When someone loses a loved one, along with the pain comes a deep loneliness and a confusion that can make them doubt their sanity, explains an experienced grief counselor.
“They are not alone, and they are not going crazy,” said Margaret Peterson, a nurse and mental health counselor who leads bereavement support groups at St. Mary’s Church in East Islip. St. Mary’s is one of many parishes around the diocese that has support groups for people mourning a loved one.
“Crazy is normal,” said Gerri Lehr, who heads the bereavement ministry at St. Joseph’s Church in Kings Park. Support groups bring people together so that they can see how natural their feelings of loss are. “We also give them tools to help them find healing.”
“We have pages of different kinds of groups on our Web site,” said Elaine Stillwell, diocesan bereavement coordinator. The list includes parish groups as well as groups at health care centers, other Churches, and colleges. The groups vary in size, scope, and length of time.
The bereavement section of the diocesan Catholic Cemeteries Web site, www.holyroodcemetery.org, contains a listing of groups around the island. “It’s updated a couple of times a week,” Stillwell said. “We also have programs on grief and the holidays.”
Many of the groups run weekly for a limited number of weeks in order to achieve specific goals in helping group members cope. Kathy Ryan, parish social ministry director at Maria Regina Church, Seaford, leads support groups for widows and widowers at her parish and also a joint parish group in Long Beach for anyone suffering a loss.
The people who come to these groups “are in terrible pain but don’t know how to ease that pain. What they receive from groups like ours is a way to understand the grief process and resources about how to deal with it,” Ryan said.
Much of the understanding comes from realizing that “when you lose a loved one, you lose part of your self, part of your identity,” she said. Some groups deal with certain kinds of loss — the death of a spouse, a child or a baby before or after birth, or suicide — and some are geared to subsets of mourners, for instance young widows and widowers, children or parents.
She moderates a monthly meeting of the Compassionate Friends of Rockville Centre at Molloy College. Though the group’s primary focus is parents who lost a son or a daughter, “we also have a meeting for siblings” who lost a brother or sister.
Bereaved Parents of the USA has monthly meetings at Faith Lutheran Church in Syosset, said Diana Roscigno, who founded the group. “It’s the only group like this on the North Shore.
“We get a range of ages” from those who lost a two-and-a-half-year-old child to one whose lost son was 46, she said. “We also have a couple of siblings who come sometimes.”
“Some couples can’t talk to each other because they are going through different stages or have different ways of dealing with it,” Roscigno said. “A group makes it more likely to meet someone whose experiences are like yours.”
At St. Rose of Lima in Massapequa, A Place for Hope, a support group for survivors of suicide, meets monthly. “We offer support like other groups,” said Anne Marie Maiorana, who leads the group, “but the loss we feel is different than any other type of loss.”
Suicide carries a stigma that makes people feel less comfortable talking about it, Maiorana said. “I wish more people knew we are out there because you need to talk with someone, and we have people who understand because we’ve gone through it.”
Guardian Angel Perinatal Support is a monthly group at St. Kilian’s Church in Farmingdale for parents who lost an infant either before birth — through miscarriage or still birth –- or after birth. “We get some parents who lost a toddler because they don’t feel comfortable at other groups,” said Martha Weiss, who coordinates the group.
“It is often silent suffering because people who lost a baby before birth usually don’t grieve publicly,” Weiss said. Yet, the sense of loss is just as real. “Happily, some of the parents do have another baby, and the group shares in their joy.”
Many of the groups deal with the spiritual side of grief. Gerri Lehr, from St. Joseph’s in Kings Park, noted that some of the people who come to their support groups are angry with God over their loss.
“I tell them to continue the conversation. Keep screaming at God,” she said, because it is better than cutting yourself off. While working on her doctorate in ministry at the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception, she did research on faith and loss. “What I found,” she said, “is that people who keep up their conversation with God heal better.”