By Keysha Drexel
Journal editor
When Cathy Connor released a white balloon into the air on June 14 at Community Grief Support Services’ first Walk to Remember event, the Hoover woman said she knew it was a big step in coming to terms with the death of her husband.
Connor said since her husband of 26 years, Scott, passed away in October, she’s struggled to face each day without the love of her life.
“I have my good moments and my bad moments, but I think there will always be a part of me that says that this must be a nightmare and that I will wake up someday,” she said.
And just being able to say that–to acknowledge her feelings and to talk about her husband–is something Connor said she couldn’t have done without the support she has received at Community Grief Support Services in Homewood.
“At first, I didn’t think I could make it through the grief support group meetings, but now I really see the value in being around other people who really know what you’re going through because they’re going through the same thing,” Connor said.
Having that sense of community in the midst of their grief is just one way survivors benefit from bereavement support groups, said Steve Sweatt, co-director at Community Grief Support Services.
“One thing that is essential is being able to access a community so that survivors secure validation for their experiences by talking to other people in the same situation,” Sweatt said.
CGSS started as a volunteer service of Ridout’s Funeral Home in the early 1990s to help bereaved families struggling with their loss, said Lisa Harrison, administrative director.
“We incorporated as a nonprofit in 1996 and have been providing free services to help bereaved adults in the greater Birmingham area since then,” Harrison said.
The services offered at CGSS include individual, couples and family grief counseling, community education programs, lunch-and-learn workplace seminars and loss-specific grief support groups led by licensed professional therapists, Harrison said.
“We have different support groups for different kinds of survivors,” Harrison said. “We have groups for those who have lost an adult child, for those who have lost parents, grandparents and siblings and for those who have lost their spouses.”
It was the loss-specific programs that first made Connor go to CGSS, she said.
“I have lost both my parents and that was very, very difficult, but there’s no way to compare it to losing your spouse, your best friend, your better half,” Connor said. “I had heard that term, ‘better half,’ my whole life, but I don’t think I really understood it until Scott died.”
Scott Connor was an executive vice president of bank operations for Regions Bank for 32 years and was healthy up until he was diagnosed with brain tumors in February of last year.
“It all happened so fast. He got the diagnosis on Feb. 5, 2013. He did chemo, radiation and the doctors tried a new drug for brain tumors, but by August of last year, he couldn’t walk, swallow or talk,” she said. “It was so hard to see this happen to this wonderful, funny, caring man that I loved.”
Connor said while she has a great network of friends and family who have supported her, she knew she needed help dealing with the hole in her heart left when Scott passed away.
“Typically, I’m a very together person, but I was so emotional all the time right after Scott died that I knew I had to learn to let go,” Connor said. “My church, Riverchase United Methodist, recommended Community Grief Support Services, so I did some research and I liked the way they have their programs set up there.”
Before attending her first meeting, Connor met with Sweatt to talk about what she could expect.
“What we try to do is bring people for a pre-group orientation session to make sure they get a good introduction and see what the group will be like and if they think it will be a good fit for them,” Sweatt said.
On Jan. 11, Connor went to her first grief support meeting, albeit with some reservations.
“I remember getting ready to go to the meeting that first night and thinking that I didn’t know if I could do it for 11 weeks,” she said. “It’s hard enough to tell your own story, and I just didn’t know if I could go through weeks and weeks of hearing about how others were hurting, too.”
But Connor said the group meetings were eye-openers for her and gave her a new perspective on her situation.
“It wasn’t just a bunch of people sitting around crying and sobbing,” she said. “We had people who had gone through the program come in and talk to us and it was like seeing that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, there is hope that I won’t always hurt this much.”
Hearing the stories of others also helped Connor realize how lucky she is in many ways, she said.
“I’ve heard of people having to sell their homes and other horror stories, and I realized that I was very blessed that my husband was proactive and had everything in order. He was a planner, and we got wills and life insurance and all that the moment we got married,” she said.
While she had misgivings about support groups in the beginning, Connor said by the eighth week of the CGSS program, she knew she had made the right choice–and some new friends.
“We got to know each other individually. We had dinner together, and then by the eighth week, it all started clicking and we were able to laugh together. After Scott died, I didn’t know if I would ever laugh again,” she said.
Sweatt said the grief support program is designed to be a transitional social bridge for survivors.
“People think that they just go to the meetings and talk about their grief, but it is more than that,” he said. “The grief support group allows for those occasions when they want to talk about their pain and for those occasions when they want to talk about other things.”
The ultimate goal, Sweatt said, is to help survivors get back into life at their own pace.
“One of my teachers, Alan Wolfelt, talks about how we live in a grief-avoidance culture. Our programs give people a place to slow down, to experience the profundity of what they’re going through,” he said. “Real healing demands that you allow yourself to experience the loss, and you can’t do that if you just keep running and going and doing. We offer that state of suspension where you can allow yourself to have those feelings.”
Each person has his or her own way of grieving, Sweatt said, and that’s why one-size-fits-all bereavement services are not very effective.
“There’s a fallacy among the public and even many mental health professionals that there are stages of grieving, something you can check off a list and say, ‘Well, now I need to be feeling this because I’ve moved to the next stage,’ but that’s not how it works.”
Sweatt said everyone has an organic, natural way of coping with loss and that professionals like those at CGSS can help survivors find the right avenues to experience emotional release.
Connor said she still experiences a range of grieving emotions and sometimes she feels them all in the same day.
“I still go through denial, I still deal with anger. You go in and out of the emotions, and sometimes everything just hits you like a wave,” she said. “Seeing that other people are on that same emotional rollercoaster ride has helped.”
When she found out about the Walk to Remember event, Connor knew that it would be important for her to participate in it with her children, Kelli Connor Cohen and Tyler Connor.
“I had so much respect for my husband, and I wanted to honor him in some way, to pay tribute to his memory and his life and to just remember him,” she said.
Sweatt said events like the Walk to Remember are connecting rituals that allow survivors to still feel bonded to the loved ones they have lost.
“Finding ways to connect with the joyful memories is important, and it gives the survivors the chance to honor those memories,” he said.
Now that she has completed the 11-week program at CGSS, Connor has signed up to be a volunteer with the organization.
“No one really understands unless they’ve had to walk this path, and I hope that by my sharing my experience, I can help someone else feel the comfort that comes from knowing that someone really gets it,” Connor said.
Groups Offer Grief Counseling, Support
Along with the programs and grief support groups offered at Community Grief Support Services in Homewood, there are several other resources for those struggling with grief over the loss of a loved one.
Alabama Grief Support Services at One Office Park Circle offers several different grief support groups in the Over the Mountain area.
Day groups meet year-round at Shades Valley Presbyterian Church at 2305 Montevallo Road in Mountain Brook and at Hunter Street Baptist Church at 2600 John Hawkins Parkway in Hoover.
An 11-week program for those who have lost a parent and for young widows and widowers is also offered at those locations.
Additionally, Alabama Grief Support Services will start offering general grief support group meetings at South Highland Presbyterian Church at 2305 Highland Ave. in Birmingham on Sept. 11.
For more information about Alabama Grief Support Services programs, visit alabamagrief.org or call 870-0161.
The Amelia Center at 1513 Fourth Ave. South in Birmingham offers counseling and support to parents and families grieving the death of a child and to children, teenagers and young adults up to 21 years old and their caregivers grieving the loss of a loved one.
For more information on the programs of the Amelia Center, visit www.ameliacenter.org or call 638-7481.
Alacare Home Health and Hospice offers the Breakfast Club, a conversational grief group for adults on the second Friday of each month.
The meetings start at 9 a.m. at the Alacare Hoover office at 2970 Lorna Road.
Alacare also offers a seasonal support program with a grief and the holidays workshop during November and December each year.
Plans are also in the works to offer regular grief education seminars to adult grievers in the community, said Paul Moon, Alacare’s bereavement coordinator.
For more information, email Moon at [email protected] or call 981-8437.
At Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church in Homewood, the Beginning Experience program offers a series of support groups and weekend events designed to help the widowed.
Participants in the program meet once a week for 10 weeks. Children’s groups are also available periodically.
For more information, visit birminghambeginningexperience.org or call 969-8509.
In Mountain Brook, Crestline GriefShare offers weekly grief support meetings at Crestline Church, 601 Hagood Street.
For more information, call 879-6001.
The Crisis Center at 3600 Eighth Ave. South in Birmingham offers a survivors of suicide bereavement group program for those who have lost a loved one to suicide.
Facilitated by professionals, the SOS group provides an open, nonjudgmental atmosphere of support without the stigma often associated with suicide. Group members share their stories as well as various coping skills they have found to be helpful in the healing process.
The Survivors of Suicide group meets the first and third Thursday of each month at Riverchase United Methodist Church in Hoover. The address is 1953 Old Montgomery Highway.
For more information, contact Andrea Nelson at [email protected].
