Grief counselors at University Hospital in Salt Lake City started getting calls as soon as the news emerged that Josh Powell had used a hatchet to begin the fiery murders of his two young sons.
Some wanted to know how — or whether — to explain such a horrifying crime to children. Some were re-experiencing their own traumas from years earlier. Others wanted assurance that their world was still intact after the gruesome deed. None of the callers was related to the victims, but all were virtually as shaken up as if they were.
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Caring Connections
As part of the University of Utah’s College of Nursing, this program offers care of grieving persons, education of health care students in the care of the bereaved and research in loss and grief. See › http://nursing.utah.edu/practice/caringconnections |
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It became a collective cry for consolation in the face of unfathomable loss.
For many, that’s where religion can help. But, in an indirect way, it also can hurt.
Faith can provide some answers for believers. It can offer hope of eternal rest and joyous reunions in the hereafter for victims and swift justice for wrongdoers.
Religion, though, also can make believers feel guilty for experiencing profound anger at God, or for hating a perpetrator or his family. Some feel troubled by simple statements of belief, such as "God needed them in heaven," "She was too good for this world," "He is in a better place" or "She fulfilled her mission on Earth so it was time to go." Other churchgoers sense a pressure to forgive or to be so religiously optimistic that they deny their pain.
Such pronouncements come naturally to people of faith, said Katherine Supiano, who directs University Hospital’s grief-counseling center, Caring Connection. "We feel better if we have a ready answer."
But if those answers are offered prematurely, before grieving loved ones have a chance to express their anger at God or others, she said, "those words ring hollow and hurtful."
Kiirsi Hellewell, a friend of Powell’s missing wife, Susan Cox Powell, has experienced many of those emotions.
"What’s really helping us right now is our [LDS] faith and absolute belief we will see Susan again," Hellewell said this week, "and that she’s with her sweet boys right now."
She doesn’t feel any compassion for Powell yet.
"I’ve talked to a lot of people who are furious that Josh escaped earthly justice. We wish he was rotting in solitary confinement for the rest of his life," Hellewell said. "As church members, we are supposed to be loving and forgiving, but it’s going to take a lot for us to get there right now. There’s a lot of anger."
And that is appropriate, grief counselors say, even healthy.
Focus on memory • Supiano offered her distraught callers two contrasting images: the blazing crime scene and the subdued candlelight vigils. One was a symbol of death and hatred; the other a remembrance bringing light to something dark.
Though the circumstances of any death are unique, Supiano’s advice remains the same: Don’t get hung up in voyeuristic details. Focus on the lives lost. Draw on personal beliefs (with or without God) to sustain you. Reach out to friends who will buoy and succor you.
"Hope and comfort and faith come from our human relationships," Supiano said. "People all around are willing to be co-comforters."
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