Hot Line Has Solace for the Grieving

John James could barely hear the caller on the other end of the line.

“I don’t want my son and daughter-in-law to hear me,” the woman whispered. She explained that her husband died last Dec. 22. They had been married 55 years. And although her son and daughter-in-law had just arrived to spend the holidays with her in Whittier, she was not happy.

In fact, she wanted to cry because she missed her husband, especially now. But she was afraid to mourn in front of her son and his wife; she didn’t want another lecture on ways to live her life without the man who was a part of it for more than half a century.

“They keep telling me that I should be fine now, that it’s been a year since he died, that I shouldn’t be crying,” the woman told James. By the end of the conversation, the woman realized she wasn’t alone in her sorrow and hung up feeling better.

James is founder of the Grief Recovery Institute of Los Angeles, a 6-year-old, nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people cope with the sense of loss that results from a death, a divorce, a job change, even retirement.

The institute, which relies on private donations, is operated by four staffers and several volunteers who have been trained in grief-recovery counseling. They provide information to the public and conduct grief-recovery seminars for health-care professionals.

The institute’s latest service is the country’s first toll-free holiday grief hot line--(800) 445-4808. James, who co-authored “The Grief Recovery Handbook” and has taught graduate courses on grief at the University of San Diego and the University of Phoenix, says he targeted the holidays because “Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, the New Year are all about family, and everything is a constant reminder that someone in the family is not there.”

James knew from personal experience that it was perfectly fine for the caller to cry her heart out. Twelve years ago, he was looking for someone to help him cope with his grief after his 3-day-old son died of respiratory failure.

“Everyone wanted to talk about everything except my feelings,” he recalls. “The first sentence I heard after my son died was from a nurse who said, ‘Well, at least you’re fortunate. You can have other children.’ ”

Intellectually, James knew that was true. But at the time, he says, “I wasn’t dealing with an intellectual problem. I was dealing with grief.”

He still is. A day doesn’t go by that he doesn’t think about his baby boy. But after researching grief on his own because there was no one to turn to for help, he now understands that it’s OK to do so. “It’s a normal and natural thing to do,” he says.

“We have a 911 number for people who break their arms,” James says, “but who can you call if your heart is broken? If you break a leg, you get six weeks off with disability pay. But if your mother dies, the attitude is that you better be back at work tomorrow and you better be together. It’s a sad commentary.”

James had hoped to start the hot line last year, but the institute couldn’t afford it. This year, the financial picture didn’t look any better until his wife, actress Jess Walton (who portrays Jill Abbott on the daytime soap “The Young and the Restless”), appeared on a celebrity edition of “Wheel of Fortune.” She won $3,000 for her favorite charity, the Grief Recovery Institute--enough to set up the holiday grief hot line and operate it for two months.

Since Nov. 1, institute volunteers working four telephone lines have counseled and consoled more than 1,500 despondent callers from Albany to Albuquerque. “What they all have in common is the experience of having gone through grief themselves,” James says.

Calls are answered from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, Pacific Coast time. Public-service announcements on radio and television, and word of mouth have helped increase awareness of the hot line.

James is determined to keep the hot line open after Dec. 31 through donations ($120,000 is needed to expand the service to 24 hours a day, seven days a week) because, he says, millions of people each year lose a friend or relative and the holiday season isn’t the only time grievers need a quick fix. Birthdays, anniversaries and other family gatherings can be sad occasions that make people want to pick up the phone and speak to someone with a sympathetic ear.

That’s why the woman from Whittier called.

“I asked her to share with me about her husband,” James recalls. “She spoke about their first Christmas and the little tree they bought because they were too poor to celebrate in a big way, but still they were happy and together.”

Eventually, the woman stopped whispering. Her tears turned to laughter after James asked her to recall a funny holiday story about her husband. Then James helped the woman work out a sentence for her to repeat whenever she feels gloomy during the next few weeks: “From time to time during the holidays, I will miss my husband, and when I cry, I don’t need to be fixed because there is nothing wrong with me.”

Says James: “The whole problem is lack of education for all of us--for the griever and those around the griever. We need to nurture each other and talk about our feelings, especially during the holidays.”