Finding the Words, a Swearer Center program run in partnership with CCRI and Hospice, helps families mourn and illustrates the grieving process to participating students
Andre was her best friend, lover and soul mate through 45 years of marriage. Barbara knew what he was thinking before he thought it. But after he died in 1998, Barbara Cullen needed words to heal.
She joined a bereavement-counseling group at Hospice Care of Rhode Island, which had helped Cullen and her three daughters care for Andre. The counseling helped but it was Anne Furness who "saved my life," she said. "Anne touched my heart. She listened and understood."
A nursing student, Furness was participating in Finding the Words, a program for families that chronicles on audiotape oral histories or experiences of illness, grief and death. The partnership among Hospice, Brown's Swearer Center for Public Service and the Community College of Rhode Island matches nursing, social work, medical and pre-medical student volunteers with clients and staff at Hospice and other facilities.
At home in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Providence, in a room decorated by Andre in his wife's favorite colors, Cullen and Furness spoke about life, love and loss. When Cullen was ready, Furness recorded the conversations. They met four times, talking for hours.
"I wanted someone to know what our life was like and the reasons I was feeling so bad," Cullen said. "I wanted someone to listen. The compassion I felt from Anne was real. I was able to open up and talk without embarrassment."
Narrating an oral history can be cathartic, said Jasmine Beach-Ferrara of the Swearer Center. "The process also helps students look at issues surrounding grief, loss and death through different lenses than those in academic and clinical training."
Narrators set the tone, said CCRI nursing graduate Kate Sweeney, who has worked with the program since its inception two years ago. "They can talk about their childhood, reflect on the experience of illness or speak to family members. People who have lost a family member can also reflect. They can mourn."
Two nursing students and four Brown pre-medical students are currently volunteering. A former nurse, Brown senior Julia Buss coordinates the project. She helps recruit narrators and assembles the volunteers to share what they've learned and encountered, discuss concerns, and hear from others. Bringing together nursing and medical students breaks down barriers between future health-care professionals, she said.
Last year, the program added arts and creative expression, including hand and body casting, creative writing and photography. Volunteers received training from local artist and lecturer Christiane Corbat and Waking Dreams & Warrior Women, a nonprofit group that conducts collaborative arts projects, educational programs and medical research.
Second-year medical student Adrian Gardner met several times with a 42-year-old cancer patient, a woman living at home with her husband and two pre-teen sons. On his last visit, the woman was ill and in pain. The home was tense. Gardner told her about hand casting, and she asked her family to help.
"As her husband watched, the two boys cast their mom's hand," Gardner said. "They probably had never touched her hands in that way before. They took strips of plaster dipped in water and laid them on her, massaging, coating and smoothing the wrinkles as they worked. Five minutes after they finished, she wriggled her hand out and they had a cast."
Two weeks later, the woman died. "This was a powerful experience I feel privileged to have been part of," Gardner said. "The family was left with a cast of their mom's hand and the memory of having spent time with her in that way."
The interviews confirmed the importance of listening, Gardner said. "I think a lot of doctors believe they need to be in control and knowing where things are going. This experience taught me the importance of also being present and not being in control and letting the patient guide you to where they want to go."
On Cullen's mantle hangs a thick wooden chain, carved by Andre. The last three links symbolize the bonds between the couple and hospice nurse Bobby Rhodes, who introduced Furness to Cullen.
"Sometimes in the privacy of your home, one on one, you can express feelings, truly. Here was someone willing to listen. I was crying. She was crying. We would stop the tape and have some coffee.
"If I can help one person get through a difficult situation after death, then I'm doing my part. That's how the chain starts."