My Story of Grief

I considered myself a rather shallow and unemotional person as I grew from childhood to mature adulthood. Perhaps the strongest emotion I felt was homesickness when I went to boarding school in 5th year and in Paris when I was an au pair, both moves having been instigated by me, I should add. When my Parents died I was married, with children, teaching full time, and living away from home in Dublin. I was sad but not devastated as their loss was not a daily grief.
In 1990, four days after her fourteenth birthday, my daughter Aoife was struck by a car on a wet summers day. We watched her struggle for survival in Beaumont I.C.U for a little less then a week. We feared, hoped for a while, and then she was gone. It truly was as if part of me was ripped out.
Aoife was a very sensitive girl with a beautiful spirit that lit her face, she was deeply touched by a radio program her father had done about organ donation and spoke firmly about her wish to be a donor. While the process was horrific for us as the organs were harvested from our little girl, the saving of three lives made some small sense of this unnatural loss.
One of the cruellest, but also one of the most healing things, is that life goes on. Our three children needed the care and attention of their parents. It was their first experience of bereavement and we had to help them through it. Jobs had to be returned to, on the surface, at least, business as usual. Close and extended family, colleagues and friends helped during the day, but sleepless nights were spent reliving each moment, from the neighbour calling with news of the accident, the sight of her on the pavement, uninjured apart from the cracked skull and the blood seeping from her ear, the ambulance ride, the anxious and endless waiting, the front of brain hope and back of brain, unacknowledged, fear.
Time eventually eased the pain and we do love our angel in heaven that the thoughtless but sincere lady congratulated us on a few days after the funeral.
In 1998 my husband Eamonn ran the Dublin city marathon and a week later, the New York marathon. He complained of back pain on returning and put it down to his recent exertions. The pain got worse and in January ’99 he was admitted to the oncology ward of St Vincent’s Hospital.
As they tried to track down the source of the cancer the various procedures and treatments took their toll rapidly and I watched my handsome and vigorous husband fade away to be replaced by a skeletal octogenarian. He was finally released from pain on May 6th ’99. Anticipatory grief meant that there was no surprise at this death but that does not mean that there was no shock. This was a total lifestyle change; my future would now be a solo venture. There was fear as well as grief. Of course I was not alone and the same blanket of love and support was given to me again as I faced this new chapter in my life.
When we survive major grief, we access our deepest feelings and endure the pain they cause, but we can grow stronger from this to cope with anything life has to throw at us. We all faced up to the challenges of day to day living and gradually the pain eased and a sort of acceptance was reached.
But life was not finished with us yet, and in 2007 my son’s partner, the beautiful and sensitive Marion, died by her own hand. He had loved her deeply and his overwhelmed despair was heartbreaking to see and plunged us all back into the pain and sorrow of all our losses. The unemotional person I thought I was had long ago disappeared.
Being a part of Bethany has helped me greatly to make sense of the suffering, to try and deal with the feelings it has aroused, to determine where those feelings come from, and to deal with them. It has also allowed me the opportunity and the privilege to support others in their grief, and in this way travel further along the road of healing. The training I received during the Monkstown course of 2006, the year of my retirement, helped me to relive many aspects of my grieving and to make sense of them as I hadn’t before. To talk more and more openly to like-minded people under the direction of trained personnel freed up my emotions and allowed me to unblock many barriers that I had raised for my protection and initial survival.
The Orlagh bereavement retreat weekend, which I attended in 2008, continued the process as I accessed a deep pool of anger that I hadn’t been fully aware of. I felt as if a wall I had constructed around me was finally removed but I was left bereft and confused with a need to confront the source of this anger. It took a while but now I think I am further along the road of full acceptance.

Deirdre Ó Muirí

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Keynote Lecture Annual General Meeting 2010


Dr. Helen Greally of Cancer Care West gave an inspiring presentation of her work with cancer patients and their grieving families. She spoke of her research in how best to help those who are suffering either anticipatory grief after a cancer diagnosis or grieving the death of loved ones. She offered many insights which challenge some of our assumptions about bereavement.
The wake as an alternative:
The Wake is a positive option which is growing in popularity with people who feel it lessens the intensity of grief and is less depressing than the funeral home.


a) the family feels more in control.
b) friends can relate their
stories.
c) the bereaved can tell their stories.
Death takes away certain
assumptions:
1) Life is predictable:
It is not and the shock adds to grief.
2) We are in control:
we are not in control of death or illness.
3) Our life is permanent:
In spite of the evidence, we think we will not die.
Assumptions:
It is often the ending of our assumptions in our relationship to the deceased that we grieve and our grief is therefore unique. Who is the chief mourner? It is not always obvious. We must never the judge the bereaved and this will allow them to be more open.
Grieving is not an illness, good days may suggest recovery but full recovery does not necessarily occur.
Denial:
The ability to deny is huge and protects the psyche until it is ready to face the harsh realities of life. Do not try take away denial but rather make the journey at their pace.
Stages of grief:
New studies suggest that the stages of grief are not linear but can crop up at different times and become very mixed.
Avoidance:
The bereaved often find that people avoid them and this is very hurtful. People need to tell and retell their story to make it believable and bearable.
The lecture was followed by a useful small groups workshop on how do the assumptions about grieving we bring to our ministry affect your work with the bereaved?
Discussion of this question led to lively feedback from the groups as they shared their comments, insights and experiences.Gobnait O’Grady thanked Dr. Greally for her excellent presentation.

News Flashes........... Our Lady Queen of Peace group Bray celebrates the 20 years of Bethany ministry of Doreen Roche and welcomes Sam Veale as the new Co-ordinator. The group reports a satisfactory increase in drop in attendance and house calls in the last year and a very successful November Mass. Reflection Day 8th of May 2010, Spiritual Director, Fr. Flan Lynch. Venue: Clonliffe College Clonliffe Road Drumcondra 9am to 4pm Fee per person €20. To defray the cost of running the Executive, the Treasurer asks for a donation of €50 from any group which has sufficient funds. We welcome any notices or articles from Bethany groups throughout the country for publication in forthcoming newsletters. A Bethany training course will commence on Thursday 23rd September 2010 in Monkstown. We remind members that parish or group sponsorship is available for training courses. Contact Gobnait 087 2052177 or Liz 087 2392465. Groups should also remind the bereaved that retreat weekends may be sponsored.

The Bethany Bereavement Residential weekend

The Bethany bereavement retreat took place in the Orlagh Retreat Centre from Friday 26th to Sunday 28th February 2010 and seventeen people attended. Booking was slow initially but the momentum grew nearer the weekend and we would like to thank the groups who encouraged and persuaded the participants to attend. As in the past it was marvelous to see the support of the participants for each other and to view their journey over the weekend. I reproduce here an extract from a letter received from one of the participants:

“I am writing this letter to say a heartfelt thanks to yourself, to Father Myles and to all the facilitators at the residential Weekend.
I felt that I should write to you so as to give you an idea of what you gave me over the weekend.
The understanding and support shown to me by the members of my group was superb and demonstrated to me their genuine concern that we were all there to help one another through the different stages of our own individual journeys.
I think it is opportune that I pay a particular tribute to Fr. Myles. He was superb in
everything he did and said.
He shows enormous understanding and his expertise was evident to see.
I found it difficult to leave the weekend. It was like leaving a newly discovered family whose members were of different ages, different background and with different needs but with the one critical common objective of making that journey together and helping anyone who stumbled a bit on the way.
I hope these inadequate words of mine convey my appreciation to you and your colleagues.”

His words are anything but inadequate and probably convey much more eloquently anything I might say.
The next Residential Bereavement weekend will be held in November and further information will be available in the autumn edition.

Anne Butler

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