Entering the Psychology of Communication classroom during those first couple of weeks was daunting. I was introduced to ideas that were in direct violation of everything I'd grown up believing, and found it difficult to leave behind the modern discourse I had become so used to. I was suddenly being challenged to go beyond the taken-for-granted assumptions about the world we live in and to acknowledge that many realities exist and are constructed and reconstructed through our interactions with others. It was especially demanding when it came to arguments regarding realities that cannot be denied and those that should not be denied. Simply put, the “death and furniture” dispute, which opponents of social constructionism often bring up as a way of limiting that knowledge which can be socially constructed. In this argument, death and furniture stand as symbols of doubt to relativist beliefs. Antagonists of the theory use these examples to make the case that the physical world and distressing events, such as death, cannot be disputed nor are there multiple ways of talking about them.
In order to better illustrate one way in which the social constructionist approach propositions you to see things differently, I would like to share a personal story which looks at one of these challenging and difficult issues, that being of death. As mentioned, opponents of social constructionism oftentimes use this subject in order to “prove” how wrong the ideas behind this theory are. Keep in mind that, before embarking on the exploration of social constructionist thought, I had my doubts as to how helpful this philosophy could be in terms of my personal life. However, studying social constructionism has enabled me to take a step back and see the abundance of possibilities that exist when one allows themselves to not be limited by prevailing discourses, and more specifically for me, when it came to the topic of death. I encourage my readers to let go for a moment and do the same.
My freshman year of college I entered the University of New Hampshire eager to experience new things, meet interesting people, and to set goals for my future. A month after being emerged into this chapter of my life, I was confronted with the devastating news that my Mother had been diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. After a three yearlong battle with this horrible disease, she passed away the summer before my senior year and life, as I knew it, was never the same. I immediately began searching for someone or something to blame, her doctors, the medicine, God. I made myself believe that nothing I would do in life would ever matter since she would not be there to share in it with me.
It was heartbreaking to see how quickly my Mom’s life was made a thing of the past by my friends and family alike. In attempts to comfort me, people would say, “She loved you so much, Jill” and they would talk about what an incredible woman she “was.” It was difficult for me to not fall into a similar pattern, as I had grown accustomed to a world where death is talked about in a way that makes the relationship shared with that person a thing of the past. I sat grief stricken in church on the day of her funeral as those who spoke in her memory talked of how she “had been loved by so many” and “was an inspiration to everyone who knew her.” Listening to the way people engaged in conversation about my Mom, it felt as if she were being taken away from me all over again, only this time on a new level. It seemed that I was being told that my connection to her was now just a thing of the past.
Going into my senior year at UNH, just two and a half months after losing my Mom, and having been shown concern from family members about bottling up my feelings following her death, I decided it might be helpful to sit down with a counselor. After just two sessions of being told how important it was to my “grief process” to acknowledge that my Mom being gone was a reality I had to come to terms with in order to heal, I made the decision that this sort of counseling was not for me. However, it wasn’t until discussing this whole process from a social constructionist point of view that I was able to truly grasp why these sessions had failed me. It was suddenly clear to me that I was not comfortable with giving in to the traditional discourse in the sphere of death and mourning that invites people to "let go" and "move on" from the memories of deceased loved ones. I was unwilling to accept that because my Mom was no longer physically present in my life that the ties I have to her would be severed from then on.
This was the point at which I began “re-membering” my best friend, my Mom, not through engaging in stories of “farewell,” but instead by taking a narrative approach that preserved my connection to her. Once I had allowed myself to see that our relationship could be made part of my future, through recognizing the power of storytelling as a means of going beyond the physical world, I saw that our bond had not been broken, rather it had been changed.
Looking now at the sympathy cards that had flooded my home in the days following the loss of my Mom, I am able to recognize the “dis-membering” language that had tried to assure me that “time heals all wounds.” Reading those words had actually made me feel worse, as my heart reminded me that I wasn’t looking for time to relinquish the pain I was feeling. Had I received a card that instead reminded me of a special time that had been shared with my Mom, I would have felt much more at peace.
Being introduced to the social constructionist approach allowed me to finally do just that. I was able to reject the assumption that people should complete a process of “saying goodbye” in order to come to terms with the “reality” of the situation, and to instead take time to remember. From this perspective, the sorrow I was feeling was no longer something I felt the need to work through or “get over,” rather I allowed my Mother’s life and the memories of times we had shared to become my daily source of strength.
By approaching the subject of death from a social constructionist standpoint, one acknowledges the fact that while death is a biological event, the ways in which we choose to make sense of it are shaped by the social discourses of the world we live in. For those who have ever lost a loved one, I am sure you are familiar with the common dialogue that normally accompanies a time of such sorrow. For me, by stepping outside of this dominant discourse, I was able to recognize that “moving on in life” was not how I wanted to respond to my Mom’s passing, nor was it how I had to. I refused to leave her behind and instead choose to look back to those final days that I spent with her. In doing so, I've been able to reconstruct our last moments together and recognize their significance to my future.
During her last few days with us, as she lay in her bed, I sat by her side and read a letter I had written in which I promised that “every song I would sing, I would sing for her” and that she “would be with me in all I had left to do.” Although she had been physically and verbally unresponsive to my words, which at the time made the moment seem meaningless, I now look back and see that time as being of utmost importance in the building of our future relationship.
Last Christmas, my best friend surprised me with an early gift that stood as a tribute to all of mine and my Mom’s favorite things about the holiday season. That wonderful gift, and having my friend talk about my Mom in a way that made her very much a part my present (and future) Christmases, stood as another reminder of the way in which my connection to her will never be lost. Now, thinking back to that first counseling session when I had been posed with the question of, “How were you and your Mom able to say goodbye?,” I wish I had been able to respond, we didn’t, she is still with me. Simply put, “A relationship does not die when a person dies.”
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