This holiday season Denise Davis and her family will join with her father, James Heintzelman, and her sister just like any other year. They will eat the regular food and enjoy the regular traditions.

Except this year, she’s missing her mother.

Bernice Heintzelman died in February after being a hospice patient for four days. Her family is still going through the grieving process and learning how to cope with the first major holiday season without their loved one.

The two attend regular grief support meetings through SUN Home Health and said the meetings have taught them the stages of grief and give them the opportunity to discuss the feelings they encounter each day.

“They’re good for you,” Heintzelman said, but added that not just the meetings provided comfort. The hospice workers he encountered in his wife’s short care were professional and friendly, offering a comforting atmosphere.

The groups are held in an intimate setting and give grieving individuals a chance to talk about their feelings and how they’re coping.

“The biggest part of the group is going over the grief process,” Davis said. “You start to feel different ways. Sometimes I think I shouldn’t be feeling this way, but it’s comforting to know people feel the same.”

First holiday alone

During the grief support meetings, Hospice Chaplain/Bereavement Coordinator Jim Taylor said the group does worksheets and watches videos to begin to get everyone talking. The group is encouraged to open up and talk about their grief.

“Emotions need vented,” Taylor said. “At the time of a death, family is inundated with attention, cards, phone calls, visits, the service. Soon after, the attention evaporates and everyone’s life returns to normal and you desire your life to return to normal but it never will. We need to realize, given time, we can and need to develop new, normal lives without the person lost.”

Taylor, who leads the sessions, lost his wife four years ago and knows what the individuals he’s counseling are going through. He serves as a shoulder to lean on and an ear to listen for those who need it.

He remembers his first holiday season without his wife in 2005. He lived in Mifflinburg and his children lived near Philadelphia.

While his wife was living, the couple made trips to the city every year because they knew her time was limited. The first Thanksgiving holiday after her passing, he drove to his daughter’s home.

“The drive wasn’t the problem. I parked on the street, walked down the driveway and it hit me,” he recalled. “This was the first time I made the trip alone. I stopped in the kitchen and broke down and cried. My son-in-law wrapped me in his arms. It was comforting.”

That Christmas his family came to him in the Valley, and though he said it wasn’t in their hearts to celebrate they made the best of it for his grandchildren. At the table, everyone told a memory of Taylor’s wife, which he said was tearful but cleansing, and it validated in his heart she hadn’t been forgotten.