Pilgrimage through Loss by Linda Lawrence Hunt

Author:Linda Lawrence Hunt
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781611643787
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press

He found being able to imagine talking to his son and then doing another journal entry with his son’s imagined response “opened my eyes to what I have been feeling.” He also appreciated the counsel to “throw away the stop watch” and expectations that he will “get over” grief.

Gloria Nielsen, a former hospital chaplain who has led First Presbyterian Church of Spokane grief groups for over ten years, discovered several universal experiences happen when communities gather intentionally around loss and bereavement. “Many say that listening to others normalizes grief … they realize they aren’t going crazy. Being with others who listen and accept you as you are provides an anchor. No one is trying to fix you and urging ‘are you back to normal yet?’”

She believes that grief shared is grief halved. If a person can identify their feelings, they can begin the process of gaining peace within themselves. One woman, who lost an infant at two days old over forty years ago, came to deal with much that had been suppressed. “I still had a lot of hidden pain. It has been very helpful to revisit that part of my life. To take the time so many years later to remember, and forgive, and let go of the pain of such an abrupt loss finally gave me a measure of peace. I also learned to allow myself to talk about Amy without feeling that people would think that I should be done with that by now.” She also gained insight on who to share with in the future. “The class made me see that not every friend is up to hearing about your grief.”

She believes that grief shared is grief halved.

—Gloria Nielsen

“How true,” agrees Shelly Fry, who also attended Nielsen’s class with her husband for three ten-week sessions after their twenty-five-year-old son Spencer (nicknamed Bear) died in 2010. “The classes were a lifeline for us.” Bear was joyriding with a friend who drove a BMW at 100 miles-an-hour down a hill and hit a tree, killing all three men in the car. “It was such a senseless, unnecessary, stupid death,” laments Fry, the mother of four sons. She felt particular agony since Bear had finally been in recovery from severe health and addiction challenges that lasted years.

Seven years earlier, while attending community college, their once healthy son awoke one morning with immense pain in his face. Over the years, the family visited over twenty-three doctors and specialists and endured several surgeries as they saw him become increasingly disabled, living with chronic pain. “Mom, you have to help me,” he’d cry, and Fry gave her heart and soul and finances to find a diagnosis and relief. A professional working woman, she became the one over the years taking time to seek medical assistance, travel, and care for him after complex surgeries. These absences jeopardized her employment situation that the family needed for medical expenses, a further stress. Eventually he was diagnosed with Neuralgia Trigeminal, and surgeries at the Mayo Clinic began to give him some relief.

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