In October 2023, the Ashcroft and District Hospice Society started a twice-monthly session called Suddenly One, which provides support for people who suddenly find themselves alone following the death of a spouse or partner and who are trying to navigate the world as a single person instead of as part of a pair.
“Within the hospice world there are many ways of providing grief support,” says Hospice Society president Deb Tedford. “This is an opportunity for people to talk about death, and how they’re coping with the death of someone they love.
“I did a little bit of research, but most of what I found was from hospice organizations much larger than ours, with a larger capacity for clinical support and bigger facilities. We decided to see if there was any interest in even gathering, and let the group decide how they wanted it to look.”
The group is geared toward seniors and is for men and women, with participants able to come and go as they pleased.
“We’ve had men attend and that’s great. Men and women grieve differently and their support systems are different, so we have women garner information from the men and vice versa, which is very valuable for everyone.
“It settled into a group of widows, who are all in different stages of the grief journey. Some were there to be supportive of others because they felt they were in a pretty good place, and some attended because they couldn’t get past being in a room with more than three people. They needed to find a place where that would be an okay emotion and feeling to have.”
Tedford says that the group — which has between three and eight attendees each session — is a safe place for conversations about validating all the feelings that people have when dealing with a feeling of being abandoned and very much alone. “No one understands that better than someone who has lived that exact experience.”
The group has been meeting on the first and third Thursday of each month, in the private meeting room at the Ashcroft Library, and also has a Facebook message group so that people can speak with each other and support each other without having to physically meet. Tedford says that the discussions have been wide-ranging: everything from talking about emotions to practical things such as finding a good handyman.
“There can be a feeling of helplessness with women when a spouse dies and you have to do things your spouse always did and you don’t know how. Who do you trust? There’s a safety factor when you’re suddenly single and potentially in an older age bracket, and you can feel vulnerable. Who do you allow into your home?” She adds that suggestions have ranged from the general, to specific people who can be trusted: “That’s the benefit of living in the tight-knit community that we are here.”
Conversation starter exercises have worked well, adds Tedford. They tried craft days, but that didn’t interest the group, which is fine: “The next group might choose that as something they’re interested in doing.”
That next group will start in the fall, as Suddenly One’s last session for the spring was on May 16. Tedford says new members will be welcome, and anyone who has taken part up until now is invited to return. Since most people seem to like having no more than eight people at a session, she notes that if the program becomes so successful that they need to form two groups, they can do that.
“It’s an opportunity for people to get together and have a comfortable safe place to talk. Groups like this can be whatever they need to be for the people who attend. That’s how we’ve run this first session, and I imagine we’ll have the same attitude and perspective when we start a new group. We’ll ask current participants what they would like to see in another group, or ask people experiencing this what they would like to see.”
She adds that while the group is for people of all ages, the majority of the participants are over 55. “They’re all very active people, not doddering old widows. They’re all very vital people trying to find themselves again.”
The Hospice Society has literature available for people dealing with loss, as well as a list of online resources, and Tedford says that anyone who wants to learn more is welcome to visit the society at their new office at 509 Railway Avenue in Ashcroft, which will be opening soon.
“The office hours have yet to be determined, but people can also make an appointment outside those hours. The information will be on our Facebook page and website [www.ashcroftdistricthospicesociety.org].”
