Living With Grief: After Sudden Loss (1996)
- Foreword
Jack D. Gordon
Dedication and Acknowledgements
- Journey of a Young Widow
Victoria Cummock - After Heart Attack and Stroke
Stephen P. Hersh - America's Number One Killer: Vehicular Crashes
Janice Harris Lord - Survivors of Suicide
Judith M. Stillion - Sudden Violent Death
Lula M. Redmond - Complicated Grief in the Military
Bonnie Carroll, Lisa Hudson, Dianne Ruby - Traumatic Death: Treatment Implications
Charles R. Figley - Social Psychological Aspects of Disaster Death
Vanderlyn R. Pine - Grief Counseling for Survivors of Traumatic Loss
Dana G. Cable - Using Funeral Rituals to Help Survivors
O. Duane Weeks - Complications in Mourning Traumatic Death
Therese A. Rando - Masculine Grief
Terry Martin and Kenneth J. Doka - Law Enforcement and EMS Personnel
Lois Chapman Dick - Spiritual Support After a Sudden Loss
Earl A. Grollman - Sudden Death: How the Media Can Help
Brian Kates - The Response of Schools and Teachers
Robert G. Stevenson - Government's Role in Disaster Response
Laura W. Boyd - An Annotated Resource List on Traumatic Loss
Mary Beth Williams with the assistance of Michelle LedbetterReferences
Bibliographical Information
Foreword
Jack D. Gordon, President Hospices have an obligation, which they accept gracefully, to serve families of their patients-counseling a family even ahead of a death, listening to the anguish of a depressed survivor of a recent loss, arranging a bereavement visit from a hospice social worker or clergyperson. They do all of that and more, naturally and routinely. But they don't stop there.
Close to 90 percent of hospices in the United States reach beyond their own patients and families to become, in a variety of ways, a community resource on grief and bereavement. They often sponsor regular support groups for people who are dealing with complicated mourning that may have begun long before and outside of hospice. It certainly requires providing counseling or guidance at the time of a community crisis. It may involve offering a speaker for schools, service clubs or church groups. Simply it means being there whenever they are needed for as long as they are needed. That is the hospice mission and that is an important service that the Hospice Foundation of America encourages and tries to support.
It was out of that spirit that our first teleconference on living with grief was arranged in 1994. We began with a limited vision of what we might do, hoping for at least 50 sites (or downlinks) and possibly 2,500 people. We exceeded that in a week and ended with an ad hoc network of over 900 sites. The next year we rose to 1,170 sites and about 55,000-60,000 participants. This year we expect to reach 2,000 sites. If we do, we will have an audience of at least 100,000 people who in turn may touch the lives of millions of people each year of their professional careers. That is an exciting success story.
What is equally exciting is that we, like the hospices themselves, are reaching out beyond our limits. We are pleased that we now involve a far wider group of site sponsors than ever before, including hospitals, community colleges, university departments of social work, mortuary science and nursing, military bases, government agencies, including police and EMS personnel, state departments of aging and funeral homes.
This book is the outgrowth of our 1996 teleconference, Living With Grief: After Sudden Loss. We were joined again by the Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC) and welcomed Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) as cosponsor. Major funding came to us from the Open Society Institute's Project on Death in America and from Service Corporation International, Inc. and its associated funeral homes. The American Medical Association (AMA) has been a new and particularly helpful ally. Cokie Roberts, volunteer moderator of each of our teleconferences, contributes in ways beyond simple description or measure.
Because we are a small foundation, our ability to produce and distribute the teleconference and to fund our many activities depends on support from other organizations and individuals. We thank all of those who have been of such precious help, partners truly.
While the teleconference is our most visible activity each year, we also publish a monthly bereavement newsletter, Journeys, edited by Ken Doka. In February 1996, just a year after we started, we distributed 28,300 copies to subscribers through 204 hospices to surviving families and through public libraries to senior citizen groups. We hope to double our distribution this year.
Our foundation makes a special effort to reach out to the military services with their unique problems and needs and to both clergy and physician education programs on end-of-life issues. This year we have increased our support of AIDS education and prevention projects, particularly involving church-connected pastoral care programs in some areas.
Finally, I wish to thank the authors of the chapters contained in this book. Some of their contributions have appeared in other places and sometimes in other forms, but all are joined here in a particularly moving and instructive document. Once again, Ken Doka has attracted the authors, gathered the material as editor, and led us sensitively and firmly to a satisfying result. He deserves, and we offer, our deepest gratitude for his guidance and counsel.
Hospice Foundation of America
