Confronting the Complexity of Loss

experience of telling others and the benefits of that practice. The question of how these
differing views and attitudes ought to be accommodated is discussed in the concluding
part of this study.
3.4 Memorialising
Participants were invited to reflect on the importance of memorialising past events. Such
memorialising could take various forms including public monuments, special dates set
aside for the purpose of remembrance, and private acts of memorialising, such as
almsgiving. The participants were generally divided on the issue. Some were of the view
that memorialising was important—even indispensible, while others stated that closure
depended on forgetting their loss. This dichotomy is captured vividly in the words of
Richard Holmes:
There is a goddess of Memory, Mnemosyne; but none of Forgetting. Yet there
should be, as they are twin sisters, twin powers, and walk on either side of us,
disputing for sovereignty over us and who we are, all the way until death. 105
Three attitudes to memorialising were evident from the participants’ responses. First,
certain participants were hesitant to acknowledge a need for or any benefit in
memorialising their loss. One participant who lost a brother during the JVP insurrection
stated that remembering his brother was too painful and that he saw no point in
memorialising. Similarly, other participants found the act of memorialising pointless, as
their lost family members ‘would not be returned to them’.
Second, certain participants acknowledged the ‘inevitability’ of commemoration. These
participants claimed that they possessed an emotional desire to memorialise their loss
even though they saw no rational basis for it. One participant who lost her husband
during an LTTE raid on a border village stated: ‘I want to forget my experiences, but
forgetting is hard. I can only forget those bitter experiences if my husband comes back.’
Another participant whose husband disappeared after surrendering to the army in 2009
observed: ‘how could I forget? Even if someone claims that they are trying to forget, it is
a lie. If my husband comes back, then I may be able to forget it. If more and more sorrow
keeps piling up, then it is hard to forget.’
Finally, certain participants took up the position that memorialising was necessary both
for their personal benefit and for the benefit of others who have endured similar loss.
Many of these participants in fact related memorialisation to the act of telling others,
which was discussed in the previous section. Additionally, they spoke of events and
memorials that might facilitate collective remembrance. One participant from
Mahawilachchiya stated: ‘I do not think that we can forget such things because of the
pain we suffered. I think that it is not good to forget them.’ Another participant whose
son went missing during the JVP insurrection argued that memorialising was essential
because ‘we must tell our children and the future generations about the damage that was
105 Richard Holmes, ‘A Meander through Memory and Forgetting’, in Harriet Harvey Wood & A. S. Byatt
(eds.), Memory: An Anthology (2008).
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