Misery needs company

Funeral director Jim Kelly takes care of the living by telling people it's okay to grieve

by Kristen Lombardi

Sometimes the kindest people say the most hurtful things. Take Jim Kelly, the founder of You Are Not Alone, a free grief-education and bereavement-support program, as he starts a Wednesday night meeting at Immaculate Conception Church on Grove Street. Kelly directs his gaze toward each person seated around a table and announces: "You must know no one can take away your pain. No one can do your mourning for you. . . . It stinks, but that is the nature of grief."

His audience responds with a stony, sad stare.

Kelly, a hefty, balding, intense man, sits at the table's head, his eyes focused, his hands clasped. He tells the 12 or so men and women -- many with white, thinning or coifed hair -- that he's about to give them the type of information never embraced by society, never taught in school. He gets philosophical; people, he offers, conform to the very American "rosy mentality" that urges us to just get over our losses.

"So what do we say?" he asks with increasing animation. Silence pervades the hall, save for the shuffling of feet. Kelly continues: "We say that dirty, four-letter word, `fine.' I'm fine. . . . But we pretend to be okay for other-people's benefits, not our own."

Soon Kelly motions to the fuzzy, stuffed, banana-clutching monkey that's propped before him. His candor gives way to levity: "I don't have a fetish for stuffed animals." Members smile. The monkey, he explains, represents a fundamental principle of his gathering. "Are you in control of the 1000-pound gorilla called grief?" He doesn't wait for an answer. "Control is an illusion," he warns. "People who think they can maintain the mask are kidding themselves."

Thanks to You Are Not Alone, Worcester residents don't need to. Every month, its members -- now totaling in the thousands -- get together to untangle popular myths associated with grief. The program is designed to teach the bereaved the skills to help them better deal with emotions.

This might not seem exceptional, considering the growing public awareness of what's been called the "grieving process" -- a process connected to myriad everyday losses (the loss of a job, a relationship, of youth, independence, and the list goes on). But what makes You Are Not Alone unique is its existence at a time when people are unfamiliar with, even disconnected from, death and its rituals -- partly because of today's low mortality rate and partly because of social trends that relegate the dying to hospitals, nursing homes, or hospices. Even more unusual is the You Are Not Alone founder, Jim Kelly, who, as a funeral director, has the heart and mind to care for the living, rather than to focus on the disposal of the dead.

If the thought of a funeral director conjures up a dark, severe-faced, reserved image, Kelly topples the expectation. The Kelly Funeral Home on Lincoln Street -- decorated in warm, inviting gold-and-teal colors, with bountiful rose-and-carnation bouquets -- is more reminiscent of a tired, once regal Southern mansion than anything else. And when the outspoken, good-humored, garrulous-to-a-fault Kelly sits in his grief library, packed with nearly 100 books and articles on "Living with Dying" and "Loss, Grief, and Mourning," there is an aura of the shepherd about him.

So it isn't surprising that Kelly prides himself on his willingness to help people heal. In his role as funeral director -- or, as he prefers it, "grief facilitator" -- Kelly tries to foster what he calls an "environment for grief management," counseling families, interviewing them about their relation with the deceased, allowing them to create their own rituals, all to avoid the expensive yet empty, standard-fare funeral.

"If I'm not encouraging people to heal, what the hell am I doing?" Kelly asks incredulously. He answers, "I'm just taking orders, selling people big packages, and disposing of the dead. A funeral director who thinks that's good enough should get out of the business."

But Kelly wasn't always this way. Indeed, death had been such a regular part of his childhood that he could have easily become indifferent to it. An eager-to-assist kid, Kelly helped his father, Walter, with the family business by tidying the parlor and, as a teen, ferrying corpses to the embalming room. To this day, he remembers how his dad, when it was busy, transformed the family den into a viewing area, throwing a tarpaulin over the TV and then hoisting caskets upstairs.

"It was all perfectly natural to me," Kelly says. "This was just where my dad worked."

Yet it wasn't long before he thought differently. One afternoon, an impressionable Kelly, then 16, walked out of Burncoat High to discover his big, burly father waiting for him, weeping. "It was unsettling," he recalls. "I wasn't used to seeing my dad cry." Even more disturbing were the words his father uttered: Uncle Frannie died. Kelly went numb, noticing, as he puts it, "something physical in the pit of my stomach." A silent, surreal ride home brought him face-to-face with his fun-loving, larger-than-life uncle, already laid to rest in a casket.

The image of an embalmed Uncle Frank made Kelly realize the meaning of grief and, as such, the true value of his father's work. At that moment, he says, "I knew being a funeral director had more to do with the living than the dead."

But the experience didn't motivate Kelly to carry on the family business, which, as it's told, dates back to the late 1920s, when a great aunt became the first female embalmer in Massachusetts. For Kelly, that kind of inspiration came abruptly in 1975, once his 57-year-old father suffered from a heart attack and died. It was a rather freakish twist of fate, considering Kelly had just completed funeral-service school (he took courses in management, embalming, and anatomy). He had to abandon his adolescent dream of playing drums in a band; at 19, he took over the funeral home instead.

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YANA offers the bereaved a chance to connect, to be understood, and, thus, to find solace. And since it raises public awareness of what's endured when grieving, YANA ultimately paves the way for a more compassionate community.

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His father's demise placed Kelly on a professional path that, years later, would be forever altered by a relentless series of losses. In 1985, two of his favorite uncles perished from cancer and heart disease. Soon his father's best friend, who had maintained close ties, committed suicide. And then on Mother's Day 1986, Kelly's own mother, Lillian, expired under the weight of what he now calls a "heavy heart."

As the funeral director for his loved ones, Kelly was forced to hide his sorrow so he could perform his duties. But four losses in nine months, he says, "overloaded my capacity to maintain the wall." And so, he crashed. Months had passed before Kelly, alone one night, finally recognized he couldn't escape the creeping sense of solitude. He tried watching TV. He tried reading. "I felt like I was running in front of a train." After hours of pacing, he did the only thing he could: he called a friend, who drove from New Hampshire to be by Kelly's side.

The experience prompted him to study whatever he could on the grieving process and, in 1989, to set up a support group for people who had lost parents. But what started as self-help for Kelly has evolved into what he considers to be a "different animal altogether." Today, the educational program, You Are Not Alone, known as YANA, tries to teach the bereaved how to better handle their grief. Meetings feature discussions on how to go on living, for instance, and how ignoring grief can deteriorate your own health. In this sense, YANA is an extension of the funeral, helping folks establish another life after death.

And Kelly has no doubt that the program provides relief -- not just because it boasts a 2700-strong membership, but because members have shown him an unyielding fervor. "I knew I was onto something big," he says, "when people stayed past midnight just to talk."

Such an intense response doesn't surprise Kelly, though. After all, his struggles have fostered a deep conviction that suppressed grief leads to negative, self-destructive consequences, including the use of drugs, sex, and food, as people try to medicate their pain. He is so convinced of the powerful repercussions that he suggests grief may be the underlying cause of such irrational, violent outbursts as the April Columbine High shooting spree in Littleton, Colorado, and the Sutton Xtra Mart robbery-turned-murder in late June.

"We are a product of our experiences," he notes; if we walk around walled off and disconnected, "we could explode." He later adds, "If people learned to manage feelings instead of being managed by them, we'd have an entirely different society."

As any bereavement specialist will tell you, there is a certain truth to Kelly's claims. It may be unwise to attribute unrecognized grief to every societal ill, but experts agree that people who don't deal with the "negative" emotions associated with mourning -- the anger, resentment, and the bitterness -- are more likely to find those feelings festering.

"We all suffer loss," explains Worcester psychotherapist Joanne Jozefowski, who wrote the newly published The Phoenix Phenomenon: Rising from the Ashes of Grief. "Some people can integrate [it] into their lives in healthy ways, others cannot."

Ever since Elizabeth Kübler-Ross conducted her landmark study on death, dying, and terminal patients in 1969, people, in general, have become more aware of grief as an inevitable life process, rather than a disease. Public awareness, in fact, has flourished with recent trends toward a more psychologically sophisticated society -- evidenced by the fact that therapy is now acceptable and affordable. Boston University social-work professor Mary Urban-Keary notes, "People used to struggle to exist economically; today, they have time to deal with the mind."

Even the funeral industry has accepted this knowledge. Across the country, directors have hired in-house grief counselors, kept well-stocked libraries of grief-related materials, and have opened up their facilities to support groups. Though such acts are still fairly unique, directors, at least, talk about grief, says David Walkinshaw of the Saville and Grannon Funeral Home in Arlington. "We're more proactive in helping people cope."

What a funeral director like Kelly -- or, more aptly, his YANA group -- has done is to "normalize," as it's called, the grief stages, thereby allowing people to feel less alienated, less strange. YANA offers the bereaved a chance to connect, to be understood, and, thus, to find solace. And since it raises public awareness of what's endured when grieving, YANA ultimately paves the way for a more compassionate community.

In the words of Jozefowski, who has spoken at meetings, "YANA is a place of hope for the future."

Of course, YANA members are the living proof, so to speak, even if it isn't always apparent. Back at the church, they seem to drift in and out of concentration. Some doodle, erase, then doodle again on pamphlets announcing "10 Easy Ways To Manage Depression" and "Six Commonly Asked Questions on Grief." Others fold and refold articles offering advice on making meals enjoyable, indeed bearable, after the loss of a spouse. Yet as soon as Kelly mentions an idea that registers, a wave of emotion gushes.

"Sometimes you lose someone," he suggests, "and people say, `If you need anything. . .'"

"Yes!" interjects one woman, whose long, blond curls accentuate her solemn expression. "But they never pick up the phone to call."

"When people appear to drop off the planet," Kelly replies, "they probably don't know how to help."

Another woman, whose red, puffy eyes remain hidden behind impenetrable lenses, sniffles and says, "I'm glad this group is here because this is new for me."

Kelly leans forward, reassuring her. "This isn't an everyday thing."

She nods, wipes her cheek. "The most vital thing I've heard is to tell people what I need."

Suddenly, Kelly grabs the stuffed monkey, shaking it. "Remember," he advises the group, "deal with the gorilla or it will deal with you."

He then launches into the story behind the symbolic simian. Several years ago, he relays, a woman arrived at YANA only to leave after the introduction. When she eventually returned, she handed Kelly the stuffed animal and told him: I'm not mad at you anymore. Initially, the woman had wanted a magic cure; but instead, Kelly had explained that grieving got worse before it got better. After months of futile searching, she realized Kelly was willing to speak the truth -- no matter how painful it was to hear.

For veteran YANA members, in fact, Kelly's honest, albeit tough, message is exactly what enabled them to keep living. Susan Vancelette, of Worcester, for example, sought out YANA after her toddler grandson died from a liver disease six years ago. Today, she credits Kelly with helping her see that she has a right not just to grieve, but also to grieve forever. So when little things -- especially the twinkling melody of crib toys -- still prompt tears, Vancelette doesn't get discouraged.

"Jim freed us," she exclaims. "He liberated us from the social constraints making us feel there was no room to grieve."

Elaine Laukaitis would probably agree. The cancer-induced death of her longtime husband two years ago propelled the Worcester resident into depression. For months she did nothing but sit by her husband's grave and lament: Mr Laukaitis, I want to be with you. "I struggled to survive," she recalls -- until an "ungodly hurt," she says, swept over her. "It dawned on me that I was suffering a broken heart."

Spotting a YANA bulletin, Laukaitis attended one meeting and then another. Not only did Kelly validate her emotions, she says, but YANA, as an educational program, became the catalyst for what Laukaitis describes as "my awakening." Though she still has bad days, she adds, she now feels a sense of peace and normalcy.

"I thank God for a Jim Kelly," she confides, "someone who can help us through all this suffering."

But Kelly isn't without his detractors. Indeed, there are those who've criticized him for offering what amounts to grief counseling without a psychology degree, let alone a license. That nearly all of his critics happen to be funeral directors reflects, in part, an ongoing industry debate. "Some directors don't believe grief facilitating is their role," explains Kelly Smith of the National Funeral Directors Association, which represents 15,000 professionals nationwide. "They see it as an intrusion, or feel they don't have the credentials to do the right thing."

Kelly, though, believes the industry's reluctance to help people heal probably has more to do with funeral directors' own fears of death. And he's convinced that, eventually, consumers will force the industry to be compassionate. Yet for YANA members, Kelly has already looked beyond the funeral toward restoring people's and, hence, Worcester's health. In the words of Vancelette, "Jim has true spirit of community involvement. Here is a giver to the max!" n