Published Monday, December 30, 2002
By Erin Palko
Herald Staff Writer
This year, Christmas was a little different with Allie Gilchrist's family.
The 10-year-old Musser Elementary fifth grader lost her grandfather Robert Elerby to kidney cancer earlier this year. Allie said her grandmother, Elsie, took the absence hard.
"She was a little bit upset this year because it was her first Christmas without him," said Allie, as she took a break from roller skating at Olympic Fun Park in Hermitage.
Allie said she is doing well, partly due to the fact she was enrolled in Sharon Regional Health System's Help Experience the Loss of a Loved One program, dubbed HELLO, even before her grandfather's death.
Jodie Moroco, counselor with the program, helped prepare Allie for what was coming.
"She told me he was going to a better place," she said.
Allie was just one of many from the program who came out to skate Friday at the HELLO holiday skating party. This was first year the program coordinators held a skating party for its young members.
"We decided to do this ... they're on their break (from school), they can skate, get food, get a present," Ms. Moroco said.
Sponsored by the Sharon Regional Health System Home Health Agency/Hospice Home Care, the bereavement program for children from ages 5 to 18 assists children with the stages of death and bereavement, allows them to discuss their feelings, lets them accept death and provides them with coping mechanisms.
Right now there are about 150 children in the program, Ms. Moroco said.
Each child who attended the party received a "grief kit" -- a small wooden box filled with a grief booklet, candy, a picture frame and other items related to the death of their loved one.
The children also took a break in skating to attend a brief memorial service dedicated to the family members they had lost.