Grieving Centers Help Children Cope With Pain of a Loved One's Death

By CASEY COMBS

Dec. 7, 1997 12 AM PT

ASSOCIATED PRESS

PITTSBURGH — Nicole Graycar was only 5, but she wanted to be the strong one in her family after a brain aneurysm killed her mother.

Nicole’s father and older sister mourned with tears, but Nicole was careful not to cry. Over time, her stoicism faltered. She had frequent stomach problems and, at 12, wanted to kill herself.

That’s when Paul Graycar decided his younger daughter needed to break through her tough facade. For help, he called Pittsburgh’s Center for Grieving Children.

After meeting with other bereaved children, Nicole wept all the way home and cried herself to sleep. “I thought my life was ruined and that it wasn’t going to get any better,” said Nicole, now an eighth grader. “But when I was going to the center, I found out that it doesn’t have to hurt anymore. The memories won’t go away, but the pain will subside.”

Pittsburgh’s center, opened in 1996, joined similar groups around the country in helping children talk with peers about friends, parents and siblings who have died.

“The kids who come realize ‘I’m not the only one,’ ” said Fred Rogers, the center’s honorary chairman and creator of “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.” “There isn’t anything that beats a community of trust for healing.”

The Dougy Center, the first to focus on youngsters, was founded in Portland, Ore., in 1982 by a nurse, Beverly Chappell. In the years since, Dougy volunteers have helped 75 similar programs get started, and they estimate there are at least as many others in operation. Though the centers have no clearinghouse, hospitals or funeral homes may be able to locate one.

Portland’s center is named for the late Dougy Turno, a 10-year-old with a brain tumor. He had written to death-and-dying guru Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, asking why no one counseled dying children.

When Dougy, a Midwesterner, arrived at the Oregon Health Sciences University for treatment, Kubler-Ross asked her friend Chappell to work with him. Ultimately, Dougy made his rounds at the hospital talking to dying children, saying he understood their feelings because he, too, was dying.

Observing how children could help each other, Chappell opened the center. But she encountered early resistance from physicians and other professionals.

“Everybody looked at us and said to us, ‘You’ve got to be crazy. Kids don’t grieve,’ ” she said. “People don’t like to talk about death and grief. . . . Consequently, we totally shield our kids from it.”

The need is real. From a handful of children in the first year, Dougy grew to nearly 100 in the second. Now 250 children visit the center each month.

One in 20 children will lose a parent before age 12, according to Alan Wolfelt, director of the Center for Loss and Life Transition in Fort Collins, Colo., and author of 14 books on grief and five on children.

Though death was a normal part of growing up at the turn of the century, today’s society denies death, he said. “We live in a culture that doesn’t understand the role of hurt in healing.” That accounts for the angry letters accusing him of making life more difficult for children because he encourages them to talk about their pain.

In fact, children’s feelings often are ignored when a parent or sibling dies. Worse, they may be told to stifle tears to spare surviving family members. Many children already do this instinctively.

The result? Anger, withdrawal, perfectionism, even physical problems such as headaches, disrupted sleep, eating disorders.

Getting away from aching family members or unsympathetic classmates is a powerful antidote. As Chappell noted, children need a place where “they could say things, and their moms wouldn’t cry.”

Like Dougy, Pittsburgh’s center uses community volunteers instead of trained therapists. They lead discussions with children grouped by age and sometimes by type of loss--of parent or sibling, by suicide, murder, illness.

The center is funded through a private foundation so that the sessions, one a week for nine weeks, are free. Parents meet in a separate room while children pursue art projects and write in journals to untangle their emotions.

Even toddlers can work out their pain. That makes Dougy’s “volcano room,” with padded walls and punching bags, popular. One 3-year-old, for instance, spent a day beating up a teddy bear. “They beg to go down there,” Chappell said.

Of course, not all children-- especially older ones--are eager to talk about their innermost feelings and weep in front of peers.

Denise Barron of suburban Pittsburgh initially had to drag her four boys, ages 10 to 16, to the center. Three years after their father died in a car crash, the youngsters were slipping at school. But after the first session, the boys were hooked.

They grew closer as brothers, fighting less and rooting for one another at athletic events. Now Anthony, an eighth grader, is in training to counsel other children.

For Nicole Graycar, the grieving center brought hope. This year, on the anniversary of her mother’s death, she read her poetry aloud at a session. Her poem compared her mother’s years with the family to a sunny day, and the years after her death to a storm.

“It said how after each rainstorm, the sun will come out,” Nicole recalled, “and there has to be a rainbow.”

The Dougy Center suggests anyone interested in locating help in a specific area visit the Web at www.ubalt.edu/www/bereavement.