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March 29, 2024

10 Things You May Be Surprised to Know About VNSNY Hospice’s Bereavement Program

January 25, 2022

This article is part of an ongoing series highlighting different teams across VNSNY. Our aim in running this series is to enhance the VNSNY employee experience by spotlighting all parts of VNSNY, revealing things you may not know about another team, and bringing our organization closer together. If you know of a VNSNY team that you think should be included in this series, please let us know by clicking here!

VNSNY’s Hospice Bereavement Program provides extensive support for the surviving family members of VNSNY’s hospice patients, helping them deal with the grief they are experiencing. “Bereavement is an essential component of hospice care,” explains VNSNY Lead Bereavement Counselor Willis Partington.

Here are 10 things you may not know about the Hospice Bereavement Program—and the grieving process that family members and loved ones go through:

1) VNSNY Hospice employs 14 Bereavement Counselors. Each week, these counselors collectively hold about 75 individual sessions and 10 group sessions across all five boroughs of New York City.

2) Bereavement counseling usually begins a month or so after a loved one’s passing. As a rule, the Bereavement Program generally waits a month after a hospice patient’s death to contact the survivors. “Before that, they’re dealing with so much and there’s usually support from friends and relatives for four to six weeks,” says Willis. “But then the calls and the visitors slow down, and they’re left alone with their grief. That’s where we come in.” Put another way, as Willis likes to say: “Grief begins after the last casserole has arrived.”

3) VNSNY’s Bereavement team studies their clients’ lives before they contact them. Before their first phone call, VNSNY Bereavement Counselors familiarize themselves with the life stories of their clients and the deceased loved one by reviewing the family’s hospice notes and charts. “Many clients want to talk about their loved one, and this preparation helps our counselors actively elicit the telling of that story, including both moments of joy and moments of sadness,” says Willis. “For many clients, that’s how the healing begins to happen.” Adds Janet King, a Bereavement Counselor in Manhattan, “What we hear every day are love stories.”

4) Grief is not something that can be “fixed.” Bereavement involves non-pharmacological non-medical ways to help people find the meaning of the deceased’s life and deal with their relationship to the deceased and the loss they’ve suffered, notes Wills. “We’re not therapists and we’re not there to make the grief go away,” he says. “We walk alongside family members and provide hope that the pain will lessen in intensity over time.”

5) Grief is not a straightforward process. “The biggest misconception about grief is that it’s a straight line from point A to point B,” says Willis. “It’s actually a journey with plenty of twists and turns.” In fact, one of the Bereavement Program’s group activities with clients is a visit to the outdoor labyrinth in Battery Park in Lower Manhattan, which Willis calls “a visual metaphor for grief as a journey.” says Willis. The labyrinth walks, led by Manhattan Bereavement Counselor Debra Oryzysyn, have continued even during COVID-19 since social distancing is built in. “We make the trip twice a year,” adds Willis. “For many clients the second visit is a chance to see if they feel differently and think about how things have changed since their first visit.”

6) Relationships don’t end after death. “Closure is for bank accounts, not love accounts,” says Willis, who notes that it’s common for survivors to talk to the deceased or their ashes or write them letters. “These are all good ways to continue their relationship with their loved one.”

7) The first year after a loved one passes poses special challenges. Year One has all the “firsts” that are spent without your deceased loved one: the first birthday, first holidays, first anniversary, and so on. As hard as each “first” can be, notes Willis, “it’s not just about getting through the year. With each passing first, the permanence of the loss also becomes more apparent.”

8) The pandemic short-circuited normal rituals of grieving. A big challenge for any survivor—even before COVID-19—is the difficulty of facing grief in isolation. “People who are grieving a loss need a reason to get out of the house and see other people,” says Willis. COVID-19 has made it even harder to do this, which is why all VNSNY Bereavement Program individual and group sessions quickly transitioned to virtual meetings: The ‘good’ news is that Zoom eliminated geographic constraints on these gatherings, allowing even those survivors who relocated to join together in fellowship. The annual Hospice Memorial Service also took place via Zoom last year and this year. For some families, it was the only memorial service they were able to have for their loved one.

9) The Bereavement Program hosts a wide variety of group meetings. The program’s group sessions typically have 10 to 25 participants. Meetings usually start with the attendees introducing themselves, saying who they’ve lost, how long it’s been, and how they’re doing. There’s usually a range in the time of loss among those present, from several weeks to several years. Some groups focus on survivors in their first year while others are open to everyone, with no time limit on how long survivors can attend. The meetings may be for someone who has lost a spouse or partner, a parent, a sibling or even an adult child. Meetings are offered in English, Spanish and Chinese.

10) Many of the group meetings are open to the community. “We have an extensive community bereavement program,” says Willis. “All of our ‘general loss’ meetings are open to anyone, including our weekly Tuesday meeting, which was held at 220 East 42nd Street pre-COVID-19 and is now on Zoom.” The Bereavement Program also partners with other organizations in the community like the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the School of Visual Arts to host sessions, and this fall VNSNY started an LGBTQ+ and allies bereavement group that is open to the community.

To read similar articles in the series on other teams in the organization, click here.


To view this article in Spanish, click here.

To view this article in Chinese, click here.