Hadley Feingold

“Meant to Be Held, but Why?” is an exploration of personal ritual through a set of tools to help the user process grief. Many cultures do not sufficiently validate or ritualize the grief caused by ambiguous loss, which is loss not associated with a clear death (e.g., dementia, divorce, chronic illness). I propose an alternative memorialization technique. Human beings have created death rituals since the dawn of civilization. We hold funerals, scatter ashes, write eulogies, and practice countless religious rites. What ceremony do we have when a loved one is unrecognizable due to dementia? We are meant to hold this grief, but why? The tools (a hand plane, stamps with phrases and symbols, and brushes) provide strength and beauty in the act of inscribing and marking sites in sand, a forever-changing, in-between place at the intersection of land and sea. As the tide rises or the wind blows, there will be no trace of the event except in the memory of the ritual performer.