Grief in a pandemic: Regina counselling service encourages reaching out in any way possible

Family coping with grief during pandemic WATCH: A family that lost a loved one to COVID-19 continues to cope. Colton Wiens looks at the options for those grieving.

REGINA — Grief counselling services are encouraging those who know someone who has lost a loved one to reach out as much as possible during the pandemic.

Executive Director of The Caring Place in Regina, Melony Materi, said grief counselling services are seeing more requests for help and are encouraging people that they can still care for their grieving loved ones.

“Reaching out to them via phone, reaching out to them via Zoom, sending them messages as much as I can. Letting those people know that I care,” Materi said.

Materi encourages people to do more than just give condolences.

“Talk about the impact that that person had on your life, talk about the impact that you had on their life,” Materi said.

According to the provincial numbers, 122 people have died after contracting COVID-19 as of Monday. Eighty-nine of those deaths occurred after November 21, for a 269.7 per cent increase in just 30 days.

Grieving while staying physically distant is something Paul Gullacher has been learning to adjust to since his father Butch Gullacher died with COVID-19 in April. In the eight months since, Paul said it’s been tough to connect with others.

“It’s not going very well. I mean a lot of the avenues that we would take to grieve have been interrupted or disrupted,” Paul said. “It’s been kind of a surreal experience in the sense that we would have never predicted it would occur this way.”

Paul said the family has not been able to hold a formal funeral.

“Hopefully next summer maybe even next fall when travel becomes possible. I think there were a lot of people that were very close with him that would like to pay their respects,” Paul said.

Paul hopes others continue to follow the guidelines and try not to gather over the holidays, to help keep more people from having to go through the grief he faces.

The Caring Place provides grieving services to those who have lost a loved one and hosts free support groups for people feeling anxious or depressed or facing domestic violence.