Getting intimate with death

Local professionals help dying and bereaved cope with the inevitable

Nadine Gariepy-Fisk tucks her four-year old son Oliver into bed and wanders into her garden to admire her flowers. With summer finally here the recent showers have begun to bring out colour and new life.

“Mama mama!” shrieks her son from the door. “We forgot the heart!”

She crouches down looking into his eyes with comfort and concern. Each night Gariepy-Fisk sits with her two boys before bed to do a love and kindness meditation together while holding stone hearts. They send positive energy to each other to their loved ones or to someone who is struggling. Most recently they’ve been sending love and kindness to their grandma who has fallen ill. Tonight they forgot.

“Mommy I’m going to be so sad that she’s going to die” says Oliver.

“Yes darling you are going to be sad and it’s going to be hard” she says.

THE HEALING JOURNEY

Death is an open discussion in Gariepy-Fisk’s household. In fact it’s a topic she faces daily as director of programs and services at Hospice Calgary. She was moved to go into grief counselling after doing research in pediatric oncology while completing her master’s degree in Montreal. “One of the pieces I found difficult was there was a real sense that the children wanted to talk about the fact that they were so sick… the fact that they were afraid they were going to die” she says. “But the adults around them were afraid to talk about that and weren’t allowing that.”

Grief work has traditionally focused on helping the bereaved move through the grieving process — moving through the steps until the person “has sucessfully resovled the loss” according to one journal article. However when it comes to Gariepy-Fisk’s approach to counselling families on preparing for and dealing with death she says it’s really about riding out the journey of grief with them. “You’re kind of walking alongside with them and checking in” she explains. She says grief starts when a person receives a diagnosis and it’s important to acknowledge how the person is feeling and the changes they’re making at different times.

One family that Gariepy-Fisk has helped along their journey is the Gessners.

Gariepy-Fisk sits on the floor with Sheri Gessner and her two sons Brady 11 and Carson 8 at the Graham Kid’s Corner room inside Hospice Calgary playing with building-blocks. Above them the sun shines through the skylight even as raindrops hit the glass outside. The room’s four walls are covered in art made by children and families sending messages to their loved ones who are sorely missed but never forgotten. The room has seen tears and anger and sorrow but it’s also seen triumph. It carries messages of hope — hope for those who are gone and hope that those still here will move forward.

The Gessners came to Hospice Calgary about five years ago just after Sheri’s husband Shane received transplant surgery — one of numerous procedures and treatments he underwent during decades of living with illness and complications from a rare blood disease. When the family began receiving counselling Sheri was working full-time at her job as a mental health support worker driving her sons to and from school and hockey practices and taking care of and co-ordinating care for her sick husband. “My life was exhausting and I couldn’t give” says Sheri. She began to learn how to deal with stress and anxiety. Gariepy-Fisk helped the family prepare for Shane’s death and to understand how that would change their lives. Shane died in April 2012 surrounded by his family. “I’ve learned it’s okay to let [my sons] know how I feel” says Sheri.

Brady and Carson say counselling has taught them coping mechanisms to work through their own grief. Some of these include building a tower of blocks and tearing it down or finding a peaceful space in the house to be alone. Gariepy-Fisk says children often don’t know how to articulate their feelings because they don’t have the life experience to make sense of it so these types of activities can help.

DEEP LISTENING AND COMPASSION

Bob Glasgow rocks back and forth as he walks to his office with the help of his cane crossing the creaky hall floors of the 129-year-old building that is now home to the FCJ Christian Life Centre. A retired chaplain of the Rockyview Hospital and now a pastoral counsellor Glasgow spent the majority of his childhood in debilitating pain constrained to his bed or wheelchair due to juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. His illness subsided in his mid-20s but he’s still had over a dozen joint replacements since.

Glasgow says his personal experience with illness created a lack of direction and a real uncertainty in him as a young man. “Often when illness strikes people are not sure they can continue with their present goals and they’re not sure what the possibilities are” says Glasgow.

At 23 spiritual experiences and long talks about theology with a close friend inspired Glasgow to convert to Christianity. He went on to study ministry and has been helping people in times of crisis for over 40 years. He now does private counselling in his office at the FCJ Centre and also offers bereavement education and counselling to professionals.

As a chaplain and counsellor Glasgow says he simply helps clients based on their own beliefs. “I sit down with people with no agenda other than to listen deeply and to follow in behind what their responses are” he says adding that his focus is to enter into “a sacred conversation” and listen to people’s stories of suffering. He explains that it’s important for people to put their sorrow into words because the chaos of it can greatly overwhelm them.

Over 25 years ago Glasgow began leading grief support groups at the Rockyview General Hospital. For years they operated solely on donations but eventually became the funded Grief Support Program. In 2012 the program moved to a space called the Bob Glasgow Grief Support Centre in the Richmond Road Diagnostics and Treatment Centre.

Bev Berg Grief Support Program manager at the Richmond centre who’s worked with Glasgow since the mid-90s says they see about 1400 new clients each year. She says Glasgow’s compassionate nature and hard work has made a large impact in the field of grief work. “People just have a huge sense of gratitude when he’s in their lives helping and supporting them” says Berg.

However Glasgow says that one of the major road blocks to healing is the pressure from others to do so quickly. He works with many parents whose children have died and he says the average time it takes to reach a point where they can move forward is about two to five years. He argues that we are in a death- and sorrow-denying culture. “It touches us at our deepest fear… the fear of being left alone” says Glasgow adding that uncertainties about death also leads to anxiety.

THE IMPORTANCE OF RITUAL

When Kathleen Charpentier’s husband Richard knew he was dying after a three-year fight against thyroid cancer she says he wanted to make his death a beautiful experience shared with his community. “Richard really believed that death and dying were something to be embraced and it was going to be the last great thing that he was going to teach and share with his children” says Charpentier of her husband who died on May 16.

However because Charpentier’s family isn’t religious she didn’t feel comfortable asking for guidance from a priest. Instead she called Sarah Kerr of Calgary to come out to her family’s farm in Castor Alberta and help facilitate the ceremonies following Richard’s death.

Kerr has been a practising death midwife for just over six months. Her goal is to facilitate a spiritual experience for dying people and their families that is based on ritual and honouring the soul’s journey through death. She can be brought in to help someone during illness during death after a death or to help someone cope with unresolved grief. She also performs euthanasia ceremonies for pets.

“Rituals and ceremony are really how people make sense of big transitions” says Kerr. She says ceremonies such as funerals shift energetic patterns and change things in a person’s life. She helps create these experiences based on the family’s values and spiritual wishes.

Kerr also helps with a process known as home death care. Between death and burial or cremation families may choose to keep the body at home for two to three days. Kerr explains that in many cultures it is believed that it takes the soul a few days to leave the physical body. “It really brings us into a more intimate relationship with death” says Kerr. “We’re so dysfunctional in the way that we approach death. When a body is whisked away often without people even getting a chance to see it it feeds that illiteracy about what death is. And death is actually quite normal.”

Charpentier says she was committed to caring for her husband’s body at home which involved bathing and dressing him in the hours after his death. “I personally kissed Richard’s eyes closed and I tied his chin up and I held him after he died” says Charpentier.

The following days consisted of multiple ceremonies led by Kerr. Richard died on a Friday and on Saturday about 40 people from what Kerr refers to as his “intimate circle” came together at the home to tell stories about him.

On Sunday immediate family and a few close friends gathered at what Charpentier calls “The Rock” a sacred spot on their farm where they’ve held weddings and other celebrations in the past. Her sons laid Richard’s body on their homemade “prairie canoe” made out of poplar poles latched together beneath spruce bows and a bison hide. Charpentier recalls the men taking turns carrying Richard’s body two men on each side of the canoe out to “The Rock” as her daughter and a family friend played on the drums. At the ceremony Kerr led the way. Rituals involved each immediate family member placing something into the canoe and speaking about why they chose that item to go with him. After Kerr shook a rattle over the body to release the chakras (energy centres)( Charpentier says it was undeniable that she could no longer feel her husband and that his spirit was indeed released.

After the ceremony the family held a party at their home with great food drinks and lots of laughter which is exactly what Richard wanted says Charpentier. On Monday his body was cremated and on Wednesday the Castor community gathered at a ceremony led by Kerr at the community hall. “I have undeniable grief but it’s very peaceful” says Charpentier.

The presence of community in death midwifery is integral says Kerr. “Western culture is so individualistic. We think we’re separate.” She explains that when a person dies the community around that person is also affected and it can only be healed in a collective way. Charpentier says that after her husband’s death her entire community really stepped in to help with the ceremony. She says she believes people do want to contribute to their community but that our society doesn’t create a space for them to do that.

Kerr believes that if people were to have a deeper understanding of death and not fear it so much we wouldn’t have such a materialistic culture. “We hold onto life and onto the material world with a death grip because we think ‘this is all there is.’ But cultures who understand a bigger spiritual frame of life say… it’s your spiritual development that matters” she says.

FINDING COMFORT IN DEATH

Many of the people that Gariepy-Fisk Glasgow and Kerr meet die soon afterwards.

“We try not to take it home but there’s a part of it that is with you… you’ve integrated it. And you hug your children tighter and your walks are a little bit longer” says Gariepy-Fisk. She copes with death by talking to co-workers or processing her feelings on her drive home.

For Glasgow he works hard at releasing people. He says that if caregivers carry people and their stories with them they’ll dominate their life and they will often burn out.

On the other hand Kerr believes that remembering people and even talking to them after they’ve died is healthy. “It gives me a lot of comfort to know that death is not an end it’s just a long-term cycle… energy continues” she says.