St Rose Parish Nurse Ministry Program—

A Full Life Depends Of What You Find In The Face Of Loss

By Jan Howard

Transitions in the face of loss and change, with emphasis on relationships with God, the world, other people, and self, was the subject of a discussion sponsored Monday by the St Rose Parish Nurse Ministry.

Kendall Palladino, director of Spiritual and Bereavement Services at Regional Hospice of Western Connecticut in Danbury, shared stories about a summer he worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta and of counseling as a chaplain. He offered advice and led round-table discussions about how to experience a healthy transition and renew life following a loss or some type of change.

Mr Palladino, who holds a master’s degree in divinity, discussed spiritual health and how it is affected by transition.

A healthy transition, he said, is comprised of five components: giving, receiving, autonomy, companionship or community, and expectation, the first letters of which spell grace.

Discussion centered about how these five components of transition are used in conjunction with relationships with God, the world, other people, and self.

 

Giving

In his work as a chaplain and counselor, Mr Palladino said he has found that people need a place to give of themselves.

“When they are going through transitions, they don’t feel they can give anymore,” he noted. “There is a need to give.”

He questioned if people need to be good at what they give to God. Some attendees offered love, faith, honor, and singing as gifts people can make to their God. To other people, gifts could include their talent and caring.

Mr Palladino said people who are givers have the hardest time giving to themselves. Yoga, time to relax and enjoy the world, being patient, and being less critical of oneself were offered as some ways to give to oneself.

Receiving

Mr Palladino said people often confuse what they need as compared to what they want. He described a man he met in the Hospice program who wanted to be pain-free but also wanted to make hobbyhorses for his granddaughters. He was growing weaker so he knew he needed help and asked for it.

“He became the manager,” Mr Palladino said, telling his helpers what to do. “We got the hobbyhorses done. He died shortly after making his goal.

“He knew his needs and how to ask. He knew he needed help at that time.”

Mr Palladino said people often feel guilty about receiving help. “We all want to give and to receive. We need to receive but need to feel independent. When we receive, we don’t feel independent.

“At some level, receiving gracefully is a spiritual and worthwhile thing to do,” he said. “When we give from the heart, we don’t want to receive back.”

He said people should give graciously as well as receive graciously. “Forced giving is no fun,” he said, noting that sometimes people think they are helping someone when that person does not want or need help. “We need to be sensitive to what their needs are.”

Autonomy

A woman with ALS, who had lost her voice, told Mr Palladino, “I don’t know what I’m going to lose next.” She was concerned she would lose control of bodily functions or would be unable to support her family.

“We want to be autonomous,” he said. “We fear the loss of autonomy that is hard won and hard earned. We fear it will be taken away. What do you fear will be taken away from you that will take away autonomy in relationship to God, people, the world, and yourself?

“Loss of physical activity happens in life. Do we fear for our security? Loss of autonomy is one of the hardest losses,” he said, using as an example a senior citizen who needs to give up his/her driver’s license. “We don’t want that to happen.”

Attendees noted fears about not being able to care for themselves and losing mental acuity.

“I don’t want you to dwell on fears,” Mr Palladino said. “We are human, and there will be things we lose.”

Companionship or Community

There is a power relationship in companionship, Mr Palladino said. “Often that is the dynamic.”

“People have some basic emotions, he said, such as anger, irritability, frustration; they are sad, glad, hurt, scared, ashamed, or guilty.

People need to be open to relationships, he said. “You need to display what you really are with someone.”

People need to have the opportunity for face-to-face contact, to feel happy. “We need companionship or community. We need interaction with others and with God. We need to be connected to other people,” he said.

When he worked with Mother Teresa, he told her he wanted to work with people who had leprosy. She did not tell him not to do it, he said, but voiced her concern for what she termed is a leprosy of the west.

“She was speaking of leprosy of emotions and the soul and loneliness,” Mr Palladino said. “She encouraged me to come back here. There are concerns here.

“There is a lot of moving around. You don’t have the extended family you might have had years ago. There is loneliness in our country. These are vulnerable times.

“We have to share core emotions,” he said. “If we are not able to do this, we are not spiritually healthy. We have to ask ourselves, who am I in community with?”

Expectation

What do we expect from God, the world, other people, and ourselves? Mr Palladino questioned.

“We have to set realistic, reachable expectations,” he said. “What do you expect from life? How you answer depends on whether you answer with joy or fear.” Reachable expectations are necessary for spiritual health, he noted.

“There is a sense of bitterness when you get sick or a loved one dies,” Mr Palladino said. “Transition is a loss.”

When faced with the death of someone, there is a need for healthy grieving, he said. “Facing the reality of the loss is the first real task. We try to be aces, to go it alone. That’s not the most healthy approach. We need to face it.”

People need to feel supported through the loss, he said. “We all need to feel this. We try to slip away from it by staying busy, but the loss doesn’t go away. There is an emptiness that follows.

“We need to feel that loss. We’re still ill, we still don’t have that person or thing. We’re grieving. We think we will never be able to fill that emptiness.”

Little by little, he said, there are new relationships or new opportunities. “There is a transition to the new normal. We fill the loss. We need to say farewell.

“We still have memories, but saying farewell is crucial to grieving,” Mr Palladino concluded. “Make time for yourself. What is healthy spiritually is making the transition.”