Finding a way through grief

Community Hospital offers a wide range of bereavement resources

The death or serious illness of a loved one can bring on a cascade of powerful emotions. Sadness, relief, even anger can overwhelm with no warning. Raw and turbulent, grief can threaten to disrupt the comfortable rhythms of life, making work and school difficult or impossible.

For those having difficulty coping with a death, Community Hospital offers a wide range of bereavement resources. From a library stocked with materials about grief to innovative counseling programs and support groups, these free services help hundreds of county residents each year navigate safely through grief.

The Health Resource Library, located in the Comprehensive Cancer Center at Community Hospital, and the new Salinas Community Health and Hospice Resource Center are excellent places to find grief resources, as well as information about a vast array of health topics. Located at the corner of Romie Lane and Main Street, the Salinas center opened in November 2003. It offers an extensive library of reading and audiovisual materials in both English and Spanish. One room is devoted exclusively to books for grieving children.

The library also maintains a binder of local bereavement support group listings. Center staff and volunteers, who have all completed hospice training, can help connect community members to a wide range of groups — some affiliated with Community Hospital, some not. Many groups are available in both English and Spanish.

For many, grief often begins when a serious illness strikes the family. Facing the loss of a spouse, or watching a once-vibrant parent grow progressively weaker, is hard for adults and can be even more traumatic for children. “Some parents try to hide it from their children,” says Joy Smith, an R.N. and educator with Community Hospital’s Comprehensive Cancer Center. “But even if kids aren’t told, they know something’s not right, and sometimes what they imagine is a whole lot worse than reality.” The fear and uncertainty can emerge as falling grades, bad behavior at school, and even depression.

A free program called Kids Count 2 is available to help children and their families better manage the hardships of dealing with illness. Parents and children attend the monthly meetings together. Kids and parents meet over pizza and soda in separate groups, each led by a trained therapist.

The youngest children “talk about the changes that happen because somebody’s sick, why their mommy doesn’t have any hair or their daddy can’t walk,” says Smith. “But even older children often feel like they don’t get their needs met as easily as they used to because their families are so busy taking care of the sick person at the doctor’s or the hospital and they are left with baby sitters.”

The children receive a journal in which to write or draw and learn other strategies to address their own turmoil. Meanwhile, parents discuss the effects of illness on the family and learn how best to comfort their children.

A similarly structured program, Good Grief For Kids, helps children and their parents cope with the death of a loved one. Parents and children again split into separate groups led by therapists. The children learn about the stages of grieving, share family stories, and make art to express their feelings. By the time the six-week program is over, they have learned ways to tend to their own grief, such as writing a message to the deceased on a balloon and letting it go. Parents share their own stories of loss and learn how to support their children
during the grieving process. Families can repeat the program if desired.

Still, children spend most of their waking hours in the classroom, where solace for grief can be difficult to find. So staff at Community Hospital, working with Hospice of the Central Coast, developed the Griefbusters program to bring grief therapy into schools.

“It’s the logical place for them to have someone available to talk about their loss,” says Michael Benedetti, program manager of Community Hospital’s Hospice Resource Centers. The program trains two to three volunteers from each school — from teachers and school administrators to janitors and cafeteria workers — to provide one-on-one grief counseling for students during the school day. Children enrolled in the program are permitted to leave class at any time to talk with a Griefbusters counselor.

Since its beginnings in 1984, the award-winning program has trained more than 385 volunteers in more than 100 San Benito and Monterey County schools and has been emulated in many districts across the nation. And just last year, Griefbusters launched a trauma support team to provide extra counseling to schools affected by situations such as the sudden death of a student or teacher.

Those most likely to face bereavement, though, are women, who tend to outlive their spouses. The loss of a husband, says outpatient Behavioral Health Services manager Wayne Lavengood, leaves many women struggling financially and socially, in addition to feeling alone. “It’s like flying a plane with a copilot, and all of a sudden the copilot is gone. Now you’re responsible for flying the plane alone, and you have to figure out how to pick up those other duties even when you don’t feel like it.”

To meet the needs of new widows and widowers, Lavengood and several colleagues developed a class called Picking Up the Pieces. The course helps bereaved spouses learn more about the process of grief and how to carve out a new role for themselves as they go forward. “We try to help people not just pick up the pieces, but to put them back together again in a way that fits. It’s a new puzzle, a new way of life,” Lavengood says. The six-week class includes grief counseling as well as visits from an attorney and a financial adviser. Graduates of the program have even gone on to found the nonprofit Widowperson Services, which coordinates outings, dinners, and other activities for bereaved spouses.

Good Grief for Kids…and adults, too

When her father passed away unexpectedly while traveling out of the country a few years ago, Marcia Cody knew his absence would be painful for her family. Both her parents had recently moved to the area to be near their daughter and two grandchildren, and the whole family had always been very close.

But the depth of 5-year-old Conyal’s grief caught Cody unprepared. “My son was just devastated. He was very angry and had quite a few tantrums. I knew we needed to do something about it, but I wasn’t sure what.”

So when Cody discovered Community Hospital’s Good Grief for Kids program, she breathed a sigh of relief and signed up immediately. Designed to help children cope with the death of a loved one, the free program includes pizza and soda at each meeting.

Once a week, for the next six weeks, Conyal, Cody, and her 11-year-old daughter Jazzmyn met with other grieving families to learn about the grieving process from professional counselors and to find new ways to cope with their sadness.

Cody says talking to program counselors was extremely valuable for her children. “They were able to get some of their feelings out, and it was comforting for them to be with kids who were going through the same sort of thing. They got to do different projects each week, such as bringing a picture of their loved one or sharing a favorite item that reminded them of their grandpa.”

These techniques helped both children better come to terms with their grandfather’s death.

To Cody’s surprise, she found the program just as helpful for herself. She and the other parents met in a group with a counselor and discussed their own grieving.

When Conyal began acting out again and dwelling on his grandpa’s death a few years later, mother and son were welcomed back to the program for a second round. This time, the messages stuck. And now when a grieving coworker mentions a loss in the family, Cody recommends the program. “It’s just wonderful,” she says. and adults, too