Submitted photo of 2013 Camp Faith
A day dedicated to dealing with grief — something with which no one is ever fully prepared to deal.
One of the most difficult days of my young life was the day after my grandfather died. In hindsight, my mother was trying desperately to hold it together in the wake of her dad’s death. In my juvenile view, the first day without him was treated as any other day, which made everything worse. I was up with the sun, dressed in my school uniform, shuffled out the door to my 4th grade class. I was supposed to act like everything was normal, but I was miserable and entirely baffled about what I was supposed to be feeling. I thought maybe death was something you just moved past, that maybe my sadness was weak or abnormal or that I was acting like a crybaby — as adults we at least have some context for coping with death. As a kid, you just feel lost.
How could my mother have been expected to evaluate and control my experience of the event when she was in so much grief herself? It is a situation in which almost every family eventually finds themselves, but how to deal with it is never clear or easy.
I was reminded of that miserable elementary school experience today when I learned about this weekend’s Camp Faith, a free one-day grief camp for children and their families this Saturday (Aug. 9) from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Faith Presbyterian Hospice.
What a good idea — a day dedicated to dealing with a difficult issue with which no one really is prepared to deal.
The camp features a full day of grief education for children who have lost a grandparent, parent or family member, especially kids who have experienced loss over the summer, who will be returning to school in a few weeks.
Broadly, there are two scenarios that can occur to a student returning to school after losing a loved one over the summer, say organizers of Camp Faith:
One, the death might be of such significance that everyone at the school knows about it and therefore the student is bombarded with questions or attempts at sympathy that could be stressful.
Two, the death could be, for example, the expected death of a family member and those at school assume the student is too resilient to be suffering, that they moved past their grief over the summer or they simply do not know that anything happened.
At Camp Faith, the grieving student, accompanied by a parent, works with licensed counselors to address loss. Participants meet other families dealing with similar issues, create memorials for lost loved ones and break into groups based on age, experiences, etc.
“It is important that the parents or guardians understand the best ways to help their children with grief,” says Valerie Sanchez, director of bereavement and integrated therapies at Faith Presbyterian Hospice. “Oftentimes, a natural reaction is for no one to ever mention or say the loved one’s name. This camp gets the kids and adults to break the ice and opens up a dialogue that enables them to help each other. The adults will then be able to help their children or grandkids create a strategy for what the kids can say when someone asks them about their loss …
“As adults, we do not always understand the ways children process death and grieve. Kids need the adults in their lives to be open to their unique expressions of mourning. The challenge often arises when adults are also struggling with grief. Camp Faith was created to offer children and their parents, grandparents or guardians a safe place to express their grief while honoring their loved one.”
Lake Highlands-based Faith Presbyterian Hospice will host this workshop at their Preston Hollow retreat center at 3991 E. Renner. Tomorrow, Aug. 8, is the deadline to register. The event is free, but you must fill out the application located here at prescs.org .
