Group Helps Bereaved Accept the Future

Joyce Schlagel knows all too well the pain that comes from the death of a child.

But through a newly formed bereavement group, she is able to share her feelings about her loss with others in similar situations.

“We don’t dwell on death,” says Schlagel, whose 18-year-old daughter, Jennifer, died in an accident the day before Thanksgiving 1987. “We learn how to live with it and how to go on.

The bereavement group, Cherished Remembered With Warmth, was founded by Helen Wagner, whose 30-year-old son died in a traffic accident.

Each word in the organization’s name begins with an initial of the son, C. Richard Wagner.

The twice-monthly meetings are open to anyone--including those who have lost beloved pets.

Daughter’s Death

Schlagel says the meetings have helped her husband, John, become able to talk about their daughter’s death.

“I really couldn’t talk to him about it. I knew he needed to talk to someone,” she says. “Christmas was hard for us. We opened up what she had bought and cried.”

A grieving family member never knows when the wound may reopen. Schlagel says she was shopping once when she saw flowers that would have looked nice in Jennifer’s hair on prom night.

“I had to leave the shop and go out on the street,” she recalls. “The first time I went shopping for Christmas for the boys it seemed everything she liked jumped out at me. Now I can walk by the girls’ shops that she liked.”

Wagner says the group’s youngest participant was a 16-year-old girl whose brother was killed in a motorcycle accident. The quietest was a woman who sat silently for a couple of hours and then started crying.

Wagner, who has read more than 70 books on bereavement, tries to convince other group members that there is hope.

“An awful lot of people waste an awful lot of energy and time trying to make life the way it used to be and to feel the way they used to feel,” she says.

“When that doesn’t happen, they get really down on themselves. They have to understand it’s never going to be the same. They have to build a new life.”