A Bug's Life

If you died tomorrow, you’d want your family to meet Debbie Brown.

Everyone must die someday. But after you have passed on, to whom do those you left behind turn for support? Few can fully comprehend the devastation of a family member’s passing, making necessary Brown’s job as bereavement coordinator at Augusta Medical Center’s Hospice of the Shenandoah. Debbie Brown has mastered an art that seems more like a privilege than a job — providing grief counseling to family members of former hospice patients.

Her words reach your ears as would gentle ocean waves — soothing and flowing, yet concise and well thought out. Wearing comfortable earth-tone clothing and a bob haircut, the not-so-obviously 45-year-old has two jobs: one inside and one outside the office. She maintains a desk in her tiny monochromatic office punctuated with color by accessories. Dragonflies are the central theme: garden ornaments made of stained glass, tissue paper notes and photos command the space. But dragonflies are more than an insect to Brown — they are an intrinsic part of her work with grieving children.

Laying the Foundation
DRAGONFLIES ARE NOT the first things that come to mind when trying to explain death. But for the past eight years, Brown has been the director of Camp Dragonfly, a grief camp for children ages 6 to 18.

At camp, children participate in activities such as fishing, arts and crafts and sessions where they can talk with doctors, volunteers and each other about their feelings. The children wear nametags with stickers that designate their relationship to the individual they lost, and they are encouraged to enjoy camp with the understanding that they can have fun despite the loss of a loved one.

Initially, AMC questioned whether there would be enough interest for an annual camp. But in its first summer, Camp Dragonfly had nearly 50 campers and 50 volunteers. Now in its eighth year, the camp boasts more than 100 campers and 100 volunteers annually.

Camp Dragonfly’s name did not come arbitrarily. Brown gives its origin as the book Water Bugs & Dragonflies by Doris Stickney. The novel explains death to young children from the perspective of water bugs that become dragonflies and leave the pond, unable to return to their friends underwater. The book explains what life-changing event has happened to the water bugs.

Despite its namesake, during the camp’s first summer, Brown hadn’t yet seen any dragonflies. During a poignant closing activity in which groups of campers wrote messages on balloons and then released them into the sky, she noticed a dragonfly come down and fly to each group around the camp.

“That’s when I thought, ‘God is talking to us; this is our message that we need to continue this,’” Brown says. “Scientific people will say it was because it was fall, or because you were at a pond … but I don’t know, it goes back to everything coming full circle.”

The camp’s message to children is similar to that for adults — grieving is natural and can happen to anyone. “It lets them think, ‘Hey, I’m not the only one who’s lost my mother. There’s other kids who’ve lost their mother, too,’” she says. “It helps them know they’re not alone.”

Beneath the Surface
CHILDREN ARE NOT the only ones who require emotional support. Two weeks after the passing of a hospice patient, Brown gives the family a phone call to check on them emotionally. If they want to speak with her, they can. Her job is not glamorous, she says, but it is her ultimate goal to validate the families’ feelings and allow them to grieve at a natural pace.

Although she contacts family members by telephone, she does not seek them. The relationship continues because they seek her emotionally. Thus, she becomes a part of their lives.

Of those who wish to continue speaking with Brown, 15 to 20 per year request visits. The visits are a means of offering a more personal, physical type of consolation.

But not all accept Brown’s invitation.

Some feel that having a visit with her is admitting to a personal problem.

“They think if they meet with me, they’re not coping well, but that’s not the case,” she says. “It’s not a sign of weakness for seeking support. That grief is not a problem or something that can be fixed — it’s a natural, normal part of your life.”

Brown still regularly visits with Paralee Dunnings of Staunton, whose husband, Ophie, passed away in February 2004. Visits usually do not extend beyond 13 months after the death occurs, Brown says, but Paralee has had extenuating family circumstances that have kept her file open.

The mutual affection between Brown and Dunnings is obvious, as Brown hangs on Dunnings’ every word and offers well-placed interjections to steer the conversation.

“She just opens up her heart to you,” Brown says. “We tease each other.”

Dunnings is quite the firecracker. In a denim peasant skirt, sensible black shoes and a striped turtleneck, she and Brown converse as would old friends in Dunnings’ cream, brown and gold-themed living room.

Ophie became sick in 1993, “and from then on it was all downhill,” Dunnings says matter-of-factly. Hospice entered the picture in December 2003 after his heart condition worsened. They wanted to place Ophie in respite care, where he would stay in AMC until his passing.

“‘I don’t want to go,’ he said to me. ‘As a matter of fact, I want to die at home,’” she says. The workers wanted Dunnings’ husband in respite care due to concerns that she might not be able to care for him properly. But they respected her husband’s wishes, and he passed away at home on Feb. 22, 2004.

At the time, Dunnings says she was angry with the hospice workers for wanting her husband to go to the hospital. But now she understands they were just doing their jobs. Her relationship with Brown is evidence that no hard feelings remain, and she has given Paralee reason to know that great things are yet to come.

The Adult Stage
DEBBIE BROWN CAN tell you how she became a bereavement coordinator, but she cannot pinpoint a single event in her life that influenced her career path.

Brown is a native of the Shenandoah Valley. Born and raised in small-town Fairfield, she still resides there with her sons, Colby, 18, and Lucas, 13.

When asked about the nature of Fairfield, instead of describing it as a one-stoplight town, she laughs and says, “It’s more like a no-light town!” She later clarifies that Fairfield is more of a village than a town, which explains the absence of stoplights.

When Brown was 12, her 3-month-old brother died from spina bifida, a condition that can cause abnormalities of the spine and the spinal cord. “That was my first experience with death,” she says. “But I saw how it impacted my family — we didn’t talk about it. I could see my mom struggling.” She recalled not wanting to be treated any differently by her classmates as a result of the death. But the experience seemed to make her more in tune with others’ feelings toward the subject.

Teri Humphries works with Brown at AMC as a clinical coordinator. They have known each other for more than 40 years. In fifth grade, Humphries’ grandfather died before she arrived at school one day.

“Debbie asked if I was all right and I told her that my grandfather had died,” Humphries said. “She came over and hugged me and told me it’d be OK. I tell her she was a bereavement coordinator even then.”

Taking Flight
IT IS THE simple elements of life that keep Debbie Brown happy. She searches for meaning in her own life through assisting her patients. As the yin to their yang, she augments her understanding of life, death and grieving by relating to the experiences of others.

Waves will crash. Circles will be completed. To Brown, most of those she visits anticipate a “magic” time when the pain will subside. But there is no time frame of right or wrong timing for when that will occur.

“It’s part of who you are now,” she says. “Hopefully, with time, the intensity of it won’t be as strong, it won’t be as prominent as it was, but it’s part of your makeup — part of who you are now.” Death, birth, marriage, moving to a new home: all of these are part of life and will make you something you weren’t before, Brown says. “We grieve because we love. The only way not to grieve is not to love.” And after a response like that, who wouldn’t choose love?

More information on Camp Dragonfly can be found at www.campdragonfly.org.