Bereavement Services: Helping One Family at a Time

from The Children's Hospital (TCH) News, June 2006

Geri Nelson, coordinator of

Bereavement Services.

Losing a child is one of the hardest and loneliest journeys a family can ever experience.

Staff at The Children’s Hospital want to help those families through that difficult time with a program called “The Colors of Healing.”

In its sixth year, Bereavement Services offers grief support groups, open discussion forums and several other programs that allow families to memorialize their children.

“The program helps in a way that allows parents to meet other bereaved parents, which helps to lessen the feeling that they are all alone,” said Geri Nelson, coordinator of Bereavement Services.

The goal of the program is to get families together to discuss their experiences, but also to help them remember the lives of their children in a positive way.

Two recent sessions brought 50 bereaved parents together for a night of activities that taught them different techniques for remembering their children. The two main topics were “Planning a Tribute Garden ” and “Preserving Memories.”

“One of our goals is to help parents learn how to memorialize their child every day even though the child is not here in person,” Nelson said.

Rebecca Haller from the Horticulture Therapy Institute taught parents what plants to choose when creating a memorial garden. Plants carry specific meanings; for example, a red tulip symbolizes ardent love. Haller also showed parents how to find the right outdoor space for a memorial garden.

In the second session, Ginny Steele, Children’s archivist, demonstrated several techniques for preserving photographs. She also talked about specific items that could represent a child’s memory, such as a blanket or a favorite toy, and talked about methods to preserve them.

Bereavement services also offers several scrap-booking days in which families gather to create collages of photos and items that remind them of their child’s lives.

“It’s really all about the families and what they need to do to heal from this painful experience,” Nelson said.

Bereavement Services includes employees as well with a session every third Tuesday of the month called “Good Grief at Noon .” These sessions offer employees ways to manage and understand grief on a personal and professional level.

Bereavement Services’ “The Colors of Healing” offers several programs open to anyone who has experienced the loss of a child or just wants to lend a helping hand.

Losing a child is never easy, Nelson said, but parents “are always parents to the child who died no matter what.”