Organizer Jenna Stamplicoski told MooseFM she finds the best way to support those who are grieving can vary, and not everyone is comfortable sitting and sharing their grief in an indoor setting.
“You have to adapt to the needs of the community. We have great response to our groups, but, you know, it can always be better. So you always have to look at new, different ways to involve more people.”
Stamplicoski, who works with Madawaska Valley Hospice and Pallitative Care, says looking at individual needs in the community led her to start the Barry’s Bay walking group.
“I was inspired by one particular spouse that we had in care. His wife had died and they walked quite often together. And it just really made me think, who’s he going to walk with now?”
Stamplicoski says the walking group takes place every week, rain or shine.
“You just get out there and go for a gentle walk and smell the leaves and the changing seasons and talk about what’s going on in your life and what’s been difficult since the last week.”
On a recent walk, the group had a special destination: the ‘Wind Phone’ in Killaloe Pathways park.
The rotary phone, nestled in a wooden booth in the park, is meant to give people the opportunity to connect with their loved ones they are grieving.
“It’s a beautiful little phone booth. They have an old style phone. And the idea is that you could talk to your loved one. So, you know, say what you need to say in a different format.”
The phone is part of a movement that started over a decade ago in Japan when gardener Itaru Sasaki put up a phone booth on his property.
He was grieving someone he had lost and it was a way of talking.
Soon after, the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami hit Japan. Suddenly many in the region were grieving the loss of loved ones.
Sasaki opened up the phone to anyone who wanted to use it.
Since then, Wind Phones have sprung up across the world.
The Barry’s Bay Grief Walking group will continue through October.
In November Stamplicoski says more programming is coming up including a memory pillow workshop, in partnership with Combermere’s Quilters Curve.
“It’s a three-part workshop, so the first session is planning your piece and chatting with the group about what you’d like to make. I have volunteer sewers that are coming. And there’s no prerequisite of knowing how to sew at all.”
You can find more information about grief programming in the Barry’s Bay, Killalo and Combermere areas here.
