The Catholic Church dedicates November to the holy souls in purgatory with the feasts of All Saints and All Souls celebrated on Nov. 1 and 2, respectively.
For individuals grieving the death of a loved one, there is often no timeframe and grief can extend far beyond November.
Pickerington St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish established a grief support group decades ago to minister to grieving adults. Two eight-week support groups continue to be held yearly: one in the fall and another in the spring.
The support groups often include between five and 12 people with three facilitators present. This fall, the support group meets weekly on Sunday afternoons through Nov. 23 in the parish library.
All individuals grieving a death, including non-Catholics, are invited to come and participate at the parish. Participants grieve together in light of faith.
Kathy Willard, a parishioner at Seton Parish since 1998, began facilitating support group sessions about 10 years ago.
“I don’t know who gets more out of it, the facilitators or the participants,” she said of the support groups.
“What I’m surprised at is there’s not many grief support groups in the area. I would just think there would be more out there because there’s such a need for it.”
In college, Willard studied employee assistance counseling to provide counseling and psychological services in the workplace. Her first exposure to grief came at a young age.
“When my brother was 16, he passed away from lupus (an autoimmune disease) – when I was 21,” she shared. “It really grounds you, and you really find out what’s important and what’s not.”
This past spring, four days before she was to begin facilitating the spring grief support group, Willard’s mother died. A second facilitator experienced the death of her best friend the same week.
“You think you know everything about everything when you’ve been doing it for that long,” she said of facilitating grief support, “but it was a whole new way of looking at things.”
The meeting curriculum for the parish support group is identical for its fall and spring sessions, Willard noted. Yet, it can be difficult to plan group meetings: participants often bring varied challenges and experiences from the past week to a meeting.
“It’s their time,” she said of participants, “so we don’t want to say, ‘We’ve got to talk about this; we’ve got to talk about that.’”
The group is available to grieving adults regardless of when the death of a loved one occurred. Some individuals don’t seek grief support initially, Willard noted, but participate in a group two or three years later.
“They’re just sitting there. They can hardly move,” Willard reflected on many participants’ first group meeting. “They’re just crying, not sobbing, but you can just see the tears coming down, and they don’t want to talk.
“And then, the last week, they walk out and they’re laughing, and they’ve made friendships. It’s just so rewarding.”
Karen Riegelmayer, a parishioner at Seton Parish since 2003, participated in the grief support group twice. She has most recently served as a facilitator.
Several years ago, Riegelmayer got involved in the parish bereavement group, which included grief support ministry. A facilitator position opened, she recalled, and she figured it would be a good fit “since I cared for my dad, my mom, my brother and then my husband” before their deaths.
“I have been so blessed during the past six years walking with those who are taking their first steps on their healing journey through grief,” she said. “Each group is different, and each person grieves differently, so I learn something new each week from each of our participants.”
Riegelmayer was part of the grief support group as a participant years prior. Shortly after joining Seton Parish, her mother died in May 2003. Riegelmayer joined the support group that fall.
She participated in the grief support group again in 2018 after her husband of 51 years, David, died.
“My grief was much more profound when he died than with my mom. I really needed a safe place to share my feelings of emptiness and loss,” she explained. “I found that in the support group.
“My family was wonderful and supported me every step of the way, but sometimes, it’s easier to share with people you don’t know, and that is what I found in our group.”
During the first meeting, participants typically share who they are grieving and when the individual died. Participants can opt to pass if they prefer it remain private.
Participants receive handouts, books and a workbook to utilize outside of group meetings.
Facilitators can offer referrals for additional grief support services if needed. While facilitators are present during meetings, participants primarily support each other.
“It’s just so overwhelming to see that because you’re thinking, that person could do nothing for themselves and now they’re helping others,” Willard reflected. “Our biggest thing is laughter.
“I even had one woman tell me, ‘I don’t want to laugh. My grief is too painful, and I just don’t feel like I should be laughing.’ When you finally get to see them laugh, and then a couple weeks later they’re making other people laugh, it’s great.”
Grief support sessions often include listening to music and analyzing song lyrics.
Music can be helpful in grieving, Willard noted. The group listens to songs such as “Drops of Jupiter” by the band Train, inspired by lead singer Pat Monahan’s mother’s death after battling lung cancer for years.
Members also color with paper and boxes of Crayons. “It brings you back to your childhood, which brings you back to before the grief and the pain,” Willard explained. “For that amount of time, when they’re coloring, they’re not feeling any of that.”
Relationships formed in the support group extend beyond the eight-week meeting sessions. Willard established an e-mail chain for monthly pizza dinners after the support group concludes.
“We get really good attendance at those,” she noted. “They have that bond that they’ll never have with anybody else.”
Previous participants enjoy gathering to talk and share a meal, and check on one another if someone is absent at the monthly dinner.
“We are traveling this journey together,” Riegelmayer emphasized. “It is never a straight line but rather up hills and down hills.
“We all will have our good days and our bad days, but with the support of each other, we will get through this.”
For more information or to join a support group at Seton Parish, e-mail MamaKath62@aol.com.
