c. 1999 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ It’s Memorial Day weekend and America is knee deep in hot dogs, picnics and the beginning of summer. But for Glen and Linda Nielsen of Reston, Va., whose 22-year-old daughter Lisa died in 1988 after a 5 1/2-year battle with brain cancer, Memorial Day won’t be a day at the beach.

They, along with other bereaved parents from across the country, are gathering at a hotel in a Washington suburb to remember their children and to help each other cope with grief.

In 1992, the Nielsens founded In Loving Memory _ a support group for bereaved parents with no surviving children. The group is holding the conference _ Common Threads, Healing Hearts _ with funding by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Project on Death in America.

It comes at a time when there is increased attention to grief and healing, especially in instances where children or other family members die suddenly as in the Oklahoma City bombing or the Littleton, Colo., school shooting.

Some experts say Americans are only slowly coming to understand grief and how it might be healed _ and clergy aren’t much more knowledgeable than laity.

At the Common Threads conference, participants will launch colorful balloons to symbolically remember their children, hear parents and professionals speak about grief, and worship at an ecumenical service conducted by the Rev. Ray Young, a bereaved father and pastor of Harvard Terrace Baptist Church in Fresno, Calif.

Glen and Linda Nielsen said they were devastated after Lisa’s death.

Since Lisa was their only child, she was the main focus of their lives.”There aren’t any words to describe what it’s like when your child dies,”Linda Nielsen said.”There’s just no loss like the loss of your child.” She said their loss has been even more difficult, at times almost unbearable, because”we live in a death-denying society; people don’t like to talk about grief.” Glen Nielsen said he has found that”the outside world is uncomfortable when we talk about Lisa. They think we should be `over it.'” Though they were in agony, the Nielsens began reaching out to other bereaved parents a few months after Lisa died. They began calling parents who had lost children, offering support and information.

Why?”Because we were hurting so badly,”Glen Nielsen said.”We’d burned the candle at both ends _ invested so much energy in trying to make Lisa well. When she died, we had nothing left to invest our energy in. We needed something to pour our energy into. We needed to help others so we could help ourselves.” Nearly 11 years after Lisa’s death, the Nielsens have moved from acutely grieving for their daughter to being bereaved parents.”We’re now at the point where we can focus on how Lisa lived rather than on how she suffered and died,”Linda Nielsen said.”You have to go through the grieving process,” Glen Nielsen said. “If you avoid grief, you won’t deal with either the pain or the good things.” The Nielsens’ experience of grieving in a”death-denying society”is representative of many who grieve for parents, spouses, children, co-workers and friends, according to experts on grief.”Since World War II, we’ve been living in a `hurry-up,’ stressful, very competitive, task-oriented culture,”said Kris Powell, a stress management specialist and director of wellness services at the Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis, Md.”Kids compete to get into school. We compete to get things done fast. We don’t like to sit still. In the car, we want to go through the yellow light.” This greatly increases the stress of grieving, Powell said.”We’ve become competitive about death,”she said.”Our culture tells people to `get over’ grief _ to `just deal with it.’ We want people to hurry up and get `through’ grief. We don’t like it when people feel too much for too long.” But grief isn’t a task to be completed and then checked off the `to do’ list. It comes in waves, sometimes long after a loved one has died, often when least expected.

In an April teleconference for the Hospice Foundation of America, Cokie Roberts of ABC News told of her own experience.”I was at the school where my sister and I went and I was being entertained by the choir,”she said.”One little girl came in wrong. And another little girl helped her out.”It brought up a moment when my sister had helped me get my alto line right and my sister’s been dead eight years. And I just burst into tears. Totally unexpected.” Many Americans are uncomfortable when people talk about the moments when grief bursts into the normal routine. Even clergy, whose role it is to comfort the bereaved, aren’t immune to the task-oriented bias of society, Powell said.”Some clergy may feel job satisfaction when they’ve completed `the task’ of helping someone `get over’ grief. Churches are institutions. Religious leaders, like leaders of other institutions, are accountable to time restraints,”she said.”Some (clergy) are sensitive. All, no matter how seasoned, have to learn about being supportive,”said Marcia Lattanzi-Licht, a psychotherapist, nurse and co-founder of the Boulder County (Colo.) Hospice. Few clergy receive much training on death or grief as seminarians, but many now are taking steps to learn more about working with bereaved people.

The Hospice Foundation of America says its”Clergy to Clergy”audio cassette series, released in 1997, has proved popular with ministers, priests and rabbis who counsel the bereaved.”When we grieve, we question our belief,”Lattanzi-Licht said.”It forces us to look at our life’s meaning.” Young, the Baptist minister who will lead the ecumenical service at the Memorial weekend conference, said he has become better at ministering to the bereaved since his 19-year-old son Matthew died in an auto accident in 1994.”I sometimes think I should apologize to all those grieving who I tried to help before Matthew died,”he said.”Before it happened, I had no idea this hurt so bad.” Too often, Young said, ministers are trained”to preach a good funeral sermon. But that’s just the beginning. Sometimes you have to emotionally hold someone’s hands for a few years while they grieve.” Many who”find a special place for grief and loss in their life”have formed a new”spiritual relationship”with the person who has died, said Jane Bissler, a grief counselor in Kent, Ohio.

Christians, Jews, Buddhists and those who are unaffiliated with any religious faith can do this, she said.”Everyone has faith in something _ whether its in God, in a higher power, in art or in nature. Their faith helps them create this spiritual connection.”

DEA END RNS