We had hospice last week. Katy loves to go and see the other kids and do the activities. She has improved a lot since she started going to the children’s grief group. For Rob and I though the parents’ version hasn’t had the same effect. Rob finds that it simply digs up things that he has put to rest (no pun intended and naturally he knows that you can never truly put grief behind you yet it does become something that isn’t constantly in your face all the time too), and I find that I am a bit annoyed with the way the group functions. There is a trained grief counselor there but lately she has been working with training sessions for volunteers and so we are left with a hospice volunteer to lead the group. She is an older woman who reads prompts to us from handouts and speaks in platitudes. 

So this last week, she had a video for us to watch. As a former teacher the moment I am told I have to watch a video, I immediately suspect the worst and I am seldom disappointed. This particular one was circa 1989 and was little better than a slide show. It was a narrator talking us through the four seasons with lovely flora photos and inspirational sayings from famous people who have lost loved ones. The four seasons thing was enough to set my teeth on grind because I heard more than I cared to about the importance of living through widowhood for four seasons before one could do anything from sell the house to go out for coffee with someone of the opposite sex, and frankly, I find the idea to be some of the worst nonsense ever, but I am digressing. The video was supposed to set up talking points and to that end our facilitator planned to pause the tape after each season.

The first season was fall. After viewing it, we were asked to comment. I had already decided to not comment. I know, from years and years of faculty meetings and inservices, that the fastest way to kill a crappy exercise is to sit and say nothing. A good teacher (or facilitator) can deal with this but there aren’t that many people who are good at either of the aforementioned and usually they cave fairly quickly. My dearest husband though works for a large multi-national corporation and his training says “When something is bullshit – speak up.” And so he did. He said he felt that the video would have been useful to him in the first month or so but that now it merely dredged up things that didn’t need to be reviewed. We watched the rest of the video without stopping and then we moved on to other topics. 

I love my husband.