Hospice helps parents face loss

Losing someone is not easy, especially when it’s a child who dies.

In September, a member of our community went to the Hospice of the Piedmont because he noticed a need — the need for a support group for parents who have experienced the death of a child. The group was formed to fill this need, and the facilitators focused on education around the grieving process. Now it has become an ongoing group.

The support group for parents who’ve lost a child is a place where the parents can share their experiences and ask questions of each other. It meets the first and third Mondays of the month from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Hospice office on Pantops, on Peter Jefferson Parkway.

Denise Kirchner, director of counseling services, is one of the facilitators of the group.

Kirchner said that the current parents involved have lost children ranging in age from a couple of weeks to 21 years old. But the child can be of any age. She said those attending also can be grandparents, aunts or uncles who were close to the child. Folks can attend as much or as little as they want.

New members joined in February. While not everyone might want to attend a group like this, there are many reasons to do so, Kirchner said.

“It helps to identify that you are not alone — what you are feeling and your responses as parents — you are not alone in this loss,” Kirchner said. “[The group] normalizes everything you are feeling.”

“Grief is such a unique experience,” Kirchner said. “No two [people] experience it the same way. They can get the message that they are not doing it right.”

Quite often, other people around the grieving parents may believe that it’s time for them to get over it and move on with their lives.

For parents, there are even more issues, especially when it comes to looking at other children the same age.

Kirchner said they encourage folks to confront their grief and not to push it away.

“You will not get over grief — you will live with it,” Kirchner said. “We encourage them to grieve and to allow joy and love back into their lives. You are not going to get through grief unless you allow yourself to experience it.”

However, there are different kinds of grievers, Kirchner said. Part of what she and Laurie Bayma, the other facilitator, teach is that this is OK and there is no “wrong” way to grieve.

For example, some people are “instrumental” grievers.

These are the people who think about the child and the loss and then do projects around the house like cleaning out the basement, or they may start a foundation. These are the kinds of people who may not be as interested in a support group.

“They are not going to talk about the hole in their heart, but they will chop a cord of wood,” Kirchner said.

On the other hand, the “intuitive” grievers are more likely to talk about their experiences and feelings.

Parents have so many issues, Kirchner said. They often have difficulty when looking at other children who could be their child’s age, or the child’s friends, or during the time of monumental events such as graduation.

If the child was the only one, they may even wonder whether they are still parents. If the child died at age 11 and he or she would now be 21, do they think about him as 11 or 21?

And, of course, the death of a child is hard on a relationship. The parents may experience it in different ways.

One may not talk about it in order to protect the feelings of his or her partner, while all the while wishing that the other did talk about it.

But in the support group setting, where other parents also have experienced a child’s death, if somebody shares his or her feelings, this can help the partners take a chance and speak up, Kirchner pointed out.

For more information, call 817-6900 and ask for the bereavement department. You also can check out the Web site at www.hopva.org.