COUNTYWIDE : Bereaved Call Grief Program Helpful

Women used to wear black dresses and men donned black armbands when a family member died.

The tradition sent the message to “be gentle with me. I’m in mourning,” said Pickens Hall, who runs the bereavement program at St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard. “Our needs haven’t changed,” she said.

But now, perhaps only “the people next door know” when a family member dies, Port Hueneme resident Paul Walker said.

Walker’s wife of 60 years died in February, 1990, three weeks after she had been found to have brain cancer. He said he found support in the “Growing Through Grief” seminar that Hall runs through the St. John’s department of family and support services.

Participants in the eight-week, non-sectarian program learn to bring their grief out in the open, Hall said.

“The more advanced medical technology has become,” Hall said, “the less we know what death is all about. People grow up to be very mature people without having had the feelings of grief.”

Joyce Shaw of Oxnard said she “was not prepared at all” when her husband of 36 years died in September, 1989.

“I had a lot of bad feelings to work out of myself,” Shaw said. “We all have guilt feelings. We wish we’d done this. We wish we’d done that.”

In one session of the course, participants bring a picture or memento that they use to tell the group about the person who died. They are also urged to write letters to those who died.

One would think that the seminar “would be a very depressing process,” said Dorothy Winnemore of Port Hueneme, whose husband of 44 years died in 1989. “But it’s not. You’re rewarded.”

Winnemore said she was surprised that she was able to go on with her life.

“I was flabbergasted,” she said. “I was ready to go out and meet people and start dating within eight months.”

Port Hueneme resident Dee Elwell said the program helped her to deal with her adult children.

“I didn’t have to lean on their shoulders,” said Elwell, married 41 years to a man who died in March, 1990. “I knew they were hurting too.”

Once you have experienced grief, “you’re very much aware of the needs of other people,” Winnemore said.