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When a child dies, search for solace sometimes leads to support group.

June 26, 2005 1:07 am

By DONYA ARIAS

N THE YEAR after Gloria Blake's 17-year-old son died in a car accident, she thought she was going crazy.

"I needed someone to talk to who knew what I was going through," said the Caroline County woman.

Kathie Kelly said she was numb for months after her 3-year-old son, Kevin, died suddenly, collapsing from a sudden heart attack one afternoon while playing with his ball in the backyard.

"I had suicidal thoughts," Kelly admitted, even though she had a newborn baby girl to care for. "You feel like you don't have anything to live for, and you want to be with that child."

In addition to professional counseling, Kelly, Blake and dozens of area parents have found solace in a support group called The Compassionate Friends. They meet monthly to talk, to listen, to cry, and, sometimes, even to laugh. People might show up soon after a child's death, or they might come to talk about a grief they've pushed away for decades.

"Everyone's child has died differently, but we're all experiencing the same thing," said Kelly, who has headed the Fredericksburg chapter of The Compassionate Friends for the past three years and recently moved from Colonial Beach to King George. "You can get what you need to help you make it through the next month."

Usually only a handful of parents gather for monthly meetings, but a newsletter goes to about 200 group members in the Fredericksburg area. They hold a yearly candlelight vigil in December, meet for picnics and other events and offer support to each other through phone and e-mail chats.

"It's like a family," said Dee Martin-Lam, whose only child, Jeff, died in 1998 at age 19 after falling asleep at the wheel en route to an early job. "I know they'll listen if I have something to say. And they won't judge me."

Like many parents, Martin-Lam dreads the approach of the anniversary of her child's death. Every June, she has a tough time as she remembers the phone call. Jeff had slammed into a guardrail and died of head injuries. She buys a fresh rose and places it in the guardrail at the crash site in Spotsylvania County. And she looks forward to talking at the group meeting about her grief.

"If you want to cry, you can cry," she said. "If you want to talk, you talk."

The Compassionate Friends has support groups in every U.S. state, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as well as 29 countries worldwide. Founded by two grieving English families in 1969, the group's philosophy is to give families "emotional support needed during the long grief journey ahead."

According to the group's Web site, more than 200,000 infants, children, teenagers and young adults will die this year. Nearly 27,000 families will be affected by a stillbirth and 900,000 an early pregnancy loss.

Finding support for such trauma is key, said Pat Loder, the national group's executive director.

"You never expect to bury your children," said Loder, who was driving with her 5-year-old son, Stephen, and 8-year-old daughter, Stephanie, on the first day of spring 1991 when a racing motorcycle slammed into their car at 150 mph. Stephen died instantly. Stephanie was flown to a hospital but died that night.

Loder was skeptical about attending a Compassionate Friends meeting, calling herself a "very private person" who couldn't imagine talking about the intimate details of her grief. Yet, while listening to a group member talk about a videotape that played constantly in her head about her son's drowning, Loder found comfort. Loder, too, was watching a movie in her mind of the car accident, replaying it over and over.

"You think you're alone, the only one having these feelings," Loder said. "You can make a connection and say to yourself, 'OK, this is normal.' It is very helpful to talk to other people and make that connection."

While group support doesn't take the place of professional counseling, it can be key to parents who feel isolated by a child's death, said Sharron Simpson, the bereavement program coordinator for the Fredericksburg-based Hospice Support Care.

Simpson often refers families to The Compassionate Friends. Whether the grief-stricken mothers and fathers end up at the monthly meetings is up to them, but Simpson tells parents who've lost a child how group support can be helpful in many ways.

"The world tends to pull back from people who are in extreme emotional pain," Simpson said, explaining that society generally fears mental illness or distress, and often people worry that they will say the wrong thing so they say nothing.

Add to the social isolation the fact that the loss of a child is so "out of the ordinary," Simpson said, and a regular grief support group might not cut it.

"I think that, ultimately, the idea of sharing an intensely emotional experience with people who've experienced something similar helps you understand it yourself," Simpson said. "Sharing the burden of grief helps to lighten the load."

Blake tries to help lighten the grief load by reaching out to as many local parents as possible. As part of her job as outreach coordinator for the local support group, she reads the obituaries every morning and sends information to a funeral home if a child has died. In time, many parents find their way to the group meetings.

"The first time I went, I just stood outside the door and sobbed," Blake remembered. Yet now she finds comfort in reaching out to other grieving mothers and fathers.

Helping others is what brings Cathy and David Taylor back each month for meetings, Cathy said recently. Their son Chris died in a car accident in 1998, and some people don't understand why the tears still flow sometimes at the mention of his name.

"When I first started going [to meetings], the thing that hit me the most was that this is a time in your life that you feel alone," Cathy Taylor said. "I'm still not completely over it."

Chris was 22 when he died in a car crash that also took the lives of two of his friends, but he was still the Taylors' baby boy. His parents can relate to other mothers and fathers who have lost a child, whether that child is newborn, school age or an adult.

Seven-year-old Katie Kelly has been bringing rocks to her brother's grave since she was about 3, the same age Kevin was when he died. She tells her mother Kevin liked rocks, and she likes leaving them on the edge of his headstone. It's engraved with his nickname, "Muchie Bear," and has a photo of a smiling, blue-eyed boy who died when his little sister was an infant.

Although Oak Hill Cemetery is just off State Route 3 in Fredericksburg, where the busy street is lined with strip malls, office buildings and fast-food restaurants, there is a quiet peace about the place.

A few steps away from Kevin's grave, Anthony Mazzarella's headstone reads, "Daddy's Big Boy, Mommy's Baby," and is engraved with firetrucks and a helicopter. A bowling pin and a toy car rest on the edge of the stone, which also bears his birth date, Dec. 6, 1999, and the day he died, Jan. 18, 2003.

Nearby, Ryan Joseph Berardino, "Our Little King," who died four days after his birth in January 2004, is buried underneath a stone engraved with a lamb.

"We've got so many young ones buried here," said Vickie Headley.

Headley not only works as a family guidance counselor at Oak Hill and several other area cemeteries but is also The Compassionate Friend's local sibling coordinator.

At the same time grieving parents gather for their monthly meeting, Headley meets with children who've lost a brother or sister. She is uniquely qualified for the job: She deals with death in her daily job and also felt a personal anguish when her brother died, in a shooting accident at age 18.

"I can relate to these young children losing a sibling because I know what they've been through," Headley said.

She believes talking things out in a group setting, even if the group is small, can make a big difference when a child is hurting.

"Take my word, when you come and listen to others, it's going to help you."

Keith Kelly has been attending monthly group meetings with his wife for about five years and said he likes knowing he might be able to offer supportive words to other parents.

"In a way, you're kind of helping other people get through this because you've been through it yourself," he said about the shock of a child's death. "It's just helpful to meet with people who are in the same situation as you are and to understand that you're not alone."

DONYA ARIAS is a freelance writer living in Stafford County. Once a daily newspaper reporter specializing in health and medical writing, she regularly contributes to many health-related publications, including the American Public Health Association's newspaper and the AARP Bulletin.

The Compassionate Friends meets the third Tuesday of every month at 7:30 p.m. at Redeemer Lutheran Church, 5120 Harrison Road, Fredericksburg. For more information, call 540/775-8430 or 866/900-4244 (toll free).

The Compassionate Friends national conference is scheduled for July 1-3 in Boston, with a memory walk on July 3. Those who cannot attend the event can have the name of their child carried during the walk. Visit compassion atefriends.org or memorywalk.org for more information.