By CYMBRE FOSTER
... We need not walk alone, we are the Compassionate Friends...helping each other grieve as well as to grow ...
--from The Compassionate Friends credo
TRAVERSE CITY -- Although the leaves on the weeping cherry in Bonnie Sobbry's backyard are autumn yellow, and the white roses that grow beneath its branches are no longer in bloom, a bench and a large carved eagle underneath still invite visitors to take pause.
This scene, just outside Sobbry's window, is a memorial to her son William 'Billy' Huff, who unexpectedly died in 2003, just short of his fortieth birthday.
There's also a wall in her home office devoted to her son. Having physical memorials to him helps her with the mourning process.
"I've learned that in our mourning we're not breaking attachment, we are redefining how we're attached," she said.
Sobbry vividly remembers the day the police knocked on the door to give her the news that would irrevocably change her life. A month later she went to her first Compassionate Friends meeting -- a meeting that helped her along the path of healing from her overwhelming loss.
Compassionate Friends is a national nonprofit, self-help support organization that is there to assist families dealing with the death of a child. There is no religious affiliation and no membership dues or fees.
"It was a campfire meeting at someone's home and I took my son's obituary and read it to them because I didn't know what else to say," she recalled.
She has continued to attend meetings, finding empathy, tears and lots of laughter.
"Basically, Compassionate Friends saved my life," said Sobbry. "One of the things I learned there, is when you lose a child life will never be the same again, you just don't know how."
When Sobbry lost her son, she was no stranger to loss. The day the police told her Billy had died was reminiscent of the day that they knocked on her door 21 years earlier to tell her that her husband had died. She was left a 30-year-old widow with two small sons to raise.
Shortly after Billy died, her son Randy was talking to Sobbry in the driveway of her Traverse City home when he coughed so hard he passed out. He hit his head on the pavement and wound up in the ICU for weeks, where it was touch and go. Sobbry was in the ICU on the day Billy would have been celebrating his fortieth birthday.
"We all come into this world with a mission and sometimes we know what it is and other times we don't," said Sobbry. "I've accepted mine as one of caretaking and healing. When I almost lost another son in October that year, Compassionate Friends was there."
After she learned Randy would recover, a friend sent her to Maui, Hawaii for six weeks. She said the trip saved her life.
"I had to make a decision about whether to go on or not. When people lose a child, it feels like there is a hole in them," she explained. "Grief can become accumulative and toxic, and that's why organizations like this are so powerful. The key is to find a purpose of the pain and that is the gift of Compassionate Friends."
In Compassionate Friends, expressing thoughts and feelings is believed to be integral to the healing process. The gatherings provide a safe environment for just that, with its basic premise being that the death of a child, brother, sister, or grandchild is best understood by others who have also experienced such a loss.
"In the beginning I likened it to an amputee, the limb isn't there but the pain still is. Compassionate Friends understands that grief," she said. "It's a place to go and have the empathy of people who really understand."
Compassionate Friends began in 1969 in England after two sets of parents who had lost children met to share memories of their sons. As they came to know others who had also lost children, they decided to form a self-help group and began reaching out.
Compassionate Friends was incorporated as a nonprofit in the United States in 1978. Since then it has grown to nearly 600 chapters in this country, with hundreds more around the world.
Holidays are particularly difficult for bereaved family members.
"One of the things that we talk about in Compassionate Friends is our new normal," Sobbry explained, "like how to deal with that empty chair at Thanksgiving, which was my son's favorite holiday."
In an effort to reach out to new families and join to celebrate beloved children, siblings and grandchildren, The Compassionate Friends of the Grand Traverse Area will hold a special candle-lighting ceremony today at 6:30 p.m. at Central United Methodist Church on Cass in Traverse City. It will be held in conjunction with a worldwide candle-lighting ceremony. All parents, grandparents and siblings are invited, regardless of how long it's been since the death of a loved one, said Sobbry.
During the ceremony, individuals may choose to be involved by lighting a candle to remember their loved one, place a picture on the photograph table, connect with other families or sit quietly.
The local Compassionate Friends group also meets regularly the second and fourth Mondays of each month at 7 p.m. in Conference Room E of Munson Community Health Center, 550 Munson Ave.
If you have any questions about today's ceremony or the regular meetings, contact Karen Strom at 946-9306.
