Live a little
| • | When you're at a loss for words ... |
By Tanya Bricking Leach
Advertiser Staff Writer
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| A year after her dad's suicide, 12-year-old Kaipo Saizon smiles as she falls into the arms of fellow campers in a "trust fall" activity at the children's bereavement camp.
Photos by Andrew Shimabuku • The Honolulu Advertiser |
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| Chelsea Meerians was 5 when her dad died of skin cancer. Now she's 12, and she says meeting other children who have lost parents has taught her to "go on with life and not keep on being sad." Here, her new friends lift her through a hole in the spider's web game. |
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| Jeremy Baba, whose dad died in a kayaking accident, sometimes feels like life is like going through an obstacle course blindfolded. It helps to know he's not alone, 14-year-old Jeremy said. |
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| 15-year old Marissa Meerians and 16-year old Debbie Chow both lost their dads. They've gained a strong friendship built on what they've been through. |
How to get involved Camp Ka Pilina Pulama, which loosely translates to "a safe place to grieve," is a yearly bereavement camp for children. To sponsor a camper, volunteer or participate next year, call Hospice Hawaii at 924-9255. |
Shayia Saizon is a first-timer, a bit tentative at first around the 25 other campers. She was initiated into their circle because her dad committed suicide.
Jason and Debbie Chow came back this year to remember their father, who went into the hospital one day, was diagnosed with leukemia and died hours later.
Jeremy Baba, a second-year camper, tells of his dad, who went kayaking after lunch one afternoon and never came home.
Marissa Meerians looks around and recognizes familiar faces.
"The survivors are back," she says, breaking into a smile.
At 15, she's a veteran of Hospice Hawaii's children's bereavement camp.
Marissa was in third grade when her dad got sick and died of skin cancer. The next year, she came to the first hospice camp, the camp with a Hawaiian name that loosely translates to "a safe place to grieve."
This year, Marissa, who will be a sophomore at St. Andrew's Priory, rediscovered friendships and made new ones with people connected by what they have lost.
"It helps to talk to other people," she said. "It has made me more comfortable. I think it really lifted my spirits. I don't have to be sad when I think about my dad. I've learned that you don't have to let go. It's always going to be hard. But you become stronger."
She felt an instant bond with 16-year-old Debbie Chow and her brother, 17-year-old Jason, Punahou students from Wai'alae, campers she often talks to on the phone and sees at monthly group-therapy meetings.
The Chows came back to the camp for their fifth year as "survivors."
"I like the people, and it's a good place to unwind and relax and get your feelings out," Jason said. "This experience has just influenced the way I look at life. It's taught me to cherish every detail."
Fried marbles
If you put glass marbles in a frying pan, heat them up and then place them in ice-cold water, they crack on the inside.
Frying marbles is one of the camp activities. It's designed to teach campers a metaphor. They are like fried marbles: shattered on the inside, yet still whole and beautiful.
Camp leaders make campers as young as 5 necklaces with the marbles glued on. The little ones don't fully comprehend it. For them, the camp is more about play than mourning. For the older ones, the activities are mixed with time for reflection. For all of them, the healing comes simply through connecting with other children who have suffered a loss.
The oldest camp veteran, 18-year-old Shelley Muneoka, known as "Peanut," came back this year as a counselor in training.
She remembers Marissa from that first summer, when Marissa was shy and Peanut was loudly missing her mother.
"They trick you into working on your grief," she said of camp activities that range from art projects to climbing ropes and stargazing.
Her mother's death meant Peanut had to grow up quickly when she first faced deep heartache at age 11. "Your childhood just kind of gets snatched up," she said.
Her mom, Laurel Muneoka, who was a public-health educator for the state government, went to Georgia on business and suffered an asthma attack. When she came home, she got sicker and sicker. She collapsed one day at work. The next day at home, she needed help going to the bathroom, and she started having seizures. Peanut remembers her mom hitting her mouth on the bed frame. Peanut sat outside until her dad came home. Her mom went to the hospital and died May 7, 1997, four days before Mother's Day. She was 45.
By eighth grade, with her dad coping with his own grief, Peanut dealt with things most of her classmates didn't even think about, such as buying her own toothpaste and toilet paper. She did a little public speaking about coping with holiday grief. When she was alone, she listened to music to get through the empty hours. She says her first breakthrough came at bereavement camp, when she wrote a letter and could finally let out her tears.
Her grief still hits her at odd times. She was at her cousin's wedding recently and watched her cousin give her mom a hug. That ripped at her heart because she knew she would never have a moment like that.
She's apprehensive about the big life events she'll face without a mom: college graduation, marriage, pregnancy, raising children.
Friendships have seen her through tough times. She has a close friend who also lost a mother. They exchange greeting cards on their mothers' birthdays.
She still sees herself as the little Peanut cracked when she was a kid. She's vowed to turn her experience into something positive. The Kane'ohe college student is studying social work in Indiana at the University of Evansville and plans to keep working with children as a camp bereavement counselor.
"The camp just gives you the feeling that life goes on," she said. "It validates your emotions and makes you feel safe and comfortable. Death makes you different, but it doesn't mean you have to alienate yourself."
Scars and treasures
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| Camp veteran Marissa Meerians, Chelsea's 15-year-old sister, calls herself "a survivor." |
By Sunday morning, 14-year-old Shayia Saizon had traded phone numbers with her new friends. And the Kane'ohe girl talked more openly about her dad, Scott Saizon, who was 36 when he hanged himself last year.
"It's been rough," she said. "It hit me most out of me, my brother and sister."
She would go in her room and cry, and it was hard to focus just on the happy memories, such as her dad's love of fishing.
But when camp counselor Gina Kaulukukui, a bereavement coordinator for Kauai Hospice, asked her group to share scavenger-hunt items for a shrine to their loved ones, Shayia articulated her feelings by holding up a fishing line with a weight tied to it.
"The weight is so me," Shayia said. "When my dad passed away, I just felt like I was anchored down. But it also represents me now, because I feel strong."
Kaulukukui, herself from a family of "closet grievers," told them her own father died when she was 4, and her mother never spoke of him again. She encouraged her group of campers to remember the gifts and memories their loved ones had given them and to thank them.
Jack Isbell, a social worker and chaplain for Hospice Hawaii and another counselor for their group, told them grief comes in waves, and the way to survive is to learn how to surf the wave. He encouraged them to celebrate.
"Otherwise," he said, "you get to the end of your life and it's as if you never lived."
So happy memories leaked out.
Jason Chow held up a piece of charcoal and talked about how his dad, Stephen Chow, liked to barbecue. Stephen, who was an agriculture inspector at the airport, died suddenly of leukemia in 1999. They released butterflies at his burial. Jason thinks of him whenever he sees butterflies.
His sister added a piece of coral to the memorial, talking about the time she and her dad went body-boarding and cut themselves on coral. She showed her scar to prove it.
Jeremy Baba, the 14-year-old Kane'ohe boy whose father, Jason Baba, died in a kayaking accident, showed the others a flower that represented his internal scar. Half a flower meant part of him was gone, but he could live on. He wants to become an attorney, like his father.
Everyone made a contribution to the shrine. Marissa Meerians added the largest treasure with a piece of driftwood, smooth and buoyant, to represent her transformation.
"I was drifting along on this journey," she said, "and I ended up where I ended up."
Rainbow of wishes
When family members arrived at the end of the weekend, they explained why the camp was so valuable for them as much as for the children.
Patti Meerians' husband, Ronald, died of skin cancer in 1997, when her oldest daughter, Marissa, was in third grade and her youngest, Chelsea, was in kindergarten. Patti's mother died of lung cancer three months later.
She found out six years ago that Hospice Hawaii was starting a bereavement camp, so she sent Marissa. And she's sent both daughters each year since.
"What I hoped for was what Marissa came back with," she said, "which was a sense that she wasn't the only child who had lost a parent."
She watched her daughters at the closing ceremony as Doug Beter gathered campers around his cages of colored homing pigeons.
Beter, owner of Rainbow Pigeons, taught the children how to hold his birds and how to release them.
"Hold a bird and make a wish," he said.
One after another, the campers reached the front of the line. Marissa and Chelsea and Jason and Debbie and the others took birds of pink, blue, green and yellow in their hands.
When they let them go along with their prayers and wishes, the birds cast a pastel rainbow toward the heavens.
Tanya Bricking Leach writes about relationships. Reach her at 525-8026 or tleach@honoluluadvertiser.com.
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When you're at a loss for words ...
Helping a child deal with the death of a loved one is bound to leave adults wondering what to say. The Web site www.hospicenet.org says it's better to explain what you can. Some suggestions:
Q. Is death like sleeping?
A. Children who are told death is like sleeping may develop fears about falling asleep. Tell them death is different. When you go to sleep your body still works. You still breathe and your heart beats and you dream. When a person is dead, his or her body doesn't work anymore.
Q. Why did they die?
A. If the death was from an illness, explain that the person's body couldn't fight the sickness anymore. It stopped working. Explain that most people's bodies can fight an illness and get better. If the death was from an accident, explain that the person was hurt so badly that his or her body stopping working. But when most people get hurt they can get better and live a long time.
Q. Will you die? Will I die?
A. Children are looking for reassurance. Let your child know most people live for a long time. Children also need to know who will take care of them. Let them know who to go to for help if there is a family emergency.
Q. Will they come back?
A. "Forever" is a hard concept for young children to understand. They see that people go away and come back. Cartoon characters die and jump up again. Young children may need to be told several times that the person won't ever be back.
Q. Why did God let this happen?
A. Answer according to your own beliefs. You may also want the counsel of clergy. It's OK to not have answers for everything. Children can accept that you, too, have a hard time understanding some things.
Source: Chris Byrne, Canadian Mental Health Association, on www.hospicenet.org.
