12.18
0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Dec 1, 2009 | by Sean Maher
The first holiday season after a loved one’s death can be among the hardest experiences for his or her survivors — burdensome and isolating while others celebrate in good cheer.
But to remain quiet during grieving can lead to more problems, and community memorial events planned for this week aim to bring the bereaved out of their silence and into the support of families who may share their experience. The annual Celebration of Light, to be held tonight in Oakland and Saturday in San Mateo, is an event open to the public and aimed at celebrating the memories of those who died this year, organizer Chris Taich of Pathways Home Health & Hospice said.
“To have a tradition that focuses on the light of their loved ones that died is important to bring forward in this season,” Taich said. “It really is more common that people are afraid to talk about them, their passed loved ones, and spoil the mood.”
“In the first year — not that grief is over after that — but the first year is a really intense year of everything being the first: first birthday, first holidays, first everything,” Taiche said. “We want to be able to walk that journey with them.”
The ceremonies are relatively simple and aimed to appeal to those of all faith traditions, Taich said. Attendees during the ceremony’s most important sequence walk to the front of the room, light a candle and speak aloud the name of their loved one.
“That’s one of the most difficult experiences for the bereaved: They feel like their loved one will be forgotten,” Taich said. “So in fear they avoid bringing up their names. But I think that compounds the grief, makes it more difficult for them to cope.”
Kari Totah, 42, attended the ceremony in San Mateo last year after her father’s death.
“It was a wonderful experience,” Totah said. “They had a gentleman there with a very powerful poem. … It was really intense, a husband who had lost his wife. He went through all the stages that they went through during her dying process. It pinpointed so many things I think all of us had gone through: hearing someone we love had not much longer to live, the hospital experience, with ‘do not resuscitate,’ dealing with different medical providers. It was very, very powerful and it evoked a lot of emotion from everyone in the room.”
Allowing strong emotions to flow is a crucial part of the grieving process, Taich said.
“Unfortunately, grief is one of those things that if you don’t let it in, it seeps in anyway and harms your life in other ways,” Taich said. “Closing off one emotion bottles up a lot of emotions. If you shut down your capacity to grieve, you may also be shutting down your ability to really love, and really care.
“We just don’t like those bad feelings,” she added. “We have an illusion that somehow we’re supposed to be happy all the time. And I don’t know anybody who is. Especially in grief and loss, we should allow ourselves to feel grief and sadness.”
The event is cathartic and healing not just for grieving families, but also for the hospice staff that hosts the event, said the Rev. Diana Brady, Pathways spiritual care director.
“Being caregivers doesn’t mean we are without the need for comfort ourselves in the midst of loss, and remembering people is a part of that,” Brady said.
“One thing I also love is that the ceremony is about light, a symbol you see within almost every faith tradition in the world,” she added. “In the Christian faith, of course, there is the light of God: ‘Let there be light,’ and the light of Christ. In Judaism, it’s more representative light, like Hanukkah, more a symbol of God’s faithfulness than associated with a particular person.”
“Within Buddhism, light isn’t connected with a person, but light represents the light of Buddha’s teachings
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