No abstract

When children lose a parent during childhood this offers emotional and life changing moments. It is important for them to be included in the death ritual and to be recognized as grievers alongside adults. Recent research has shown that children themselves consider it relevant to be part of the 'communitas' of grievers and do not like to be set aside because they are considered to be too young to participate. In this case study, I describe how a Dutch mother encouraged her three children, aged 12, 9 and 6, to participate in the death rituals of their father. She asked a funeral photographer to document the rituals. In that way, later on in their life, the children would have a visual report of the time of his death in addition to their childhood memories. The objective of my case study research was first, to explore in detail hów children are able to participate in death rituals in a carefully contemplated manner and in accordance with their age and wishes, and second, to examine the relevance of funeral photographs to them in later years. The funeral photographs will be presented as a visual essay of how and when the children took part in the rituals and which ritual objects, such as the coffin and the grave, but also letters, poems and drawings were important in creating an ongoing bond with their deceased father. The conclusion of this case study presentation is that funeral photographs of death rituals may function as mnemonic objects later on in the life of children who lost a parent in their childhood. These photographs enable children, when necessary, to materialize how they participated in the death ritual of their father or mother. In this respect they can be seen as functional means of continuing bonds in funeral culture, linking the past with the present, in particular when young children are involved.

The Yearbook for Ritual and Liturgical Studies is an online journal that annually offers a forum for innovative, national and international research in the field of ritual and liturgical studies. Editorial Board Prof. dr. Marcel Barnard (editor in chief, Amsterdam/Stellenbosch), dr. Andrew Irving (Groningen), dr. Martin Hoondert (Tilburg), dr. Mirella Klomp (Amsterdam), dr. Mary E. McGann (Berkeley, CA), prof. dr. Paul Post (Tilburg), prof. dr. Thomas Quartier (Nijmegen/Leuven/Rome), prof. dr. Gerard Rouwhorst (Utrecht/Tilburg), prof. dr. Eric Venbrux (Nijmegen). Advisory Board Prof. dr. Sible de Blaauw (Nijmegen), prof. dr. Joris Geldhof (Leuven), prof. dr. Bert Groen (Graz), prof. dr. Benedikt Kranemann (Erfurt), dr. Jan Luth (Groningen), prof. dr. Peter Jan Margry (Amsterdam), prof. dr. Keith Pecklers (Rome/ Boston), dr. Susan Roll (Ottawa), prof. dr. Martin Stringer (Swansea), prof. dr. Teresa Berger (New Haven, CT).

The Digital Monument to the Jewish Community in the Netherlands went online in 2005. This monument has been dedicated to preserve the memory of "all the men, women and children who were persecuted as Jews during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, and did not survive the Shoah". In 2010 the Jewish Monument Community was linked to this virtual monument, this website Community offers the possibility to contribute additional information about individual victims remembered in the Digital Monument. The results of this research show that in comparison with commemoration at a traditional material monument, in particular the individual features of this new concept regarding commemoration are valued. Each individual victim may be commemorated and remembered in a very personal manner by telling who the victim was, and how he or she lived on the eve of deportation. The conclusion is that cyberspace may offer a significant and relevant place for, in this case, commemoration practices. Both Digital Monument and Community offer a meaningful place of commemoration of Dutch victims of the Shoah.

In the Netherlands, until the years mid eighty of the previous century, in accordance with the so called 'breaking bonds' paradigm at the time, children who had died around birth, were immediately separated from the parents. There and above, Roman Catholic rules dictated that children who had not been baptized before they died, would be buried anonymously in hideaway, and in the unconsecrated grounds of the graveyard. This article discusses these parents and their stillborn children. Their loss and grief remained for a long time unacknowledged, resulting in feelings of disenfranchised grief. These feelings increased as a result of the shift of paradigm into continuing bonds with a deceased, developing into the nowadays empathic and intimate contact between parents and stillborn children.With the emergence as of the year 2000 of monuments to stillborn children (in the Netherlands around 160 in total),monuments have become a strategy to cope with feelings of disenfranchised grief.This article concludes that parents of stillborn children benefit from an honourable place to commemorate and pay respect to their long-time publicly neglected child.