"When someone dies in prison, grief has nowhere 'official' to go."

There’s no funeral to attend, no space to gather, and often no acknowledgement that the loss even happened. Critical incident lockdowns make it worse — doors stay shut, movement is frozen, and the only thing you can do is sit with the absence. Still, some find a way.

With a stack of paper scraps and the remains of his coloured pencils, tips dipped in water, one man paints a banner. Across it: his friend’s full name, the date of death, a dove, and a cluster of stars. He tapes it across the front of his cell door, blocking the view in. People walking past slow down. Some scoffed. Others stand there for a while, saying nothing.

It's not art. It's ritual. It's a way of making grief go visible when the rules — and the walls — won't allow it. And it becomes something shared.

This is an example of what I have come to call symbolic making as communal mourning. That is, the act of creating something physical to (a) honour a loss and (b) invite others into a grieving process, even (or especially) when formal recognition isn’t possible.

Why it works (when it works – i.e. like all things grief-related, it doesn't work for everyone)?

  • It externalizes grief. The loss moves from being purely internal to something you can see and touch.
  • It invites silent participation. People don’t have to speak to be part of the ritual.
  • It uses what’s at hand. In this case: paper, pencils, and time. In yours, maybe something else entirely.

Grief is one of the hardest emotions to carry alone. In prison, people improvise ways to carry it together. Outside of prison, even though we have more freedom, many of us still grieve in isolation.

Part of the pull towards isolation is that, when faced with a loss, words never feel like enough. Making (or anything non-verbal) can act as another channel for grief. What we make does not have to be beautiful. And it does not have to explain itself. It just has to hold the memory, and hold it where others can see.

Sometimes, that’s enough to make the weight a little lighter.

Doka, K. J., & Martin, T. L. (2010). Grieving beyond gender: Understanding the ways men and women mourn (Rev. ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203860969

Neimeyer, R. A., Klass, D., & Dennis, M. R. (2014). A social constructionist account of grief: Loss and the narration of meaning. Death Studies, 38(8), 485–498. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2014.913454

Ruitenberg, C. W. (2013). Mourning and the role of symbolic objects. Philosophy of Education Archive, 299–307. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X13502176

Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (2015). Family matters in bereavement: Toward an integrative intra‐ and interpersonal coping model. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(6), 873–879. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691615598517

Walter, T. (2012). New mourners, old mourners: Online memorial culture and continuing bonds. OMEGA—Journal of Death and Dying, 64(4), 275–302. https://doi.org/10.2190/OM.64.4.a

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