Hospice offers grief support in time of loss.
FACING THE REALITY OF DEATH: Marge Denis brings a wealth of understanding to Hospice Huntsville’s grief support group.
Pamela Steel
HUNTSVILLE - Grieving the death of a loved one isn’t easy. But Marge Denis has some words of comfort.
Denis has been a Hospice Huntsville volunteer for six years. She is on the organization’s board but began by visiting the dying. Her background as a facilitator inspired program co-ordinator Elaine Rose to ask her to run a grief support group. Along with Debbie Knobelsdorf, Denis runs a couple of seven-week programs a year.
The grief support group is held in the Hearth Room at Trinity United Church. While the church offers the space, Denis said it’s important to point out that Hospice isn’t about religion.
“Hospice stays out of the religious realm,” she said. “I feel passionately about spirituality, separate from religion.”
Hospice recommends those who have experienced a loss wait three months before joining a support group. Before that Denis said they’re too overwhelmed with shock to complete the process.
“They have to find a little patch of their reality,” she said, adding that people in grief tend to be experiencing a fundamental change to the core part of their identity.
“If your mother dies, you are no longer her child. When the second parent dies you think, ‘My God, I’m nobody’s child anymore.’”
A woman who has lost her spouse makes the shift from married woman to widow; each relationship lost is profound, she said.
Grieving is part of the experience of death for a family, said Denis.
“Grieving is something we do inside; mourning we do outside,” she said.
In our society, we ignore death and grieving, according to Denis.
“Grieving is a process not a series of acts; no two people go through it the same way.”
Denis has grieved the suicide of her brother and the deaths of both her parents.
“One of the phases is recognizing the reality of death.”
She said it’s common and reasonable to be angry in grief, but guilt gets you nowhere.
“It’s a false emotion.”
Death, she said, is as important as birth; one signals the beginning of life and the other the end.
“That’s important – and no one should die alone. No one.”
During the seven-week support group, people are able to say things to each other they might not be able to say to friends and family.
“The first word is yours: How are you feeling? What’s the best thing that can happen? What is the worst?” she asks the group at the beginning of the process.
Members of the group write down their daydreams and nightmares of where they think the process might take them, and at the end of the group they take those notes back out.
“Usually the daydreams have come true; the nightmares haven’t.”
Denis said the key to facilitating the program is remembering that it is the voices of the members that are most important and the agenda needs to be put aside if it doesn’t gel with where the group is headed on a particular day. In the end the members have the wisdom and ability to deal with their grief.
Previous participants have ranged in age from teens to people in their 80s.
And there is much laughter as they recount stories about their loved ones and share their common pain.
One highlight of the program is when members bring in a treat that was a favourite of their love one.
To find out about future grief support groups contact Elaine Rose, program co-ordinator, Hospice Huntsville at 705-789-6878.