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Mercy Sister Toni Lynn Gallagher. (File photo)
Aug. 12, 2020
Nicholas Wolfram Smith
As people enter a fifth month of social distancing during the pandemic shutdown, the isolation from loved ones at their death adds another painful layer of grief to the trauma of loss.
“It’s very, very hard for people and there’s a strong level of grief for that, so if someone should pass away there’s an emptiness at not being able to be there,” Mercy Sister Toni Lynn Gallagher said.
Gallagher, the bereavement ministry coordinator in the Archdicoese of San Francisco, said many cannot visit friends and family who are dying or be present at their last moments. In some cases, there’s an additional guilt that someone else, like a nurse, takes on that bedside role.
Hospital policies have prevented many people from gathering at the bedside of their loved ones during the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the risk of spreading the disease and the shortage of protective equipment. iPads or smartphones held by nursing staff have provided closure for some families as a way to say goodbye, but can be unsatisfying.
Sister Gallagher encouraged people to contact the archdiocesan bereavement ministry office over the phone or online to find groups or resources that could help with grief.
Public health restrictions, and a general climate of uncertainty about safety, have made grief ministry harder to carry out, but not impossible.
Bereavement ministries at parishes can offer one-on-one conversations with trained personnel or coordinate grieving groups that offer a way to share faith during difficult times. The men and women who do the ministry are not psychologists, she said, but people “who are good listeners who know how to be present to a person in grief.”
The important thing, she said, is that ministry volunteers “honor where people are and try to meet people’s needs right away.” Sister Gallagher added the archdiocese can connect mourners to ethnic ministries that understand the different forms grief takes in different cultures.
For Sister Gallagher, it is important that families go through the grieving process rather than postpone it until a later date when a funeral can be held with everyone. The danger is that as time goes on families will end up not holding a ceremony and never mark that person’s passing. Even if the church cannot hold a service, “families can pull themselves together and remember and celebrate,” she said.
“The church sometimes doesn’t allow people to minister to themselves and this is a time when we need to affirm that and teach them how to do that,” she added. Remembering someone’s life through stories helps bring closure for a family, which in the absence of funerals and wakes otherwise might not come.
As people navigate grief without gathering, bereavement ministers have also gone through a disorienting period, Sister Gallagher said, encountering a similar “abyss of distance” and loss of normal life.
“We’re trying to live each day and plan in the great unknown, and that’s what grief is, learning to do something differently for the rest of my life,” she said.
Sister Gallagher said despite the difficulties in helping people brought about by the pandemic shutdown, parish grief ministries continue to offer support for those who have lost people they love.
“We have to help people through this, she said. The church is absent in a way she hasn’t been absent before, but she is still present and that’s what we want people to know.”
The challenge of doing grief ministry now for Deacon Chuck McNeil at St. Dominic Parish is that “people in grief support need to be seen.” Video conferencing technology like Zoom can partly address that but cannot help the need to share space.
Many of the people he has talked to have seen their grief at the loss of their lifelong companions deepened by the enforced isolation of the pandemic shutdown, or the inability to attend Mass and find activities to engage themselves in.
Deacon McNeil, who recently put together his first bereavement support group since the pandemic began, said he has questions about how the ministry will go when conducted entirely online. The technology can be challenging for older users, it could be harder to build up trust and confidence in the group when everyone is separated, and some of the activities that draw people out of their depression will not translate easily to an online forum.
“But it’s important, and I have to start it,” he said.
If you are grieving or would like to join a parish bereavement ministry, please call Sister Toni Lynn Gallagher at (415) 317-4436 or email her at tlgallagher@mercywmw.org.