November 2002, Vol. 4, Issue 2

The Journey of Hope Was There Fore Me.. 

It isn’t every day that someone in your family dies. In fact, it isn’t every day that your mother or father dies. But this isn’t a rare occurrence: many children young or old, even adults, lose parents. What do you do when this sort of thing happens? How are you supposed to deal with this? How should you be feeling? This may race through your head. It did mine. 

I was fourteen years old when my mother died. She was diagnosed with some sort of brain disease.  I was never really told about what it was in great detail, but as far as I could tell, no one really knew what was wrong with her.  When I was 13, she had lost all her hair.  This was quite frightening to my little brother and I (Daniel was 11).  After a few months though her hair grew back and everything was fine.  Then she started having these massively huge headaches.  They hurt her so bad that she had to be hospitalized. I began to get worried now.  I wanted to know what was going on with her. She went to a special hospital somewhere to get examined, and tested for possible diseases.  She came back with no answers but had a CAT scan, and was able to show me what was going on.  She had something growing on her brain. I was worried now.  School didn’t change; I was doing the same things and making the same grades.  I kept my home affairs at home. 

Later in the fall my mother had another headache. She was rushed to the hospital by my aunt. Three days later she died. I was in total shock. How could this really be happening? I didn’t believe it; it seemed so surreal. A rush of mixed feelings hit me like a giant baseball bat knocking the wind out of me. For the whole next week I stayed at home. My brother and I had gotten really sick. My dad and step-mom decided to put my brother and I into a sort of therapy session once a week. I didn’t like it, I knew it wasn’t helping anyone either. For a year and a half Daniel and I went without some good help. My parents were there for me, but I needed something else and they saw that. This is where the Journey of Hope came in.

My parents told Daniel and I about this grief group for kids, teens, and adults alike who have lost family members. I shunned this idea. I didn’t like it at all. I didn’t want to share my feelings with a bunch of adolescents I didn’t know. I had no choice but to go. I decided to be open-minded about this new experience I was about to have because my parents told me we’d be going every other week for a long time. I went along with it. 

We were served a dinner, and then adjourned to our separate groups. There were some preschoolers, a young child group, a Jr. High group, a high school group, and an adult group. I felt a bit odd, in that every kid was going to share his or her story. What if someone laughed at me? Was there going to be anyone crying? I just didn’t know. The facilitator person was a guy named Bob North. This man not only answered these questions for me, but also made this entire experience easier. Bob made every time I went to the discussion group easier. We played games sometimes, and drew pictures, joked around, but whatever we did I felt better and I always got to share a prized memory or a sad memory, or no memory at all. I saw a multitude of high school students pass through this process. It seemed to make anyone that came feel better, be open with their feelings. The Journey of Hope is a wonderful program that has and is helping many people cope with deaths in the family, whether it is controlling one’s feelings, or just letting someone know how you feel. The Journey of Hope was there for me and it will be there for anyone who has felt the pain of losing a loved one.