Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 9, 1990 TAG: 9006090159
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRANCES STEBBINS CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
About 100 church and social service professionals recently took advantage of one of Western Virginia's first workshops on "Working Through Your Grief." Held at Roanoke Airport Marriott, it featured a three-hour lecture and video by the Rev. Rick Smith of Houston, Texas.
Smith, an ordained United Methodist, is primarily a director of pastoral care at a Houston hospice. Houston is also the headquarters for Service Corporation International, the parent of Lotz Funeral Homes in the Roanoke metro area and of Rader Funeral Homes in Botetourt County.
A consultant to the chain, Smith, 41, said he conducts seminars similar to the one in Roanoke about once a month. To keep his appointment at the Marriott, he told his audience he had to miss the funeral for a cancer victim his own age.
Research suggests that 60 percent of Service Corporation's clients are not associated enough with a church to get significant counsel from a pastor.
"As service providers for the bereaved, we want to be helpful in the weeks after a death when the greatest pain is felt," said Alice Berthelson, on behalf of the funeral home chain.
Smith, as well as others in the relatively new helping specialty of grief counseling, said most people are showered with sympathy, food, flowers and visits for a few weeks after the death of a loved one.
Then they are left alone to adjust to everything from keeping the car running to missing a spouse to talking over church gossip at Sunday lunch.
The seminar Smith conducted is expected to be the first of several the funeral home chain will offer in the Roanoke area during the next two years. The formation of support groups in churches is a possible strategy outlined in materials given workshop participants.
The whole grief recovery program promoted by the funeral homes is called "Picking Up the Pieces."
The audience attending Smith's lecture was about evenly divided between clergy and social service professionals, Berthelson said. The registration also showed that religion professionals came both from churches that stress literalistic conservative positions about the Bible and those that adapt interpretation to the current culture.
Smith did not promote a particular kind of funeral in his presentation; his lecture and video were educational rather than commercial in style.
The hospice counselor said the most valuable comfort a professional helper or a friend or relative can give the bereaved is to let them express feelings openly. These feelings, he emphasized, normally change fast in the months after a death. They include openly expressed anger - often at the deceased or at God - as well as sadness over the loss, panic over hard decisions or joy at recalling happier times.
Different people get over deaths with different degrees of ease and in different amounts of time. Smith said six months may be enough time for some people to form deep new relationships, while others will need several years. The impact of a death depends on how close the mourner was to the deceased.
But those who want to help must see each relationship as individual, Smith noted. A grandmother may be more significant in a young adult's life than a younger sister. People who did not get on well with the deceased may suffer greatly from guilt because of the unhappy memories of incidents that should have ended better.
The Golden Rule in which a comforter tries to put herself in the place of the bereaved is a good guide to follow, but even it is not foolproof for help. It's good to be able to recall details of the deceased's life and character, Smith suggested, recalling this story: A grandmother of 92 had accumulated a vast collection of white cardigan sweaters, the gifts of relatives who, seeing her old favorite garment, eased their need to be thoughtful by buying yet another one. The old woman told her grandson there was no need to part with a useable sweater; that would be wasteful.
Such knowledge, said Smith, helped relatives to bury the grandmother in a simple dress rather than purchasing the one for $125 a relative wanted.
People such as professional care givers must learn early to share their feelings about losses with others, Smith said. The price for not doing so is burnout, depression or cynicism.
"If you're the Lone Ranger, go find a Tonto," Smith said. He recommended a newly published book by Elizabeth Harper Neeld of Houston, "Seven Choices: Taking the Steps to a New Life After Losing Someone You Love."
The work covers not only loss by death but also divorce and other life changes which cause a kind of mourning.
by CNB