By Teri Blair
15 minutes into the grief group I knew it was a mistake. There were still two hours to go, and the stranglehold around my neck was suffocating. It had been, as every attempt had been, an honest effort at finding my way around my father’s death. When he was alive, I thought something would change when he died. It hadn’t. It was all still there.
The grief group leader was hired by the funeral home. A funeral home that was part of a chain in the metropolitan area. He began by telling the group his pedigree. I thought this was to assure us he hadn’t just fallen off the turnip cart. He was a professional with twenty years of grief group experience. We could relax now. In his good hands.
But by the fifteen-minute mark, I saw he didn’t know how to establish boundaries for the group. He didn’t set any for himself nor anyone else. When he told us in flourishing detail how he would be buried in a purple casket, wearing a bathrobe and holding a martini, we had to listen. He needed us to laugh and think he was crazy. Outrageous. When the 70-something woman kept interrupting to loudly wail and moan about her 93-year-old mother “she never thought could die,” when one of the others began openly to flirt with the leader…. when all these things happened within 15 minutes I knew it was a mistake.
I looked at the door, wondering if I could bolt. Then he called me out by name. He knew it because of the name tag I wore. He said I must have a question for him, and that I could ask him anything. I thought There is nothing on God’s green earth you can tell me or show me or answer for me. When I said I didn’t have any questions for him yet, he could see in my face I wasn’t going to fall in line with all the other success stories of people he had helped over the course of 20 years. He turned ever-so-slightly hostile and said to me, in front of the group, that some people just aren’t ready to do the difficult work of grief.
NOTE: WRITING TOPIC — DEATH & DYING is the latest Writing Topic on red Ravine. Frequent guest writer Teri Blair joined QuoinMonkey in doing a Writing Practice on the topic.
What an interesting read. You put me right in that room, all squirmy to leave. Super writing.
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anhinga,
Yes. High squirm factor! I didn’t complete the six-week course, needless to say.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
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Teri, that guy is like my worst nightmare of a therapist! And you depict him so well. Makes me shudder to hear how people in my profession can hold themselves out as healers and then be so destructive. So self-centered.
I’m so glad you never went back. That was a healing decision of its own.
Loved the way you opened this piece.
Death doesn’t necessarily transform our relationships with our parents, does it? I found, after each of mine died, that at first I was relieved that their suffering was over and that I no longer had to squeeze their care into my busy life. Later I missed my Dad but not my mother. She was the harder one for me. Harder to understand, harder to forgive. It has taken many years for me to let go of the wrongs, slights and inadequacies and to hold close what was good between my mother and me. Lots of sifting.
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Jude,
Thanks for reading my writing practice. Yes…that grief counselor was extremely bad. He was *so* out-of-line that it almost would have been funny…except for the fact that we were all in grief.
It helps me to hear you say you missed one parent and not the other. It’s one of those true things that hardly anyone admits.
Such influence they have on us…those parents.
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Squirmy is a great word for this practice, Teri. When you first sent it to me, I could not believe what I was reading. You cut right to the bone of the experience. I am sure I would have walked right out, too, not really believing my ears.
It encapsulates how inadequate we are at dealing with death and dying in this country. And with the process of grief. Culturally, we are a nation focused on youth. It makes me wonder what’s going to happen as the Boomers keep aging. What of those without children? Will communities form that help to take care of each other?
I think often of my biological father who has cancer and wonder what he’s going through. I may never know, except maybe through my aunts. I feel connected through the letter I sent, even if he never responds. Oddly, he may be the first parent I lose — one that I never really knew at all.
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Oh, I forgot to mention, thank you for writing with me!
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Quoin,
Just today I was thinking about the letter you sent to your dad; I have meant to ask you about it. This one didn’t come back, so we know he got it, right? It was an effort toward reconciliation, who knows what still may happen?
How can someone leading grief groups be afraid of real grief? To think lightening things up with ridiculous stories is a good plan?
I’ve often thought about the people who stayed, who didn’t leave. Who kept listening to him crack jokes about his own funeral.
Thanks for the invitation to write with you. 🙂
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Welcome, Teri. Yes, I assume he got the letter. Once in a while I think about it, but for the most part I try to let it go. You are right — never know what may happen. I may call my aunts in the next few weeks to see how things are going. It reminds me that there are many different kinds of grief. Losing parents through divorce or separation — for children, that can be something they have to grieve as well. As adults, things become much clearer because we’ve lived enough to have gone through our own relationship experiences.
That is strange about the grief group. I don’t know how a person leading a grief group could be afraid of real grief. How in the world did they get into that position? It does make you wonder about the ones that stayed in the group. What happened to them? And did anyone else feel the way you did.
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Teri, I read your piece this morning. Your voice is so your voice. Such a strength. And the comedian-funeral-home-therapist. Ugh. How bizarre. He sure has pulled one over on the folks who’ve hired him. So much here to continue to write about. Hope you do.
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QuoinMonkey,
I will look forward to the update when you call your aunts. Something about the way you say that made me think of Truman Capote…he always talked about “my aunts.” The ones, of course, you raised him when his mother was flitting around with various men.
The leader of the grief group was very outgoing, maybe the funeral directors thought he would be an uplifting presence to people who were down in the dumps. I thought about contacting the funeral home, but needed to choose my battles. When a parent dies, you have limited energy to toss about.
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Roma,
Oh, it’s a great compliment to hear my voice is my voice. I don’t notice it, but I’m glad someone does.
Maybe I will write about it some more. When QuoinMonkey gave us the prompt I had no idea that is what would bubble out. It was an instant reaction. The funeral home. The waiting area with at least a dozen kleenex boxes. A bunch of sad-looking, pale people. And Mr. Outrageous.
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