 The question today is, why do we elders have so much sorrow and sadness in a wonderful life that we have in our living right now? My program is don't just age, but engage personal coaching for your extraordinary elderhood. And in that process, I am concerned that the people who are in their elderhood are having the empowerment and chance to see their future as being some glorious and wonderful opportunity that they can engage fully and to do so involves some help sometimes, some coaching, some counseling, perhaps some opportunity to be engaged with others who are in the same condition and same time of life. And I love working with elders. I've been an elder myself for seven years now and also have been involved in ministry and in chaplaincy work with hospice care and have been developing this understanding of elderhood and the process that we go through as we engage in elderhood. It kind of asks us to go pay attention to these things. And I've identified five spiritual tasks that I think occupy our minds when we've entered elderhood. Those spiritual tasks are grieving, sorting through our stories, forgiving, preparing, and letting go. And today, I am asking that we focus on grieving. Grieving is a very dominant emotion. And unless we pay attention to it, it will really dominate our decision making and our relationships in ways that may not be healthy and desirable. I was in my pastoral counseling courses, I had one professor who said, first thing that I ever do when I have a client is check out, what are they still grieving? What losses are they still grieving? And I've invited to help us with this today Reverend Paige Morris and Reverend Paige Morris of Bristol Hospice here on the island of Oahu, who is the bereavement coordinator for the Bristol Hospice. Paige, thank you so much for joining me, Reverend. And it's a pleasure to have you here and to have you're facing with me, the viewers who are engaging, I'm sure, themselves in elderhood or may have others in their family who are involved in these tasks of elderhood. Welcome. Thank you. It's just a delight to be here with you today, Larry. Thank you for having me. Tell us a little bit about your role at Bristol and anything about yourself, Paige. I have the delight of knowing you. So I could tell a few secrets, but not many. But I have the delight of knowing you better as a cohort, as a colleague in ministry and would like for you to share a little bit more about who you are, what you're doing here on the island, how long you've been here perhaps, and something about your work at Bristol Hospice. OK, great. I am originally from Colorado and moved out to Florida and suffered some terrible series of losses of my own rather later in my life and accepted a call to ministry at that time. And after seminary, I decided I wanted to go into chaplaincy and accepted a chaplain resident position at Queens Medical Center. And when that was finished, I went into hospice chaplaincy. And from there have come into being a bereavement coordinator with Bristol Hospice, where we care for all of the family members of our deceased patients and make sure that they have someone to counsel them and journey with them through the grieving process because it's a terrible thing to go through alone. So I work with a team of three women and we take care of over a thousand people on the island right now. Wonderful. And I know for first hand knowledge that you do it so beautifully and well. So here's here we are with grief. Let's dive into what grief is about. What is what is grief and how much grief can I sustain as an elder as an elder person? Well, the thing with grief is grief is essentially an unkind group of companions that we pick up from the time where kids whether it's through maybe our families move us a lot and we grieve for the loss of friendships in school or maybe the loss of a pet or maybe we lose our parents young or or have romantic loss. But grief can come in so many different packages. Maybe we've been abused. So we pick up these different grief companions and they accumulate. So by the time we're older, we have a whole family of them that we are struggling with on conscious and subconscious levels. And for that reason, I believe a lot of people as they are reaching elderhood or in the midst of it, feel consumed with layers of grief. And then because societally, people feel shame surrounded with grief. There's a sense of not not having societal permission to talk because we don't want to bring other people down. So grief becomes very secretive. And then it's just a lot of layers and layers of suffering. And if you just if you just ask somebody the most surface questions, most of us will find that at any age, people are grieving. I did a seminar for some UH Minoa College students a few weeks ago as part of a Bristol Hospice practicum. And we had like 40 young people. And I asked them how many of them were currently grieving something, a loss, something that was really hard. And I would say all the two or three raised their hands. So grief is something that we accumulate as we get older. And that's why it's so painful to sit in it in elderhood, I believe. So it's a cumulative, it seems. And it's possible to sustain grief over a period of years with sometimes without even knowing it. So I hear you confine that it can come back and it can be kind of like a haunting experience that stays with us. Very much so. Very much so. And because a lot of our grief, we learn to suppress or live with or not deal with, often say that we've lost our parents and then we lose our spouse. Then we have suspended grief from other losses that can impact the grief we feel for our spouse or our child or maybe a loss of agency with health. So unresolved grief from our past can have a tremendous impact on grief that is hitting us in our present. And so it can cause a lot of upheaval, a lot of feelings of am I going crazy? Do I need psychological help? How do I deal with this? And can lead to extreme behaviors with going as far as passive or active suicide in elders. So for me, it is such a significant experience that we're all having. And one of my goals as a grief counselor, as a chaplain, as a pastor, is to say, let's open this reality up so that we can be part of each other's healing, so that we can be part of the sharing of, as you talk about, when you talk about your five points of spiritual, well, when I look at those and I'm reflecting on them, they are all part of the grieving healing process. And so perhaps part of our spiritual healing that prepares us for the end of our life or for the last great journeys of our life is that surrendering and to that point of letting go of all the unkind companions that we've picked up along the way and doing that through the support and kindness of others instead of having it as a solitary journey. That's a good image page, I think, of companions along the way. And they almost are like facial people that with faces almost in our past. Let me check out my position with you and see if it rings true to you as a professional grief counselor. I'm saying that unless I deal with my grief, unless I recover from some of the grief in my history and in the present, that I won't be able to transform into a joyful life or maybe to say it more positively, when I find help in a grief counselor or a grief group, I'm more likely to be freed from that grief. Is that accurate? Yes, and maybe I'll illustrate. I think you're completely accurate. And I'll illustrate, perhaps, with a story. I have a friend who teaches Muay Thai, which is a form of martial arts. And he had had an attorney in his 60s that had come and wanted to learn Muay Thai. And so my friend gave him two five gallon buckets of half filled with sand. And had him just carry it around and around the Muay Thai studio. And finally, the attorney said, I don't get this. What is this about? When do I get to start with your training? And my friend said to him, you have so much baggage. You have so much grief and so much sorrow. And you're so closed up that I wanted you to get the feeling of what you're carrying around. And now you can put it down. And let's see if we can get you to expand and open and find that freedom that comes from letting go and putting these things down. I think it's the same thing with grief. We can become so accustomed to our grief that we don't even recognize how much it's weighing us down and how grief causes us to close inward in so many ways. And in allowing ourselves to trust that the surrendering of grief does not lessen the significance of the experience that caused it. And so allowing ourselves to become untethered to the grief and then to sit in the memory and have it as a positive or negative memory that we let go. There is where the healing is. That is so well stated, Paige. I think that the process of elderhood, going through elderhood, the stage of elderhood is not very well welcomed by many people in our society. And we are in some ways vulnerable, I say. We're vulnerable to COVID. But we're not just vulnerable to COVID. We're vulnerable also to a social consciousness that says, get over it. Or we don't really need to tend to elderhood to your feelings, your emotions at this stage of life. You're mature. You don't have to have any kind of concerns. And when we adopt that into our individual psyche, then it becomes very inhibiting to moving forward and to moving into a more gracious and what I call an extraordinary elderhood. So I'm very grateful to hear you talk about the importance of really recognizing the grief that we carry, baggage that is there, and letting it go and having health and letting it go so that we can indeed get on with the new and greater things that we have. Tell me a little bit about, tell us a little bit about now, Paige, about the process of bereavement and what right now, we're in the midst of all of this loss. COVID has had an impact on our medical lives, our medical process, our medical lives. What is, talk about the process of bereavement itself, of anticipatory grief to the death and beyond that. Would you please? Yes. So I'll start with anticipatory grief because that affects both the family and the patient. And when called to, I will come in and help families with anticipatory grief, as well as patients. That is also something that the chaplains are very gifted at doing. So for the most part, I am caring for and serving families whose loved one has already died. And as I think most people listening or watching, as well as yourself know, there is that initial shock and then a terrible hollowness that settles in. So what I try to do is to call within the first couple of days to make sure that that person knows that I am there for the journey and that there's no expectation, but the awareness that the grief that they're feeling is not something they have to navigate themselves or have to navigate just with friends and family. And then throughout that first month of grieving, there are several points of contact to try to assess what is best for that person, where the points of pain are, where the points of unknown are, many people don't our society, and I can't speak to other societies. Maybe this is prevalent throughout the world, but we don't teach people how to grieve or even what to expect in themselves when it's happening. And so loss of appetite, not being able to sleep, really intrusive thoughts, even loss of taste and smell, which is also a sign of COVID, is very common. There's racing thoughts, there's the need to keep oneself so busy that they can't think about the grief. There's guilt and anger and frustration and there can be suicide. I mean, people can get so deeply affected that they cannot cope anymore. Where I find this most tender is in our elders, especially right now because COVID makes our elders invisible. So many of our elders are dependent on family members to get them around activities that are no longer going on or to be participating in life through the assistance of others. And so there's tremendous isolation, tremendous lockdown, which is adding layers and layers and layers of suffering for our elderly, which brings up more grief. So the 90 year old woman who has just lost her spouse of 60 years will now also be grieving her loss of agency to go out and do things and the loss of the child of 20 years ago and the fear of the unknown of the future. So what I'm finding with COVID, with grief of our elders is a magnification where every grief comes into like a strong relief. And so I am caring for people and helping them move through the grieving process for stored grief. And this is new to our COVID experience. I think it's really impacted by the isolation our elders are feeling. Grief counseling is not really psychological counseling. When we go to a psychologist because we have a problem, grief is not a problem. Grief is a natural experience that we all have to go through. And so to me, it is something that is more about helping a person speak about their experiences, find out what is normal, what is not normal, how to keep them from getting into a toxic state of grief where they cannot move forward with their lives. So it's walking with that person, giving them tools and reflective listening and being very attentive to what they're going through and how to help them move through that experience through this valley, this terrible valley, so that they can come out of the other side functioning well as their life goes on. So yeah, I feel very passionate about this. So maybe I'm a little verbose, but yeah. I can see you feel passionate and deeply about it. Empathy not only for people as they go through their immediacy of a loss, for instance, in hospice care, but also that I hear you talking about the grief that comes from this particular context now in which we live because the COVID has emphasized or has pushed more people into isolation and more loss of agency. I love that word, more loss of their own agency to be able to make their life what they want it to be. And that is a grief experience. And so part of what you're doing and what you're saying, Paige, is to normalize this for all of our viewers. If you're feeling a tremendous amount of sorrow and sadness and loss, that's an appropriate normal response to the situation you find yourself in at this time. Absolutely, and when it's not normalized, that is when people feel, use words like, I feel like I'm going crazy. Yeah, yeah. Yes, and one of the things that I love about Hawaii is this great value of our kapuna. And at the same time, it's very hard to value people we cannot see. So I feel that societally we have a responsibility. It doesn't matter if you are a grief counselor or have any experience caring for people at all, we can seek out the elders in our church or in the community that we were involved in prior to COVID or in our neighborhood or our apartment building, there are so many people who just need a tender person to check in on them and say, I'm here for you and be a listening heir. I wish with my whole heart that our younger people would take more interest in their own value to our older people because when a young spirit joins that older spirit, there's such a refreshing that can take place for both people and it's a missed opportunity and it's a missed opportunity to learn and to soothe the grief in both the young and the old as creating those connections. That's a beautiful picture of connection and I have images of Colorado where you and I both were living for a while and younger people shoveling the driveway and sidewalk of the elders in their neighborhood. And how meaningful that is for an elder to have that kind of expression. Now, here in Hawaii, we don't quite have that opportunity so to speak, but there are other ways in which we can look in on each other and be aware that the people who are in their adulthood are likely isolated in ways they've never experienced before and their agency has cut back. That is such a great word to keep in mind. I thank you for that very much. So let's talk about health. What goes on in the, you keep in touch. You get in touch with people who have lost family members and others. What else do you offer? What else helps in recovery? Well, building a toolkit helps in recovery. A toolkit for grief would include, well, for example, most people who have witnessed the death of their loved one in hospice have experienced a traumatizing experience. Watching someone you love die is traumatizing and traumatizing experiences tend to generate reoccurring thoughts of the most traumatizing parts. So a tool, for example, for an intrusive, reoccurring a traumatic thought is writing the story that accompanies that thought or writing that thought, that memory down, every time it comes up or drawing it or painting it. For example, a lot of people struggle with that far away stare that comes at the end of life and not being able to reach their loved one as they fade away and that haunts them. So to be able to express that in the written word or artistically or musically or any number of ways gives the brain a safe place to put that awful memory. And the more the brain can release that those awful traumatic memories into a safe space on paper or art or music, it allows both the consciousness of conscious mind to work together to free the person to go on to the next step of grieving. And maybe they'll have reoccurring and different traumatic thoughts that come up, but it's a way to self intervene and self heal. Another thing that people experience quite frequently is panicking or crying Jags. And so teaching ways to self soothe, to interrupt the tears. One great way if a person is just finding themselves emotionally out of themselves is to put their feet in the tub or in the sink with hot water and cold pack on the back of the neck, sends two different signals to the body and interrupts that crying Jag, helps the person calm themselves. So one of the things I like to focus on is not just verbal processing, but also building a toolkit for help. And then we have grief support groups. We do one-on-one counseling. We have a wonderful volunteer choir that people can volunteer for who aren't gravers, but that gravers can participate in as in forms of healing. We really try to cover every aspect. And then if somebody is suicidal, we will do suicide intervention, or if there's abuse in the family, we will get the right people involved. If there's elder abuse or if they've lost their, people often will lose, have financial struggles when a loved one dies. So we try to just be able to touch in everything that a person is going through so that we can be part of the healing and nothing is left hanging, right? Where they would heal except for this thing that we didn't talk about or didn't discover. So we try to be very inclusive and very all-encompassing with our care. That is a terrific program. And many viewers, I mean, the program you've talked about is for families of Bristol Hospice. What about families who do not have, are people who do not have an connection with an institution or a program? Are there ways that in the community they can find these kinds of tool kits, provisions, or groups? We do, yes, well, our grief groups are open to everybody in the community. So you did not have to be affiliated at all with Bristol Hospice to join one of our grief groups. We have a men's grief group. We have a collective grief group for everyone. And then in January, we're going to be starting some additional grief groups for spouses for the loss of children or parents and just try to get, so that we're covering. And they're all online at the moment, but that will add and flow as we recover from COVID. Of course it will, of course it will. That's great to know that it's accessible to anybody on our island or in our community. And in fact, since it's online, it could be anybody in the nation. It could technically be anybody in the nation. Yeah, technically. So connect with you, what? Through Bristol Hospice Hawaii? Yes, I can be reached through Bristol Hospice Hawaii or direct probably the most efficient way would be through my email, because then I can make the connections and respond faster. So I would say my Bristol Hospice email address would be the best way to connect to me for care. That would be page.moris at Bristol Hospice Hawaii. No, bristolhospice.com. Dot com, yeah. Yeah, page.moris at bristolhospice.com. Yes. There it is. And if, but again, if you're not comfortable with email, because a lot of people aren't into their computers and maybe that's not your thing, please feel free to just call our main line and ask for me. And I'll be happy to do whatever I can to help in this journey for anybody who's listening. Yeah. Thanks, Paige. So why am I, why are we so overwhelmed at times with grief as elders? It's because it's a normal part of the aging process. It's a normal part of living and it's a normal part of growing up to be the people we are intended to be. Paige, thank you so much for being a part of this, for sharing your wisdom and your great insights and your sensitivity. We'll be back actually in January for my show to pick it up after the holiday season and to restore and return to don't just age, engage. Be well. Happy holidays. Aloha.