Pilgrimage: The Mobilities of Mourning

Abstract

Following the book’s central thesis to its conclusion, Chap. 5 draws upon a wide selection of twentieth-century literary texts—both British and American—to illustrate the abiding significance of the ‘tracks’ we lay down during the ‘life’ of a relationship in the practices associated with its remembrance and memorialisation. The chapter is in three sections: the first, “The Public Highways of Loss” interrogates the hyper-mobility of the funeral procession in Christian religions; the second explores the “Im/mobilities of Grief” with reference to C.S. Lewis’s memoir A Grief Observed (2015 [1961]) and Janice Galloway’s novel The Trick is to Keep Breathing (2015 [1989]); while the third draws upon the of the Manchester Irish Writers’ Group mixed-genre anthologies (1999–2004) to demonstrate the elusiveness of “place memory” and the crucial role recursive mobilities play in sustaining our relationships with our lost loved ones.