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		News Release: Remembering and mourning through objects 26/2/04 038/04 The death of her father and birth of her first child led an academic at The University of New England to conduct an Australian-first study into objects of the dead. Dr Margaret Gibson, a lecturer in Social Sciences, is now writing a book on her findings, which, she says, tackles life's last taboo: Death. "Everyone, at some stage in their life, must deal with death. My study looks at the things people leave behind in this life, the stories, meaning and memories embedded in those objects," Dr Gibson said. For her academic tome, Dr Gibson set about interviewing a total of 30 people - overwhelmingly women - from across New South Wales, with each interview taking up to two hours. She concluded that it was intimate objects, from pipes and old jumpers, to badges and toys, that were particularly important in the grieving process partly because they provide a link with the absent body of the deceased . Said Dr Gibson: "Our identity is determined very much through our material culture. Many people fail to realise it is the objects that invariably survive us." Photographs, she said, held a different class of their own and she volunteered a personal story about a special family photograph. "My father was dying while I was pregnant with my first child. I had an ultrasound image of my son while still pregnant and I decided to have a photograph taken of me holding the ultrasound image of my son, with my father. "It is a photograph which has such special meaning to me, since my father and my son never met. In this photograph, my father is with my son Joshua for the first and last time, in the only way that is possible. They were in the same photograph at completely different stages in life—one is on the cusp of birth, the other, the cusp of death. It is a very moving image".   Later, she went to her parents' home and saw the brown recliner chair in which her father always sat. "It was Dad's chair, it was in the TV room and it held a special meaning, since no one sat in that chair when Dad was there. I realised then the chair was going to survive my father and would be a reminder of his absence but also a reminder that he was once here, living and breathing and with us." These experiences led Dr Gibson to start thinking about the objects which are left behind when people die. "Objects such as the chairs are imprinted with the loved person's body and they have an embedded history. After the person dies such things are used to get close to and mourn the loved one." One woman she interviewed found solace in an old jumper which her deceased husband used to wear, revelling in its smell and link to her partner. Interestingly, objects are also used to help someone in their bereavement. Dr Gibson interviewed a man who felt that he never properly grieved his father's death at the time. It was 16 years after his father's death that the man discovered in a conversation with his sister, that his father had given her a very object before his died—a badge. In the interview the man said, "I didn't mind her having it but the absence of any other symbol of our relationship really hurt, very deeply and enabled me to reconnect with all the grief I'd been experiencing when he was dying in hospital." Dr Gibson co-ordinates a recently-formed group of academics whose research relates to death in our culture. Later in the year, the group is holding a national conference at UNE where academics working in the field of death studies will discuss a range of topics and social issues. Media contact: Dr Margaret Gibson, (02) 6773 2777, or Lydia Roberts, Public Relations, UNE (02) 6773 2779.

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