hello and welcome to what's going on i'm jan knight and with me today is anne marie mahoney bereavement program facilitator thank you so much for joining us and we all thank you for having me this is to member in those things but really this is sort of my day job i had worked a nationally as a high school english teacher teaching american studies which involved a lot of art music and theater which i really enjoyed and then later after my children were grown and i went back to work i worked as a director of religious education and the piece of that that i really enjoyed was offering programs and workshops and creating retreats so  while doing the religious education work i actually in my fifty's went back to boston college and earned a master's degree in pastoral ministry and thank you know that kind of so there's hope for everybody out there and go back to school whenever you feel like it so that expanded my skill set and kind of increase my interest in doing more with programs i experienced a significant amount of death and loss in my own life over a very short period of time both of my parents my husband sister in law brother in law and some very good friends and that kind of propelled me into this bereavement work because i didn't find a lot of support out there people often find good programs in hospitals are or hospices immediately after a death but i found that the reality and really tough work of grieving sets in a year on war after the death of a loved one and i thought well maybe that could be mine it so i went back to boston college and did a postmaster certificate in spiritual formation which gave me again more of the skills to start to work with this type of program and i also d some coursework in death and dying and grieving so i put together pulling all of that what i call creative bereavement which is a program that i've run in churches and now i'm doing it in senior centers that gives people more than a year past the death and opportunity to come together in a safe space to share their experiences of death and grieving and loss but then my role with a group like that is to try to give them the tools to move forward and i use a lot of art and music and poetry and media and i find that people can relate to the ass they can take a poem home with them and read it over and over they can watch a movie and say yes that's exactly what i've experienced and yet they can do it in a safe way it's not someone kind of in their face they can do it on their own terms so i found it to be pretty successful i enjoy doing it i'm always changing it and and adding new things and here i am today to talk about a so on i'm very grateful that you are and not only are you here to talk about it with us today but you also can be reached at the senior center here in belmont but the first tuesday of of every month yes the senior center has been wonderful about giving us a space the first tuesday of every month  at five thirty and i just gather with anyone who wants to be there who wants to come and have the mutual support so i call it a bereavement drop in the mutual support of others who are going through the bereavement process and people are at many different points in that grieving spectrum but they enjoy coming together in the enjoy sharing their own experiences so no program no preparation just come you know one one of the things that i did when i was getting ready to do the show was i just went online and out of curiosity googled bereavement and found that it's based on an ancient greek word meaning to rob or to seize by violence and marriage right right and these are the things that you address these are the things that we try to talk about and we try to give people tools to manage and give them a way to start moving forward excellent yes with that in my haste i brought with me a little clip that might get us going on exactly what the program does by expressing exactly what you said a little bit of the set up this is a clip from downton abbey those of you who've been down abbey fans will recall that lady mary lost her husband matthew in a car accident right after their child was born and so the short clip that i'm going to show you is mary just trying to deal six months after the death with everyone in the family trying to tell her what to do what to feel you know what should happen and what her response is to that and it actually is a pretty common response and when i show this clip with groups everybody says yes i have always wanted to do that ok so  feel that way at some point even though those around them may be very positive and try to be sympathetic and try to be helpful they often are making demands that that person who is grieving just can't meet in the moment six months is nothing in the grieving process absolutely nothing and the idea that there is a time table for grief or that there are stages that everyone goes through the idea stage theory none of that is true for every single person in exactly the same way and so by coming together in a group like this i try to teach people that what they're feeling is ok and that they don't have to be on a timetable and they don't have to be going through specific stages and that they should have the courage to say to those people around them i'm just not ready yet to do x y z excellent and if people would like to come in and be part of that group they can just drop in and share their feelings in the drop in the group and absolutely true and then that's when i run a regular program i would do things like show that clip and have some resources and some ideas of how to work through it wonderful so with the holidays close on us this is particularly sensitive time for many people who are going through grief right and if you have any special suggestions or helpful hints or anything to help get through that  talk to people about rituals ritual can be very healing to look at the holidays you probably had traditions or rituals with a loved one and recreating those might be very painful if continuing with those rituals is soothing or helpful absolutely keep doing it many people the first couple of years will have an empty place of the table for example and that's ok because it means that the person is still with you the person is still in your mind and hearts and you haven't shut out that memory you're not trying to pretend that it didn't happen so that's a good thing but i also encourage people to create new traditions or new rituals because the idea of a bereavement program or the work of bereavement of the work of grieving is to find the new normal you had a particular story with your loved one and now that loved one is gone and that piece of the story that character in the story is now changed dramatically and so how do you write a new story for yourself going forward and so if you think of that and think of what can i do that's different or new they could be a new ritual or a new tradition and and get the family to go along with you  you know that that can be healing and that can be very helpful excellent i have a little poem that i shared with you earlier that i use all the time and i actually would suggest i i brought some photographs and the first one i have and i think i titled the darkness to light goes along with this little poem this is by mary all of her it's just four lines twenty three words but it says what the work of grieving is someone i loved once gave me a box full of darkness it took me years to understand that this too that's not it nice picture but that's not it ok it took me years to understand that this too was a gift so someone i loved once gave me a box full of darkness it took me years to understand that this too was a gift and so when we experience the death of the loss of a loved one it's a horrible dark place and feeling but the work of grieving is to move forward into the li and to see that even in that loss and even in that das there can be a gift there can be something positive you know almost there it is beautiful and i love this photograph because you're going from the shadow in the photograph into the light you're walking down that path you can't see where the past goes you can't quite see the end but it's going off into something that looks pretty interesting the mountains in the sky and where is that road going to take me you don't know until you get on that path and stop start working walking forward into the light so excellent that's where i always begin want my  so what are the same severe programs i give people an opportunity the first time that we gather to introduce their loved one because that's what they want to talk about and so i encourage people to just talk about their loved one how they met what their life was like with them and we do a little bit of storytelling around that then when we come back together again i want to hear what their story is  what what is their life like and i focus a little bit on who are you with your loved one yes who are you now after the death of the loved one and who do you want to become going forward and so that becomes a theme for us running through the different programs i do one on holding on and letting go that's the hardest thing for people sometimes what the why hold onto people tend to pull everything healthy to let go of yes and what you need to hold onto and holding on is a good thing too and for that session i always invite people to bring something with them of their loved one that they can talk about so i had a woman where her mother sweater and she said every time i feel sad i put them on this one that's like a hug from mom bakley i had a gentleman come with a jar of tomato sauce and i thought where is this going and you know when he first walked into the room my mother grew tomatoes and made sauce and gave the sauce to all of us and we ate it all winter i'm never letting go of this jar sauce because it reminds me of my mother and so and people all kinds of things jewelry photograph s i keep all my husband's ties don't that address on iraq or what them go because they make me happy to look at this so they do a thing you mentioned earlier place the loss of place is huge for people and i didn't realize that i started doing this kind of work often the deaths will mean that you're selling a house or that you're moving there's a lot of place things in your life change and that can be very traumatic yes i've lost my spouse or my parent or my child and now i have to leave the house where we live together that can be very very difficult yet so i do a whole session on what place means in our  lives and then i use music i use art i use a lot of the d v d clips because as i said i find people can see themselves in them in a safe way and then i give people an opportunity the last time we meet to record their memories either by writing a letter to for example a grandchild to us about maybe the grandparent who has died it might be a scrapbook it can be anything but in some way gather together things that help you record and cherish the memories of your loved one absolutely and that's that's so helpful right now let's see  what there's also do you ed at any point in this go through with the feelings and the experience of the death of a marriage for instance and how people cope with that because that's a big loss some people it is and i did have a person in one of my groups who was coping with the death of a marriage so we have dealt with that year and that is a very similar loss i would say the difference is that it's difficult in that situation to try to draw out the happy memories or the happy stuff so while yes it's very similar feelings yes sometimes it always doesn't a major changes in your life right when my mom was i had to put her in a nursing home because she had also hires and the difficulty of that and seeing those changes and you know this this was a woman that was always so strong and you know she could just do anything and i just that was very hard to cope with that so there are many different events in a person's life that can cause grief and what you're doing is such a wonderful thing and you're doing some work through boston university as well boston college i actually started my day job is i work as and online facilitator for boston college they the school of theology and ministry runs a series of adult continuing education classes online and i'm just a discussion facilitator so but that gives me insights into people and where they are and how they function and what's important to them and and what they're willing to share so that ends up being sort of a good reinforcement for me when i get into this work with people as well we can draw another of the photographs of like and i have talked about it let's pull up the photograph that is the empty bench and that was one of the bench overlooking the river actually three of these four photographs i took in ireland i had the opportunity to go to ireland may had never been there before the name like mahoney although i married into the mahoney's so and i found just such a rich source of beautiful photographs and so this idea of the empty bench i actually the first time that the six week program gets together i do a meditation which i call the empty bench and the idea is that picture a bench and picture yourself sitting on that bench with your loved one and sharing the memories and sharing the closeness and your life with a loved one and all of a sudden one day that bench is empty your loved one isn't there anymore and so i asked people often benches like that are morial benches and this got a little brass plate on the back about the person and so i asked people if you had a bench for your loved one and you had to write something on that brass plate what would it be what would you say about your loved one in just a few words and that's what gets people talking about what's most important about the person that they've lost and what they want to share with others and then i keep that empty bench metaphor going forward i often accompany it with a quote i have one from people are looking for peace but it can be very slow to find people have to be patient but picture just sitting on that empty branch sitting on the bench with your loved one there so anyway just a photograph of a road in happens to be autumn so it's a beautiful autumn colors and i use that i use several metaphors a sort of female the program one of them is this idea of story and me the new chapters in the story but also the idea of the journey that's a very common theme the idea of you're on a road and you've been on a road with your loved one for a long time and also on that loved one isn't there and as you look down that road you cannot necessarily see all the way down to where you're going what is that new part of the journey going to be for you but you have to have the courage yes step onto that road and start walking and don't look back just for so anyway and then my fourth one is back to ireland and this is the gap of done low and that idea of the gap people have a desire to to fill the gap you know  experience tremendous emptiness with the death of my loved one and i need to fill that up people will often you know change jobs or get a new hobby or travel or trying to do something to fill that gap and the german dietrich bonhoeffer has a beautiful meditation on the idea of keeping the gap open he says nothing can make up for the absence of someone whom we love and it would be wrong to try to find a substitute we must simply hold on and see it through for the gap as long as it remains unfulfilled preserves the bonds between us so that gap represents the continuing bonds that you have with your loved one don't try to fill it up and that's sometimes a revelation for people but it's something that makes sense when you really start to think about it i always start with sleepless in seattle and if i have guys in the group i was apologize i'm sorry this is a chick flick but just go with my here if you remember sleepless in seattle tom hanks at the very beginning his little boy they've lost he's lost his wife and he's got a little a gator ten a little boy calls in a christmas to be on the telephone the what the the radio psychologist my dad's very sad a christmas what should i do to help him and there's this beautiful scene of the dad tom hanks and the little boy in his lap on a bench and the radio psychologist is saying tell me about your wife and he just talks about her and what it feels like to not have her there and it's beautiful and it's a good on trying for people to say well you know i can i can talk about my loved one excellent you know and i'll feel better i have a friend that i go to the movies with all the time and she took it right after the death of my cried through the whole thing at the end i said really kathy you thought this was a good idea but the movie was so awesome because it was about a gentleman who had lost his wife and the wife of belong to a senior citizen chorus and she'd been sick for a long time but despite the illness she participated in this course and she just loved it and he resented that he didn't like the time away from him that she spent with the chorus but after she died he joined the chorus and got the support and a lot of everyone else in the chorus and sort of found his voice both metaphorically and in reality and the whole movie is about reconciling he had to reconcile with the death of his wife and he had been strange from his son and he was able to reconcile with the son as a result and so i show a few clips from that as well so there's a lot of good stuff out there that you can use if you think about it and that's a wonderful program that you do another a wonderful service thing provide so i just want to remind people that if they want to drop in to the senior center it's the first tuesday of every month at five thirty senior center and that would be the drama and then the next cigarette program i'm doing that would involve everything i've been talking about that begins in january ok i want to say the second week in january i'm sorry i didn't get a calendar before we started i want to say it's january tenth or eleventh it's the tuesday it's definitely in the senior center newsletter ok so it's in there in december will be in there in january so you can get all the information how to register for it at the senior center and that will be the six week program that involves these kinds of things and talk about one thing so much you want before we end i just want to give this one public service announcement that we received the belmont savings bank is supporting the big wishes gift drive it in its belmont watertown and cambridge branches to benefit the home for little wanderers from now until december fifteenth stopped by any belmont savings bank branches in belmont and select an ornament from the giving tree on display each ornament indicates the gender and age of a child as well as the type of gift needed your donation of an underactive gift will be delivered to the home for a little wanderers which serves children and youth from birth to age twenty one making a positive impact and over seven thousand lives each year through a wide network of programs