When Hope Creates Calm in Chaos
Memories of Care, Temporality, and Slow Emergence of Hope
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/pl.v47i1.171932Keywords:
Collective Memory Work, caring communities, temporality, liminality, existential hope, the emergent self, hope-bearing practices, woven ethicsAbstract
This analytical essay explores how the slow emergence of hope can be traced in the caring practices of close relatives caring for parents who have lost a child. Drawing on Collective Memory Work as both a methodological and epistemological approach, the essay is grounded in empirical material developed collaboratively with those in close caring relationships with bereaved parents. Particular attention is given to two young couples, whose memory texts and shared work trace the connections between care, temporality, and hope in times of chaos, when life no longer makes sense. The essay examines how care, time, and hope become intertwined in the chaotic and suspended temporality following a child’s death. The essay is written in the first person as a deliberate generic choice, it draws on qualitative forms of representation inspired by therapeutic case studies, narrative inquiry, and metaphors. Emphasizing the language as connotative rather than merely denotative, reflecting a commitment to the dissemination of a complex social phenomenon. The analysis is thus situated within the emergence of the young couples’ memory work and years of care work with families living with critically ill children and families who have lost a child. Drawing on Gabriel Marcel’s understanding of hope as a relational and existential phenomenon, and on Stenner’s concept of in-between spaces, I argue that care within communities of close relations can be understood as a liminal and hope-bearing practice. Within these in-between spaces, care transforms, and the contours of hope can slowly be sensed as life once again carries a fragile sense of meaning.
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