This article was recently in the paper...Yesterday Debbie also lost her mom... Still in her heart Thanks to GriefShare, Debbie Fetty is coping with loss (Editor’s note: LIFE United Methodist Church is holding a special GriefShare program on coping with the holidays on Saturday, Nov. 8, at the church hospitality center, 1564Mary Lou Retton Drive, Fairmont. Registration and continental breakfast will be held at 9 a.m. and the welcome given at 9:30 a.m. There will be video and smallgroup discussion, announcements and sharing of a memory table. Lunch will be from 12:30-1:15 p.m., when Chinese lanterns will be released. Wrap-up is at 1:30 p.m. To register, call 304-363-2104 or 304-363-4657.) BYDEBRAMINORWILSON TIMESWESTVIRGINIAN FAIRMONT— How heart-breaking it is to lose a loved one. How excruciating it is to lose a second within six months. It can be almost too much to bear. On Jan. 17, 2013, Debbie Fetty lost her sister, Donna Jo, suddenly and unexpectedly. Donna Jo, then 54, had been battling epilepsy since she was 19. “She had a grand mal seizure that lasted 36 hours, and she never came out of it,” Fetty said, her voice breaking. “She was on the highest medication she could take,” Fetty said. “She even had a vagus nerve stimulator. I don’t know. It just took over.” Donna Jo was in rehab from hip surgery when the seizure happened. “We never got to talk to her,” Fetty said. “That was really hard.” Just 12 months apart in age, she and Donna Jo were very close. That bond grew stronger as Donna Jo became more dependent on Fetty as her seizure disorder worsened and she needed assistance. “She was usually right by my side. Losing her was a tough thing to do,” Fetty said. And then, not quite six months later, Fetty lost her dad, Bob Fetty Jr., when he died on July 14. He also left behind a son, Thomas James, and another daughter, Kayla Fetty. “We lost him toAlzheimer’s,” Debbie Fetty said. “We knew he wasn’t doing well. He just went to sleep and never woke up the next day. He was in a coma for three days. “I’ve been through a lot. It’s been a rough year.” She fell into a deep depression. “With this so close together, I thought I was the only one,” she said. “I went to a doctor and tried medication. Obviously, it didn’t work for me. The doctor wanted me on it for 30 days, but it didn’t do anything for me.” She knew she had to do something. Agood friend saw her pain and told her about GriefShare, a 13-week program hosted by LIFE United Methodist Church that addresses various aspects of mourning and grief. “She insisted I go to at least one meeting. She thought it would be helpful.” Fetty went. Her friend was right. “It gave me an outlook that I could talk and not worry about what anyone thought of me,” Fetty said. “When I cried, it was OK. It was OK to cry, but I had to be strong and take care of Mom (Shirley Fetty).” Through GriefShare, she learned a lot about coping with grief, she added. “You need help ... and God’s help, too. I’ve always been a Christian, but I felt alone before I started GriefShare. I knew families who were going through something like this, but I felt like I was alone. They were dealing with it better.” She needed a place where she could express her deep grief. “I needed to grieve for my sister and my dad.” With the holidays quickly approaching, that grief became sharper and more intense. But she applied what she’d learned in GriefShare. Her family decided rather than leave Donna Jo and Bob out of their celebrations, they would embrace their memories. “We did everything we always did as a family at Thanksgiving,” Fetty said. “We didn’t change anything. We talked about them. That’s what they tell you to do. Some people are afraid to say anything about someone who’s passed away. “The way I look at it, if I was talking about them, I was remembering them in good terms. So we talked about the funny things they’d done, different things. My sister’s little jokes. The way our dad carved the turkey. He always carved it until he got sick. “And this helped a lot.” Christmas was harder, she said. “That’s when we memorialized them. We had ornaments with their names on them. That acknowledged that they were here. And we let the small children put them on the tree. They’d been close to my sister and dad, too. “We stuck together as a family. That was important.” Everyone shared different memories, she added. “You remember the good things, not the bad. You have to remember the good things. “My sister loved children, although she never had any of her own. She loved her nieces and nephews. She loved playing with them. “She was a kind person. She liked doing things for older people on her street. She watched out for them. She was kind-hearted. She couldn’t work. Her seizures were just too bad. “She even told us she was going to die of a seizure. And she did.” She’d broken her hip and was doing well after surgery. “Her doctors were amazed how she was progressing, how strong she was. She was weeks ahead of her scheduled therapy. “And then she went into a seizure that lasted 36 hours. “The neurology department at Ruby did everything they could possibly do. “She’d gone there since she was 19. “They could have put her into a medically induced coma, but her chances ... she’d probably be a vegetable. “So we decided to let her go comfortably. It was a family decision. She would not have wanted to be a vegetable.” That was the most difficult decision she’d ever made, Fetty said. “There was nothing anybody could do to help her. She lived seven days after the seizure. Someone in the family was with her 24 hours a day. We never let her alone the whole time.” It took months, but Fetty was finally working her way through the pain of losing Donna Jo when her father died six months later that July. His death, though, was not as much of a shock as Donna Jo’s had been. He’d been battling Alzheimer’s for some time, she said. “He was fine the Thursday night before, and that Friday morning, he wouldn’t come awake. We had hospice with him. and the hospice nurse said we were at the end. “We took him to the hospital so he wouldn’t die at home. Our mom still had to live there. “He lived until Sunday morning. We had him on comfort measures. He just never woke up.” Again, as with Donna Jo, there was nothing medically that could be done for him. “His body just shut down,” Fetty said. He was 80. “There’d been no signs of him going that quickly. His heart and pulse and oxygen were good. He had been talking and eating. He just went to sleep and didn’t wake up.” The family never considered not doing the holidays without their beloved Donna Jo and Bob. “That wouldn’t have made it any better,” Fetty said. “That would have been shoving them to the back and not acknowledging your grief. You need to acknowledge your grief.” She knows that everybody deals with grief differently. “My mom talks to my dad and sister. That’s how she gets through it,” she said. “The nieces go to the cemetery and talk.” But she couldn’t find her way through the fog of grief that threatened to swallow her. “People said to me, ‘They’re dead. Get over it. Move on. Now you can come to work early.’ People really didn’t know how it hurt when they said that. I felt alone. Now I’m more cautious what I say to people when I know they’re going through something like this.” She learned through the videos and sharing sessions at GriefShare that she was not alone. “I needed a safe place where I could say something and nobody would judge me. They gave me a chance to talk about things. They made me see I wasn’t the only one thinking like that. “Alot of people feel angry to God and their family and doctors as they work through their grief. “I felt guilt. Did I do the right thing, letting my sister go? Was it right to let her go peacefully and not try extreme measures? “Did we do enough?” She realized an important fact. “You do as much as you can, but when even the medical profession can’t do anything, you’re at the point where you’ve done plenty. You cannot feel guilty when you’ve done everything possible you can do for them.” What a difference a year makes, she added. “We have some joyful things in our family. There’s a new baby. And we’re going to do the family Thanksgiving dinner at Dad and Mom’s house, just continue to do the things we normally did. “We’re still going to talk about them at Christmas. “They’re still in our hearts.” She is working on becoming a facilitator for GriefShare. “I feel stronger this year because of GriefShare,” she said. “I’m able to cope and helpMom, and do the things I should be doing.” She recommends going to this special GriefShare meeting if you are mourning a lost loved one this holiday season. “They don’t judge you. You go there. It’s confidential and helpful for you. You can turn to other forms of help, if you need it. “I don’t think I would have been able to cope like I am now if I had not gone through GriefShare,” Fetty said. The videos are presented by mental health or grief professionals, some of whom have gone through the grieving process, she added. “Their talking gave me something to think about. Now, some weeks didn’t pertain to me, like dealing with anger. But it gives you a way to get over your emotions.” You can come to any session at any time during the 13-week program, she said. For more information about GriefShare, call 304-363-2104 or 304-363-4657.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 15:19:09 +0000
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