Category: The Hospice Chaplaincy Show

In today’s episode, our hosts Joe Newton and Saul Ebema sit down to talk with Erik Cremeans. Erik shares his journey from childhood and the lessons he has learned along the way that influence his work as a professional hospice chaplain. 

Chaplain Erik is also a theologian, a thinker and a short story writer. He looks at himself as a curator of people’s stories and in his writings, he captures the beauty within those bedside narratives. Here is a piece he wrote for; https://hospicechaplaincy.com/2020/02/16/stone-the-crow-a-chaplains-reflection-on-death-and-dying/

Terri conducts workshops throughout the U.S. to help the dying and the bereaved find healing through meditative, ritual and therapeutic processes that focus on inner transformation rather than external events. 

Her work is acclaimed by physicians, hospice workers, grief counselors, clergy and the bereaved for its pinpoint clarity on the process of dying and grieving, and its heartfelt depiction of consciousness beyond the physical body. 

She is also an author who has written a number of books including;

1.     GRIEF AND GOD: When Religion Does More Harm Than Healing (2019)

2.     ​TURNING THE CORNER ON GRIEF STREET: 
 Loss and Bereavement  as a Journey of Awakening (2014)

3.     EMBRACING DEATH: A New Look at Grief, Gratitude and God (2010)

4.     A SWAN IN HEAVEN: Conversations  Between Two Worlds (2007)

In this week’s episode, Dr. Saul Ebema and Dr. Joe Newton sit down to talk about the challenges of the family members of the hospice patient and how to help them.

When a member of the family is dying, unique problems arise. These problems usually begin at the time of diagnosis. Communications often becomes difficult as family members experience different stages of grief. Early in terminal illness, there are the emotional burdens of learning of the illness and coming to accept a terminal diagnosis, of giving up hope of cure and choosing comfort measures. In addition to grieving for the potential loss of the loved one, there is also the grief for the death of the family unit as it has existed before. Although the family will continue after the death, it will forever be changed by the death.

Dying persons in this age group present counseling challenges that defer from the elderly. The middle aged adult with family and work responsibilities who is stricken with terminal illness and the elderly in a nursing home face their deaths with different concerns due to their perceived age differences and social responsibilities. The sense of loss, injustice, and anger is often more intense in the person at this middle stage of life. The major psychosocial concerns in this age group are the loss of identity, work, family and the reality of not being able to support their families or not being able to raise their children.  When compared to the death of an elderly person, the family members and friends of a dying person in this age group have intense psychosocial issues. 

There is an implied though not plainly expressed expectation in our culture that the parent will die before the child. The orderliness of the universe seems to be undermined when this expectation is unmet. The unnaturalness is not determined by the age of the child, but by the fact that the child dies out of turn with the parent. The death of a child is considered a greater loss in our culture because the child has not had the opportunity to live a full life compared to the adult or the elderly. The emotional and spiritual needs of dying children vary greatly with age and intellectual ability.