Coping with grief at Christmas

A local bereavement support service – with groups in Galway City and County – said it can help anyone experiencing grief or feeling the loss of a loved one this Christmas.

Maureen Casey, a volunteer with the Bethany Bereavement Support group based in Ballinasloe, agreed that Covid-19 has changed the way people grieve.

That’s partly due to restrictions at funerals and changed rituals whereby people no longer hug, shake hands or even attend burials anymore.

But, she said, what hasn’t changed during Covid is how grief impacts people differently.

“Grief is very personal, we all do it differently. We all cope differently. People in the same family might be grieving for the one person but they’re all doing it differently because everybody’s grief is personal to themselves,” she said.

The public perception of grief can often be out of sync with the person who is grieving.

“The outside world sometimes expects people to be over their grief by the month’s mind mass, or the first anniversary but people might not even have started to grieve at that stage because they’re in shock, and when you’re in shock you just go day-to-day and it might not hit you for at least a year or more,” she said.

Maureen said that there was “no time-limit on grief”, either.

“Everybody takes a different amount of time to grieve. A person may be bereaved for several years and something will happen that reminds them of their own grief and they will be back again grieving when they thought they’d finished with grieving the person,” she said.

Maureen said that Covid has made grief harder for some people. But coming to terms with death is hard anyway. And she said that grief isn’t just about death.

“Whether you’re meeting people or not (due to Covid restrictions) grief is very hard for people. They find it very hard to talk about it and they don’t understand it. Any loss can cause grief, not just death. The fact that Covid is here can cause grief because people can’t get out and meet their friends and do what they used to do.”

The Ballinasloe Bethany Bereavement Support, like other Bethany groups around Galway City and County, is a listening service for people who have experienced a loss or are grieving.

“We’re not trained counsellors, we’re trained listeners. We listen to people and help them come to terms with their grief and loss. We accept people where they are at in their bereavement. We don’t tell them they should be further on or they shouldn’t be crying. They can cry when they like and don’t need to apologise to anyone for it because crying helps,” added Maureen.

There are Bethany teams with volunteers in Annaghdown, Ballinasloe, Corofin, Glenamaddy, Kiltullagh, Loughrea, and Galway City.

The Ballinasloe group can be contacted on 087-2334438 and contacts details for other local groups are available at www.bethany.ie.