[ HAWAII AT WORK ]
ROD THOMPSON / RTHOMPSON@STARBULLETIN.COM
Aaron Yamasaki, left, Hospice of Hilo's director of bereavement services, discussed a new brochure last week with Ron Hart, Hospice's public relations director.
Hospice director I am a midwife to grief.
works through grief
Aaron Yamasaki is on a continual
journey toward healingI journey with those who are willing to open their lives and embrace the support offered as they move forward after painful loss.
At some point everyone is catapulted into the grieving process by the death of a loved one. Many slog their way through, facing and embracing their feelings as they arise. Others try to avoid it, only to have grief rear at an inopportune time. Some get bound up, all tied within themselves and unable to make their way through. Stuck.
To love deeply is to have the capacity to hurt deeply. Each day at Hospice of Hilo, where I am director of bereavement services, I meet people who are dealing with the loss of a loved one.
For some it was anticipated, the end of a long-term illness. Others have been dealt the blow of a sudden death. Anticipated or unanticipated, death is death; grief is grief. People are trying their best to cope with the losses they face. Part of Hospice of Hilo's mission is to help these survivors.
People often ask me what it is like providing the service I do. I tell them, it's like being a midwife to the grieving process. Not midwifery in the physical sense, rather in the emotional, spiritual sense.
For me it's traveling with them, a midwife who creates a safe context and environment in which they are able to do what they need to do in order to get through the losses of humanity.
Ultimately, we each work through our own losses: No one can do it for us. We can, however, accept support to help us move healthy and safely through the unfamiliar territory of grief.
To journey with those who are bereaved and grieving the death of a loved one is to journey with those who have often come to live with the reality of the sacredness, fragility, and yet strength of the human spirit.
I try to facilitate their expressions and feelings; help them choose healthy coping skills; solve adjustment issues; and address social, emotional and spiritual concerns.
Ultimately, it is assisting survivors in adapting to an environment in which the physical presence of their loved one is transformed into an emotional presence. As one writer said "Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship that lingers on in the survivor's mind for some final resolution, some clear sense of meaning, which perhaps it never finds."
Midwifing is the process of sustaining, guiding and ultimately creating a context in which healing and wholeness can be rediscovered.
Hawaii At Work features tells what people do for a living in their own words. Send submissions to: business@starbulletin.com
