The Stations of Urban Mourning: A Qualitative Investigation of Ongoing Public Grieving
by David W. Boles

Over the past year there have been three killings in my Jersey City Heights neighborhood. Each killing ground is a spoke of suffering less than one block from where I live. You cannot walk any stretch of sidewalk leaving my apartment without walking on concrete that was once stained with the last bloody droplets of a human life. As I try to press meaning into these senseless killings I am reminded there is great truth in the oath of the street that “life is cheap.” However, dying, I have discovered, costs more than a corpse. Those who survive the street death of a loved one appear have a ritualistic and ongoing public grieving that this observation report will try to frame in a way that provides perspective on the Stations of Urban Mourning....

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