College course aids in overcoming grief

The bereaved mother walked Sister Rose Benedict Troy, CSJ, to her door after a counseling session and opened it onto a busy highway. She reflected: "Why is the world going on when my world stopped?"

That question is part of "the normal grief process," Sister Rose told The Evangelist. "I want them to understand it's normal to feel the way they feel. People listen; they're like sponges. They just want to know. And then they can live, knowing it's okay, that there's nothing wrong with them. I want to give them confidence in their grief, to tell them 'there is nothing wrong with you.'"

Sister Rose, who works for a funeral home in Utica as a grief counselor, is able to help people in part due to a certificate in bereavement studies she earned from Maria College in Albany.

Experience

In her former position as a pastoral associate at St. John the Evangelist parish in New Hartford, a suburb of Utica, one of Sister Rose's major duties was planning funerals and speaking with families after a death.

She created bereavement support groups for widows, widowers and parents, founded a suicide support group, and started six-week general bereavement sessions. Sister Rose also inaugurated "Images of God," a course that helped the bereaved connect with God, and ask the painful questions about death and faith that many people have after a loss.

"Other things are lost in your life because of that death," she explained. "For many people, one of the other losses is faith or a relationship with God because they're angry and have questions."

Maria's lessons

After she was hired by the funeral homes, and in order to "help sharpen my skills and my knowledge," Sister Rose enrolled at Maria College.

For two years, she and a classmate, Christine Abbass, traveled from New Hartford to Albany to attend weekly classes. Ms. Abbass, who had been a participant in some of Sister Rose's support groups, is working at another funeral home.

At Maria, Sister Rose said, "the courses were wonderful, and you can always learn new skills. The greatest thing is that most people in the courses were all professional people who were working with hospices, funeral homes and [in nursing]. We got insights from one another."

Moving on?

Many of the people that Sister Rose counsels have experienced catastrophic or tragic deaths, such as parents who have lost young children or young people who have lost their spouses to accident or illness.

"After a few months, people are saying to the young widow, 'You've gotta move on,' and to the parents, 'You've other children; you have to move on,'" she noted. "That is an impossibility. You adjust, [but you] never get over the death of someone who was significant."

Finding God

As a bereavement counselor for a secular funeral home, Sister Rose often works with families who are of other faiths or no faith at all. As a result, she often plans services for families who do not belong to a church.

"There are a lot of unchurched people," she said. "When there is a death, they don't know where to go. That's one of the difficult things for me. Until I came to the funeral home, 99 percent of the [services I did] could incorporate faith."

While she sometimes misses the community spirit found in a parish, "I've had so many opportunities and wonderful people who have come into my life at really tragic times. I would never have had the opportunity to be with them. That has been a gift."

(Sister Rose is very familiar with the Albany Diocese. She attended school as a child at St. Mary's Institute in Hudson and completed undergraduate work at The College of St. Rose in Albany.)

(Hiring bereavement counselors is a growing trend in the funeral home industry, Sister Rose explained. In the past, a funeral would mark the end of the home's association with a family; now, "we are very aware that that's not the end of our job. We need to support people for as long as they want to be supported. In ten years, hopefully, all funeral homes will have someone like myself on the staff." For information about bereavement courses at Maria College, call Sister Jean Roche, RSM, at 438-3111, ext. 233.)

(8/24/06) [[In-content Ad]]