Reverend Robert Ashley Beagle held a Grief Seminar and Workshop at First Baptist Church in this week in Dayton. The seminar was a combination of three two-hour sessions. The meeting was not meant to be religious but rather an option to help people cope with grief, whether from death or guilt they feel from other aspects of life.
“This is not a religious ceremony. I’m not trying to push anything on anyone,” Beagle said. “It doesn’t matter what your skin color is, where you’re from, what denomination you are. Grief affects everyone.”
Beagle has been in the ministry for over 30 years, completed four years of continuing education in the Clinical Pastoral Education Program at VA Hospital, facilitates classes at Life Learning Center in Covington, has done a lot of grief counseling over the years, and has focused and studied psychology and science of grief and how to deal with it.
According to Beagle, there are two different types of grief a person deals with. The first is anticipatory grief, where you suspect someone will die. You have time to grieve before they die, and you have time to prepare yourself. The second is shock grief when someone dies instantaneously.
“I was at work this past week, a couple my wife knows came in, and I said how are Jason and Krista doing,” Beagle said. “I married the couple, and they are both in their 30s. Anyway, I had just married them two years ago. The couple said, ‘oh, you heard that Krista passed away?’ She was driving with her children, and she swerved, over-corrected, and was ejected from the vehicle and killed instantly. That was a shock. I was very good friends with both of them.”
Beagle touched on a few things talked about at the previous seminars, like the idea of remembering those lost and being stuck in grief.
“Remembering is a very big part of grief,” Beagle said. “Remembering helps us reach back to the past and helps us in our life for the future.”
To help remember your lost loved ones, Beagle recommends donating in their name.
“One time, I went to Hoxworth and donated a gallon in my moms’ memory,” Beagle said. “If they died of cancer, you could volunteer at the cancer institute and honor their memory of being here. The saddest thing is when someone dies, and no one grieves them or remembers them.”
Getting stuck in grief is when the symptoms do not subside. You should see yourself moving on and things getting better, Beagle said.
“People get stuck in grief,” Beagle said. “How long should you grieve? Everyone’s grief is individual. Sometimes it might take a year, sometimes five years.”
At the third seminar, Beagle gave four tips on how to help people move on with their grief.
Tip one: Make a memory box
Get any box you want and put things in it pertaining to your loved one.
“My wife is hefty on saving things. She’s 55 years old and still has her kindergarten papers,” Beagle said. “She still has birthday cards from her mother, grandmother and all her aunts. You can put cards in the box, a note they sent you, a clipping from a paper, old photos. You can put all types of things in this memory box. You can always go back and look in this box. You can always walk down memory lane. When someone first dies, it’s extremely hard. It’s hard to look at their clothing, at photos, but eventually, as grief symptoms get better, you’ll want to walk down memory lane.”
You can hand down this box to generations to come.
Tip two: Tell your grief story
“People are very private. I teach a class on emotions, and a lot of people have problems dealing with their grief,” Beagle said. “It’s a problem for men especially. If I share my grief with someone, it makes me look weak. What did the men teach us in our lives? ‘Men don’t cry.’ That’s one of the biggest fallacies.”
Beagle recommends finding a trusted, loving friend, someone who is genuinely in sympathy with you to share with. How many people should you share with? As many people as you feel comfortable.
“When you share your story, you are emptying that bucket of grief Beagle said. Don’t just say what happened; tell them how you feel. What’s going on with your life, how you’re handling it.”
Tip three: Writing your grief
“Some people have a hard time talking about it but not writing about it,” Beagle said. “Some people are more open, some are more closed, but we can all write down our grief. Write your story, take It from your point of view. I write about my experience in their life. I wrote about when I went to visit them in the hospital what my feelings were—watching them decline slowly. I write about their death; let’s say it was a long anticipatory death. I write about the months before they die. The funeral, how that affected me. After all that, you write about the next step going forward. Up until now, you’re writing all about yourself. Then, lastly, you write about how that person affected your life to go on.”
Tip four: Get in touch with the different parts of your grief
All your grief might not be sad. Shock, denial, happiness, sorrow can all be ways of showing grief.
“I’ve seen people laughing and cutting up in a funeral home grief can manifest as different things,” Beagle said. “Over the last 30 years, I can tell you some horror stories too.”
Beagle talked about his friend Chris white, whom he met through maintenance at McDonald’s and attending Christian motorcycle meetings. He and his wife would get together with White and his wife once a month. Beagle said he remembered his friend was constantly coughing. One day he told Beagle he had stage four cancer.
“I would go to chemo treatments with him and be a friend,” Beagle said. “One month before death, I interviewed him. If you want to see something to energize you and rev your engine, I was basically interviewing a dead man. He said he wasn’t scared because he knew where he was going.”
Beagle talked about beating yourself up after a death, wondering what more you could have done for that person in their life. He said it is about doing the best you can with what you’ve got.
“Realize you did the best you could, and they loved you regardless, Beagle said.”
