HEALING THE GRIEVING HEART
Dealing with Grief at Work
Hosts:? Dr. Gloria Horsley and Dr. Heidi Horsley
With guest:? John Santoro
April 12, 2007
G:?Hello.? I?m Dr. Gloria Horsley with my co-host
H:?Dr. Heidi Horsley.
G:?Each week we welcome you to Healing the Grieving Heart, a show of hope and conversation with those who?ve suffered the loss of a loved one and for health care professionals who work in this difficult field.? As always the message is others have been there before you and made it.? You can too.? You do not walk alone.? If you?re listening to our Thursday live Internet show, please join Heidi and me on the show by calling our toll free number 1-866-472-5792 with questions or comments regarding the losses in your life.? These shows are archived on our blog, www.thegriefblog.com, as well as www.thecompassionatefriends.org websites.? All shows can be downloaded through Itunes and transcripts can be accessed on www.thegriefblog.com.? Good morning, Heidi.
H:?Good morning, mom.
G:?Great to talk to you today.? You did a presentation yesterday, right?
H:?I did, in downtown New York, in Manhattan.? I did a workshop on adolescent grief, the unique aspects of teen grief and how can we help them.? It was at the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and I presented to about fifty professionals and it went well, and they just wanted to know how do we get teens to open up?? How do we get them to communicate?? How do we get them to talk about their grief?? So not only do parents have these issues, but professionals do as well.? Therapists do as well.? They want to know how.
G:?That?s great.? That?s the Society that Marlo Thomas and Phil Donahue are involved with aren?t they?
H:?Yes, they?re on the board of this organization.
G:?That?s great.
H:?So it was a great workshop and I think the people there learned a lot about teens and they said the teens aren?t talking to us and I said well, they?re talking to me and so let me tell you what I do.? And part of what I do is I empower the teens and I say to the teens, look, you?re an expert on your grief.? You?re an expert on your own loss.? We need your information.? What do you want your parents to know?? What do you want the world to know?? Tell me so I can be the voice for you and they start talking.
G:?Okay that?s for professionals, Heid.? And there are professionals listening to the show.? What?s your best shot of advice for parents out there who say my teens aren?t talking to me or your best thought about it?
H:?Similar to what I tell the professionals.? To go to your teen and say, look, I know what it?s like to lose a child but I have no idea what it?s like to lose a brother or a sister.? It must have been really hard for you to lose Scott and I don?t know what that?s like.? Tell me about that and I?m here for you if you need me.? If they don?t want to talk, I?m here for you if you need me and I know it must be really, really hard because most kids that are teenagers have never gone through this and this isn?t fair and this is not supposed to have happened to you.? Your life was not supposed to look like this.? Kind of validating and acknowledging that it is really hard for them.
G:?And then not expecting any response back at all.
H:?No.? Letting them know I?m here for you if you need me.? I?m here if you want to talk.? Let me know what I can do to help.? They might not say anything but they?ll know you?re there and maybe it?ll be months or years later that they?ll come to you eventually.? Just keep that openness open and let them know I?m here.
G:?Right, so hanging in there.? Now we?ve had a couple of emails, too, and one of them?s regarding our Library of Life spot and I just want to remind you that when you go on to www.thegriefblog.com, if you hit on Scott?s Site, it will take you into the Library of Life and you can see pictures of Scott and read about his life and you, too, can create a site, and they used to be a sponsor for us but they?re not any more, but I?m going to give you kind of a sponsor for them because they are wonderful.? For $50 you can put a site on for a lifetime for your child and who just emailed us, Heidi?
H:?Jo Ann Webb emailed us and she?s emailed us in the past and she created a site on Library of Life for her daughter, Crystal, and it?s on the blog if you want to know how to get to it, and it is fabulous.? They have done such a beautiful job in letting us know who Crystal was and in memorializing Crystal?s life and commemorating it.? It?s an inspiration for everyone that wants to do a site.? Go on to Crystal?s site and look at that and look at Scott?s site and it?ll give you ideas on how to create your own.
G:?Yeah, and as I said, for $50, you can do it for a lifetime.? It?s really a fun thing to do, too, and it doesn?t take long.? Heid, we?ve got another email.
H:?We got one from Linda who said that she?s really appreciated the blog and the radio show and they?ve really helped her in her grief and her grief process.
G:?Great.? Well, we appreciate all of your messages and all the things you sent us and encouragement for the show.? Heidi, it?s interesting that we started in talking about teenagers because our guest today is somebody whose son has come to The Compassionate Friends programs.? Do you want to introduce our guest?
H:?Sure, I?d be honored to.? Our topic is Dealing with Grief at Work and our guest is John Santoro.? Late in 2000, 10-year-old Paula Santoro?s last words to her father were, ?Daddy, I want to sit in that chair.?? His last words to her were ?Paula, I love you.?? Since then, John has focused on helping others deal with work during times of grief.? A vice president of communications with Pfizer, and a board member of TCF, John has written book chapters and op-eds about the intersection of grief and career.? In 2006, his family was featured in a PBS special, ?Keeping Kids Healthy,? nominated for an Emmy Award.? Welcome, John, to our show.
H:?Thank you very much.? Thank you Gloria and Heidi and thank you for all you do for this widespread community.
G:?Oh thanks, John.? It?s great to have you on.? John, could you tell us about your daughter Paula?
J:?Sure.? Paula?s life and Michael?s life, my son?s are intertwined because they were twins.
H:?Oh, I didn?t know that.
J:?Yeah, they were born on September 1, 1990, here in New York.? They were a little bit premature but basically healthy and we brought them home after a few weeks in the hospital.? We noticed after awhile that Paula wasn?t growing at the same rate that Michael was and began taking her to various doctors to see what was the issue.? It took a long time to figure out what the issue was.? The issue was a very very rare disease called Cushing?s Syndrome.? She suffered from her adrenal glands creating much more of the stress hormone than a normal person would have, sometimes even ten times the level of stress hormone, which put a tremendous amount of stress on her body, also stunted her growth, and led to a number of other very difficult symptoms for a young child to deal with.
G:?Now, tell me something.? With twins, was it unusual to have one twin have it and one not?? Did they have any idea of why that would happen or what causes it?
J:?Yeah, eventually they figured out that it was a genetic defect they knew Paula had but Michael, as far as we know, does not have.? They?ve more recently figured out that it?s a genetic defect that I have.? This is the glory of looking into the syndrome of genetics.? But in any case, Paula ended up going to the NIH, National Institutes of Health, for treatment.? Literally only a few hundred cases of this particular pediatric Cushing?s Syndrome exists or have been known to exist although it?s a little more common in middle-aged women, and she went through the treatment which was the removal of her adrenal gland, but unfortunately because of the amount of damage that had been done to her body over a number of years, she died literally a week later very suddenly from pancreatic failure.? So this was on December 10, 2000.? She was ten years old.
G:?So that was a total surprise.
J:?It was.? She had come home from the hospital.? She was doing well.? She?d been in the hospital for months.? She was doing well.? We had a nurse come in every day to visit with her.? Everything went well and then literally she got sick one night and died the next morning in the hospital in the intensive care unit.? So it?s been, as all your listeners know, a tremendously difficult journey.? My wife, Pam, and my son, Michael, we?ve bonded together to try and get through this and we had been inspired by Paula.? She was a terrific person.? She was very generous.? She was a very smart person.? She loved to read.? She was very concerned about the poor and the environment.? She was a good athlete until her body really got ravaged by the disease.
G:?Now was she in public school?
J:?She was.? We were able to keep her in public school.? She was mainstream, so to speak, and you were talking about the difficulty of dealing with teens I think at a loss of a brother or a sister.? It becomes particularly acute when you?re talking about a twin brother or sister and particularly in this relationship between Michael and Paula because Michael was larger and to a larger extent healthier than Paula was and he considered himself to be her protector in a way at school.? So he was always helping her.? She was short of stature so it was hard for her to do some things and when she died, it became more of a difficult thing, I think for him, than a lot of kids go through just because of the fact that he kind of considered himself to a certain extent to be her protector just as to a large extent parents consider themselves to be the protector of their children and no matter what the circumstances are, there?s always this sense of grief, loss, and guilt to a certain extent.
H:?And a friend of mine, Elizabeth Devita-Raeburn, wrote a book on sibling loss and interviewed 77 siblings and her chapter on twins is so powerful because I never realized there was a difference between twin loss and any other kind of loss until I read people that had been twins and lost their twin, it was like they almost lost an extension of themselves and like they say, we had even more of a bond with our twin because we knew them nine months before everybody else.? And I never thought about the uniqueness of having a twin.
G:?I was just thinking of the uniqueness for parents, too, of having twins.? That it?s stressful, my friends have told me, having twins.? One cries and then the other and there?s the whole thing about raising twins from birth anyway isn?t there?
J:?There is.? I think it?s difficult for parents obviously.? It?s not just twice the work in the early stages.? It seems like it?s four times the work for some reason.? We were always up with one of them when we were first getting started.? The bond between twins is so exceptionally strong.? I?ll tell you one really quick story to illustrate this.? When Paula was in the hospital in the intensive care unit just hours before she died, Pam, my wife, was there with her staying overnight and I was at home a few miles away staying with Michael and Michael woke up at a very early hour, 4:30 or 5:00, saying that he had had a visit from Paula to say good-bye and then literally just three hours later, Paula did say good-bye to the world.? So there?s just this tremendous bond which I think is still not very well understood and I know there?s been some research into this and I know, Heidi, you probably have done some research yourself, but it just seems like we don?t completely understand how twins interact and deal with each other and it?s particularly difficult in these times of losses.
H:?And this kind of story, what Michael experienced, is what I?ve heard twins say.? I knew a twin that the sister died in a plane wreck.? As her sister?s plane was crashing, the surviving twin felt like she was dying and she had to pull over to the side of the road and it was at the very time that her sister was dying so yes, you hear these really amazing stories about like you said the bond between twins.
G:?Well, we?re coming up on break now and I?m your host Dr. Gloria Horsley and please stay tuned to hear more from John Santoro about Dealing with Grief in the Workplace.? If you have a chance to call in today, our number is 1-866-472-5792.? If you?d like to email us, you can do it through www.thegriefblog.com.? Stay tuned to hear more.
Well, John, when we went to break, we had just heard more about Paula?s death and the fact that she was a twin to Michael and talking about the difficulties of losing a twin.? One of the things that I think is key when we?re talking about grief in the work place is the fact that even though Paula had been sick, this was a sudden death.
J:?Yes.
G:?And could you talk about how that was for you to go back to work and how long was it before you did and talk a little bit about it?
J:?Sure.? This was a very interesting time in our lives because besides Paula being ill, at that point, Pfizer was purchasing the company that I worked for which was Warner Lambert Company, and there was a lot of, as you might imagine in any kind of acquisition, a lot of changes.? People leaving jobs.? People coming and a lot of people are identifying themselves through their work and through what?s happening to their company.? I had just literally started at Pfizer and I was the new person on the block, so to speak.? I did not have much of a support network here.? I was just moving into Manhattan in terms of my workload and my work life.
G:?So you left some fellow employees that you knew?
J:?Yeah, actually most of the people that I worked with at Warner Lambert had decided to leave the company so it was kind of a difficult transition.? I moved over to Pfizer.? The Pfizer folks were very very welcoming but I literally had just started here for a few weeks when Paula went to the NIH for treatment and then was still off of work when she died.? My company was terrific to me.? They were as supportive as one would expect them to be.? The one thing that was very interesting, and I write about this in a book by Bill Jensen called What Is Your Life?s Work?, as soon as Paula died, one of the first calls I made was to my relatively new boss at that point, a gentleman named Ray.? I called him.? It was a Saturday morning.? He was out mowing the lawn and they brought him in and I?m telling him that Paula just died and all of a sudden I just started going through all the projects that I?m working on.? What?s going through my mind is I gotta off load my projects for some reason to him so that the work somehow can continue which is the last thing that?s on his mind.? He?s trying to help me just deal with the stunning shock and it was just a product of being stunned.
G:?In some ways, you?re trying to stay professional, right?
J:?I was trying to not only stay professional but to stay grounded on everything that I knew about.? So he?s crying on the other side and I?m just offloading to him all the projects that I was working on and who can do this and who can do that and I think about it today and everybody in the grief community, everyone who?s gone through this loss has done something really bizarre and that was my really bizarre thing.
H:?And I?m also thinking, John, if you took care of business first, then you could take care of the business of grieving.? You know, take care of your work business first.? Get that out of the way.? And now I can really fall apart and really think of my daughter with that off my plate.
G:?That compartmentalizing.
J:?You know I was very lucky.? I don?t want to talk too much about work here but I was very lucky in that the company was exceptionally supportive of me but I?ve done a lot of work with companies that have not been very supportive of folks going through this process and certainly in The Compassionate Friends conventions, you just hear probably ten horror stories for every beneficial story you hear about companies dealing with people who are bereaved.
G:?One of the things we always hear is that they give them such a short time.? That?s almost funeral time, not bereavement time.
J:?Yeah, and that is a really difficult issue.? Companies just have not been able yet, I think, to get their arms around the fact that this is not a process that takes five days or seven days.? One of the great Dilbert moments that I?ve heard about is an employee who had a loss and called her boss and her boss said could you rearrange the funeral for another day because I can?t make it on the particular day that you?ve scheduled it.
G:?Yeah, horror story.
J:?Horror stories like that you hear all the time.
G:?So you felt like you got enough time off and did you go in some days and leave early or did you just take time off.? How did you do it?
H:?That?s what I was wondering.
J:?Yeah.? First of all, they told me not to come back until I felt that I was ready to come back which was a fabulously generous thing to do.? I took about five weeks off which is almost unheard of basically now in terms of a lot of companies.? Pfizer has been relatively flexible in that regard.? When I did come back, I did come back part-time at first which is really important because grief is tiring, as you know.? A lot of people who are going through grief just can?t concentrate very long so the idea would be I?d come in in the morning and I?d technically try to get some things done and I?d go home in the afternoon and it took me almost eight weeks before I felt that I was back on a so-called normal schedule.
H:?That?s wonderful that you could transition slowly back into the work force.
J:?Yeah, it?s very unusual, too, and that?s one of the issues I think companies have to start dealing with is just finding ways to help people get through this in a better sense because it?s a terrific retention.? Not to get the business cases first, but it?s a terrific retention tool.? Grieving parents, as you know, and grieving siblings remember people who are kind to them.? I think we all divide the world after this experience into people who are kind to you and people who maybe weren?t as kind as you thought they should be.?
G:?And you have new friends and lose old friends.
J:?And you have new friends and lose old friends and I just feel that the companies who can capitalize ? and I hate to use the word capitalize ? but the companies who take better care of their employees when they?re going through this grief process get tremendously loyal, dedicated employees in the end.
G:?Um hm.? That?s a wonderful thought.? Now did you stay with the same job that you had?? So you haven?t changed at all.? You were still doing the same responsibilities.
J:?Well, I was the chairman?s speechwriter at Warner Lambert and they asked me to be the speechwriter for the new chairman who was coming in to Pfizer at that point and so basically I was doing that job which as you might expect is a relatively high pressure job to begin with.? Again, I was really helped in the fact that I was able to work and compartmentalize my life to a certain extent?come in, put in some intense hours for a few hours a day and then transition slowly over.
H:?And how did you do that, John?? For those of us people that are out there in the work force, did you just tell yourself, okay, right now I?ve got to put Paula on hold and I?m going to think about work.? Was it kind of just mental tapes?
J:?It was pretty much just kind of a mental discipline exercise where I just had to focus on something other than Paula.? Now I will say this.? I had times when I had crying spells at work.? I had times when I just had to close a door and just about scream my brains out.? I had times where I could not fulfill the deadlines that I needed to fulfill.? I was very fortunate that the company was responsive to me there.? It took me about nine months before I had a day when I didn?t think of Paula during the day at one point.? And I remember at the end of the day reminding myself, geez, I got through the day and I didn?t think of her last moments or I didn?t re-live that awful time in the hospital or whatever.? That to me was like a breakthrough.? That was a chance for me to see that I could make it through this really difficult time.
G:?I remember my husband had just started a new business two weeks before Scott died and it might have been about nine months or a little longer.? He came home one day and he said, you know, I think we?re going to lose the business.? He said, I was just looking at what we?re doing and it?s not working.? He said, I feel like I just woke up.
J:?Yeah, I mean, that?s how you do feel.? People say that they kind of sleepwalk to a certain extent or not just going through the motions but basically not really remembering much about those first nine months and frankly I don?t remember much about my first nine months although I wrote what were pretty good speeches.? I had a good performance report.? All the things lined up the right way, but I can?t tell you that I remember much other than the real raw pain of trying to get through a work day and I can?t imagine how it?s like for people who are literally forced back to work because of situations with their companies where they have five days or two weeks or whatever and have to get their act together and get back to work.? It?s a really tough time and I think companies can do a much better job at it.
G:?Um hm.? I was teaching at the University of Rochester when Scott was killed and I had nursing students that I was supervising for the semester and I went back to work after two weeks and finished with the students but by summer I was ready to grieve.? I think sometimes you do have to put some things on hold but it?s difficult.? I?d like to talk to you when we come back from break about the compartmentalizing and your thoughts about people who do have to go back and put their grief on hold and maybe how men and women grieve a little differently that way or not.?
Well, John, I wanted to mention a couple of things before we get back into our topic again.? First of all, you mentioned on the last break, Bill Jensen?s book, What Is Your Life?s Work? And that?s letters from parents to kids or what exactly is the content of that?
J:?Yeah, it?s a very nice book.? It?s letters from parents to their children about the world of work and the chapter I wrote was a letter to my son, Michael, about Paula and Paula because of her disease, Cushing?s Syndrome, which always put her under stress, she was very organized.? We called her our walking Palm Pilot because she could remember everything and she was very very organized and I thought she dealt with stress.? She had to keep everything very organized so life in a lot of ways was work for her and I tell a great story about going to Disney World.? She wanted to see the Mickey Mouse house.? That was the only thing she wanted to see at Disney World and this is a few months before she died.? It was our last family vacation, and for thirty minutes, she just threw off this entire mantle of work that kind of dominated her life and she was just the happiest kid poking her way through that house.? So that?s the story I tell in What Is Your Life?s Work?
G:?That?s great and we?ll put that on our blog.? I imagine you can get it through amazon, the book What Is Your Life?s Work? by Bill Jensen.? And then the other thing I want to talk to you about is the PBS special, ?Keeping Kids Healthy,? that you were on.? It?s been nominated for an Emmy.? You said that there?s some way that people can see it or get it on line?
J:?Yes, they can.? They can go to the Montefiore Hospital website in New York City or just google ?Keeping Kids Healthy.?? It?ll bring you to the website and you can actually click on the segment and you can watch the entire segment which has one segment about two kids dealing with a parent loss and then Michael dealing with the loss of Paula which is just a tremendous seven-minute segment that I would recommend for anybody who is going through this grief journey.
H:?It sounds like something that would be incredible for professionals to watch as well.
J:?I believe it would be and Montefiore was terrific in this.? It?s hosted by Dr. Winnie King and it has some professionals who comment on what?s happening inside the grief process.
G:?That?s great and we will also put that on www.thegriefblog.com.? So, John, getting back to the topic that we were talking about, dealing with grief at work, I wanted to ask you for those people out there who haven?t had the time off or whose spouses haven?t, do you have any thoughts about that?
J:?Well, first of all, my heart goes out to a lot of folks who are just forced by circumstances of their jobs or economics to get back to work very quickly.? I think the best thing you can do is to again try and preserve for yourself some safe spaces inside your work if you can.? It may be as simple as finding a place to take a coffee break by yourself or finding a very responsive co-worker who?s willing to listen to you or sometimes here in New York City, the best therapy is just going outside and walking around for a few minutes before you have to go back to work.? Some way along the way, you need to find some space for yourself and if you can do that, it makes it somewhat easier.? Time, of course, heals some of the wounds but you have to do your best to try and find a safe space for yourself.
G:?And what about men crying at work?? Have you got any thoughts on that?? I know some people have said it?s very difficult.
J:?I think there?s a lot of discussion about whether men grieve differently than women and it?s certainly in our society women get a little more license to cry in terms of the workplace.? Given the enormity of the loss that we had, I just decided it is what it is.? If I need to cry, I need to cry and people can either watch or excuse themselves or whatever.? I just closed the door and do what I need to do and not worry too much about anything like that but I know for a lot of places, it?s very hard for men to express their emotions around grief.? Again, sometimes if you can find a very responsive co-worker that you can call on every so often to just go in, close the door, and have a good cry, it certainly helps.
H:?I was going to ask you more about co-workers.? It sounds like one thing they could do that would be helpful would be to be there with you in times of need and what are some other things that they could do?? A lot of times what my mom and I hear on the show is co-workers don?t know what to say and they?re afraid to say anything so they don?t say anything.? They don?t want to upset the person working.
J:?That?s correct.? The perception is that if you?re supposed to come back to work and if they don?t mention it then things will be okay and it?s kind of this fa?ade that obviously is not sustainable.? So I think what co-workers can do is a couple of things.? One is to always make certain that they remember the child and mention the child?s name and ask questions about the child because that?s what we want to talk about.? As you all know, given the experiences you?ve had and the experiences many of your listeners have had, you just want to talk about your kid.? You just want to remember good things or you want to be able to relate to things that are happening in the work place and the life place.
G:?One of the problems, and I mentioned this on the show another time is after it had been a year, I was on a healthcare team that went around a hospital with psychiatrists and everything.? My husband did a photo album of Scott and I took it to work the first year he died and people? were horrified.
J:?I know.? We?re trying to get through this cultural barrier of dealing with the bereaved as some sort of separate community and you are separated by the circumstances of what?s happened to a certain extent but one of the things I think that?s valuable for companies to do and for managers to do is for the manager of the person who is bereaved to take kind of the lead in helping people rally themselves around the person who is bereaved and helping that person have a better reintegration into work and I often get called and I?m sure a lot of folks get called.? It?s almost like an informal counselor.? Okay, this has happened in my department.? One of my colleagues has lost a child.? How do I now deal with it?? How do I make it better for that person?? And I say, one of the things you might even think about doing is having a meeting before the person comes back to work of the people around that person of how you?re going to deal with questions.? How you?re going to deal with the crying spells.? How you?re going to deal with the loss of concentration.? Who?s going to pick up some of the work.? Maybe what you can do make it an easier reintegration.
G:?And how about for our folks out there who have a more difficult work situation?? They may have to go educate the workplace even though it?s kind of early for them.? They may have to go say to somebody sometimes maybe I?ll have to get up and leave a meeting.? Don?t worry about me.
J:?Yes, you bring up a great point, and I?ll refer folks to The Compassionate Friends organization in terms of brochures and so forth.? One of the things I did was just get a bunch of the brochures about dealing with an employee who was grieving and just leave them on my desk so people could pick them up and just read about what it might be for me to be having to leave a meeting or starting to tear up during some sort of presentation or being less than concentrating on the business at hand.? So that?s really a tough thing for grieving parents to do but unfortunately for now, it has to be done sometimes.
H:?That?s a great idea.
G:?Yeah, and you can go on line, www.thecompassionatefriends.org website, and you can pick up those brochures and also Compassionate Friends would be happy to send you a bunch of brochures.
H:?And it almost sounds like most companies could benefit from an in-service training.? Some outside consultant like you that is an expert on work and grief to come in and give a training to the management team on how to deal with grief in the work place so that they can then educate their staff.
J:?Yeah, I think some sort of intervention like that would be a good thing and that again part of the problem is there?s a lack of trained counselors to a certain extent.? A lot of counselors who deal with employee assistance issues aren?t as skilled as they might want to be in terms of dealing with these localized grief issues.
G:?Yeah, it?s kind of interesting particularly with the death of a child, some people get really upset about it thinking that something like that could happen to their own child and they don?t want to get near it.
J:?Yeah, there?s certainly a self-protection factor here.? First of all it?s impossible for people to fathom unless they?ve been through it.? Secondly, there?s a certain amount of denial that goes around it.? Again, I was fortunate in that believe it or not, when Paula passed, my boss?s boss who was a Senior Vice President at that point, a very nice gentleman named Lew Clemente, had lost actually a 16-year-old daughter in an accident.? He wrote me a fantastic letter which I still treasure sharing his experiences and encouraging me to come to work when I was ready and to honor Paula?s life through my work.
G:?That?s great.? Well, you know, I think that?s one of the things we?re doing right here on the show, too, is we?re sharing our experiences with those folks out there who are more newly bereaved than we are and we?re saying in the work place or whatever you?ll make it.? Here are some ideas we might have for you and as I said, you may have to do some education in the work place, which is very difficult.
J:?Yeah, I?m starting to find, and this is very good, I?m starting to find people slowly but surely in the six years that we?ve been dealing with this kind of grief coming around more and more to the idea that this is not something to be denied or to not talk about.? This is an issue that is really important for us to deal with because we want this employee not only to get through the experience but also to be a productive employee and companies and managers in particular at kind of a grassroots level I think are starting to understand it better than companies in particular are at maybe the 30,000 foot level.
G:?Um hm.? Heidi, I wanted to ask you a question before we went to break, and John thinking about it too, is how about grief in the work place at school?
H:?As a student?
G:?Yeah.
H:?I don?t know what Michael went through and it would be interesting to hear this, but for me, I was in college and my professors didn?t care that I had a brother that died.? They wanted my work done and they wanted it done in a timely fashion so that was an issue and after two weeks, they became less and less sensitive about it.
G:?Well, it?s time for us to go to break now and when we get back we?ll talk more about grief in the work place with John Santoro.? When we went to break, we were talking about work in terms of schoolwork, Heidi?s work.? John was talking about the more adult work place but what about the kid work place?? Heidi, you were saying about college that your professors didn?t care.
H:?Well, and I want to chime in as far as teens, too, for all the parents out there and children.? Parents have more control over their schedules than kids do and they can choose oftentimes to scale back.? Children go to school and they?re expected just to keep going as usual and keep their regular schedule as usual and I?m always telling parents, if there are places in your child?s life where they can scale back a little bit, let them, because as John has said, grief is an amazing amount of work and they need to take some time to scale back so I don?t know what Michael?s experience was in school, John, I?m sure you can address that a little bit.
J:?Well, as I started in the beginning of the program, we were talking about the fact that to a certain extent, Michael considered himself to be Paula?s protector for better or worse, and they were both in the same class.? We tried to separate them into classes at one point and Paula was just despondent.? She wanted to be back with her brother so the school made an exception.
G:?So they were twins and they were in the same classroom in what grade?
J:?Paula died in grade 4.? So one of the things that happens of course when a child dies in an elementary school is there?s usually a lot of support right away.? There?s grief counselors, there?s teachers, the kids kind of rally around the issues and we got wonderful memories of Paula sent to us from the school.? They brought in counselors and they helped the kids as well as Michael through this very difficult time and the problem of course is that that drops off pretty quickly.? The kids get back in a routine and then you do have to deal with very hard times such as the anniversaries of a death or a major holiday that bring up very difficult memories for a child and for the parents.? So it?s important, I think, for schools to remember that grief is again not just a two-week process.? It?s a process that teachers have to be sensitive to to a certain extent as life goes on.
G:?And sometimes they?re not, and I?ll have to tell to you that I went in to my kids? grade school and did a program for them.? They let me come in to the health class and do a program on grief and loss with the kids because there wasn?t a lot of education for them and one of Heather?s teachers said she was fourteen and she was having trouble in math and she was a good math student and I went in and talked to the teacher and he said, well, we?ve all had parents die.
J:?One of the things that Michael did the first year after Paula died, he was very upset that there wasn?t a whole lot of people who remembered Paula?s anniversary of her death and the next year, he actually wrote a letter to his teachers that said on this particular day, I may not be very good at concentrating.? I may need to leave the room.? I may need to do some other things to help him through that day, and he sent that letter to his teachers and his teachers responded.? They were very good to him.? They made sure he knew that if he needed to leave the class at any time that he could do that.? They helped him through this particular time frame, so it?s important if the parents can get children to talk to the teachers directly about how they?re feeling and what needs to be done to help them.? I think that?s a really important thing.
G:?Yeah, and so that education program
H:?To let them know that anniversary dates are coming up and that these times are going to be hard.
G:?Let?s talk about those anniversaries and holidays when you?re at work, John.? What do you suggest to our folks out there?
J:?Well, for one thing, I make certain people know that December 10 is a sacred day.? I don?t come to work and I spend the day with my family.? We give Michael the option, by the way, of going to school or not.? He typically takes the option of actually going to school.
H:?I don?t blame him.? Let?s see being with my bereaved parents or going to school?? No, I?m kidding, but you know that?s one of our issues.? It?s hard, right?
J:?Right.? It?s hard to watch your parents sit around all day and grieve which is what happens on the anniversary day and the birth date is particularly difficult because of course we?re celebrating Michael?s birthday of September 1, 1990, and we?re grieving the fact that Paula had the same birthday and is no longer here.
G:?Oh, that?s a challenge.? How do you do that?
J:?We try and make it certain for Michael that this is a day that we?re going to celebrate.? Sometimes we move the celebration to a weekend where he could have a chance to spend more time with his friends anyway, but he knows as well as we do that there?s the flip side to this.? Paula is no longer with us and it?s her birthday, too.? But, yeah, anniversary, the holidays are very hard.? I think when we talk about work, life, balance, and work, life, fit, whatever a colleague can do to help people who are bereaved through the holidays even if it?s just asking what a holiday memory might be of your child or what did you do during the holidays when Paula was with us, it helps a lot.
G:?That?s incredible, isn?t it, because people don?t think that you want to talk about that, that it might make you sad and that?s exactly what you want to talk about.
J:?Right, and we all breathe a sigh of relief when we get through the holidays, I?m sure many of you do, too, but whatever your colleagues can do to help you is really important.
G:?Well, John, it?s almost time to close the show and I wanted to ask you if you had one piece of advice for people out there, what would it be?
J:?Well, I think my advice is actually to companies and I?d ask that they really look at this in the same way they looked at child care over the years and partner benefits over the years and spend less energy really on making the business case for your efforts and more on clarifying how the company will respond to a grief situation.? There?s some really good work that?s been done by Arlene Johnson around this and I hope that companies take a more enlightened approach to the grieving parent or sibling.
G:?Um hm.? Thank you.? And also if you?re a bereaved person out there and you?re looking for maybe a cause, you can work in that kind of area of educating your own company and helping them to understand what bereaved parents do need.? Well, it?s time to close our show now and I want to thank our guest, John Santoro.? Thank you, John.?
J:?Thank you.
H:?Thanks, John.
G:?It?s been wonderful having you on the show.? Please stay tuned again next week to hear guest Ann Bynes.? Our topic is Losing a Child and a Firefighter Husband in the Aftermath of 9/11.? This show is archived on www.thegriefblog.com as well as www.thecompassionatefriends.org website.? This is Dr. Gloria Horsley and please stay tuned against next Thursday at 9:00 Pacific Standard Time, 12:00 Eastern, for more of Healing the Grieving Heart.? Remember others have been there before you and made it.? You can, too.? You need not walk alone.? Thanks for listening.? I?m Dr. Gloria and
H:?Dr. Heidi Horsley.? John, Paula is gone but never forgotten.? You honor her memory every day in the work that you do.? Thank you.
J:?Thank you.

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