more careful examination, however, will lead us to conclude that beyond the self there is also the other. Often our margin for improvement will also be based on the actions we take to be present, useful, functional and – why not? – worthy of admiration for our loved ones.

People who live in prison often endure for who is outside, who is waiting for a meeting during visits, or the return. Whether they are biological or elected family members, partners or close friends, it does not matter; these can embody goals to strive for and motivations to rely on to face everyday life.

Mourning is the path through which we process a loss. Its importance lies in the fact that it allows us to start living again despite the pain. It allows us to react in a way that does not crystallize in traumatic, pathological or disabling forms. This does not mean denying the suffering or erasing the memory, but rather facing one and giving a place to the other. It can be a long and difficult path during which a wide range of feelings will be experienced. In alternating phases, one will experience anger, emptiness, denial, depression, difficulty concentrating, detachment from reality, desire to cover everything up with forms of hyper-productivity.

Let us now imagine living this experience from a prison. Our loved one has passed away, a piece of that constellation that represents the outside world, towards which we tend and which keeps us going, no longer exists. In the best of cases we saw them and greeted them, perhaps expressing our affection, during a visit in relatively recent times. Also in the best of cases, communications with the outside and with the other loved ones involved were adequate, the bureaucratic times coincided with those of the death and, finally, we managed to attend the funeral ceremony. In the worst of cases, none of this happened and the picture will be very different: communications may have been difficult, the timing of the bureaucracy obstructive, permission to attend the rite may have been denied or arrived too late. In the period following these events, one may then desire solitude. One may want to hear often, or at specific and sudden moments, the voices of the mourners who share the same loss. You might want to participate with other loved ones in sorting through the deceased’s belongings, and perhaps have something of theirs with you. You might find yourself in a state of profound numbness. You might need targeted psychotherapy. All of this, inside a prison, will prove complex or impossible.

Now consider that there is also the so-called anticipatory mourning, which is experienced when you receive notice that a loved one is irreversibly ill. An illness can be longer or shorter. At the end of it, there are the last days and hours of the dying person’s life. Those moments are of crucial importance and, in the best of cases, see the dying person in contact with their closest loved ones. In this context, it is clear how being close to a seriously ill relative can help define the individual also in terms of their usefulness within the social network.

The concept of anticipatory mourning experienced by the prisoner contains at least three key issues:

– If experienced without the possibility of both visits outside and frequent communication, it will generate frustration, anguish, guilt and a sense of inadequacy.

– Closeness in dying is important because it allows the imprisoned person to reclaim a family role and therefore social position.

– Closeness in dying is important because it allows those who are imprisoned and those who are dying to have human contact that reassures the dying person, lays the foundation for the correct process of processing by those who remain and, ultimately, should be considered a fundamental right.

The death of a loved one corresponds to a tear in the external social network and its failure to process it can cause wounds that are difficult to repair. In addition to the disconnection from the usual passage of time, it represents not only a risk for the acceptance of the loss, but also for the successful re-entry into a society that provides social structures defined by rules and boundaries that one must know how to manage. Remembering how the processing of death and dying also concerns the prison population, always hidden from the eyes of the world, is a question of civic value that we should no longer allow ourselves to ignore.

Ginevra Lamberti was born in 1985 and lives between Rome and Vittorio Veneto. After La domanda più che altro, published in 2015 by Nottetempo, she published with Marsilio Perché comincio dalla fine (2019, Mondello Prize 2020), Tutti dormono nella valle (2022), Il pozzo vale più del tempo (2024). Her novels and short stories have been translated in Germany, China, France, the United Kingdom, Holland and Brazil. She is a columnist for the newspaper Domani.