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Grief Facilitator/Volunteer: There are different parts to the bereavement program.
There is the one-on-one support. There is the group support,
as well as email support and telephone support.
Grief Facilitator/Volunteer: Grief support is about listening. It is about empathy,
trying to understand where the person has been, where they
are now and where they hope to go.
Group Support Participant: She lived to be 53 and a half.
But if she had her way, she would have stopped long time ago.
Group Support Participant: So there is nothing worse
than standing there and your friend says oh I know what you are going
through. You don't know what we are going through; they have a
husband standing there with them.
Group Support Participant: A friend of mine said that,
I said you tell me when your husband passes and you still won't knowť
The reason I came to hospice was my husband had passed away
and I realized that I needed some help that I was confused
and I felt like I was going crazy.
Group Support Participant: Last Saturday was a trigger, 1st of June
because it was a month from there that Bill passed away.
When you first come, you are kind of shy.
Grief Facilitator/Volunteer: The Grief Support program
starts with each person telling the story and having them come
to the point where they accept the fact, that their loved one
has died, which is perhaps the hardest thing for them to do.
Group Support Participant: I tried making new memories,
happy ones, but it still comes back to the one important thing.
Group Support Participant: I wonder when it is going to quit.
Like when are the tears going to dry up?
Group Support Participant: Confidentiality was so important
to me. Our area is a small area and you often run into other people
and it was very important to me, that my thoughts and my concerns
would remain in that room or with the staff working with me.
I'm not ready yet, I need my job, I need the
students, I need my co-workers.
Grief Facilitator/Volunteer: Once they can accept that,
they can look at the present to determine what position they
are in, how they're feeling, how they're coping with the
different problems.
Group Support Participant: Starting things, short attention span, I guess.
Grief Facilitator/Volunteer: Then we encourage them to look towards the future
as to what they can do to help themselves.
Group Support Participant: You socialize together, you laugh,
you cry together and you get through the tough times together.
So that's been my saving grace.
Goup Support Participant: I found that hospice has
been beneficial to me, and now I volunteer for them
I only donate for hospice now.
Group Support Participant: Because hospice has had such a special place
in my life and I am the person I am today. I decided that I needed
to help give back too, to say thank you to hospice for
what they have done for me.
One-on-One Support Participant: Since my husband died it's
been a difficult process. Almost fifty years of marriage, it would
be now, I still think he's the finest person I've ever met in my life.
And that doesn't mean that it was perfect, but I think he was
as close to perfection as you can get.
- Come on in
- Hi Dorothy
- Hi, Barb
- How are you?
Grief Facilitator/Volunteer: Dorothy is one of my clients and
I started seeing Dorothy shortly after her husband had died and it
was difficult at first for Dorothy to come and build that relationship.
It always takes a little bit of time.
What's the hardest part of the day, when do you miss Larry the most?
In the evening and I think probably most women do,
because they are working during the day.
Starting out with the facilitator, getting to know each other,
feeling comfortable with each other and then really delving into how
do you get through your life with this tragedy.
Larry died and you are still here.
It is such an anomaly, you know, you are supposed to
get through this sadness, so how do you?
Yes, and that is not fair.
And to deal with it, that's the really the difficult part.
The grief process I would say takes almost
eighty percent of their energy, of their day-to-day living.
And as you continue with the support you can see how that shifts
a little bit and instead of eighty percent it might only be fifty percent
after a few sessions and towards the end of the visits and the support
you can see how people move away from the intense emotional feelings
and shift more towards where do I go from here.
And you are entitled to feel sad, it's tragic, it's horrible, it's not fair,
all of those things, so it's okay to be sad.
It has helped me, because friends, I remember my mom saying friends
only want to hear you grieve for three months, she put a time limit
on it and I believe that's true, so I can open up and still grieve
and still talk about my pain with the facilitator and it helps so much.
As you tend to someone, as you listen to someone and sharing
in their grief journey, when you see that little bit of a shift going on,
it gives you such a wonderful feeling of accomplishment and just,
you are feeling really good about being able to help
somebody in their process.
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Narrator: Hospice is a registered nonprofit charitable organization. There are no fees
for our services. We rely on generous donations from our community to sustain of services.