By Lynette Wilson
© 2004 The News Star, Monroe, LA                                                                                                                                                              posted with permission       
   

    When Colorado authorities called Johnny and Betty Jean James in the middle of the night three-and-a-half years ago and informed them of their 30-year-old son Kimball's suicide, time stopped.

   "We were in shock, total shock," Betty Jean James said. "I didn't cry. It was like I was in stone."

   Later, when the pain manifested, "it's like your heart has literally been broken," she added, while sitting on her living room couch surrounded by family photos.

   Unlike losing an aged parent, mothers and fathers cannot intellectualize a child's death. They say that sometimes their emotions cause such physical pain in the body that just taking the next breath is hard.

   "Sometimes you wonder how you'll keep going," Betty Jean James said. "And whether you want to."

   Friends afforded emotional and spiritual support for the Jameses following Kimball James' death. But as time passed support waned.

   "People go on with their own lives. The two parents are suffering the same and can't help as easily," James said. "When you lose a parent, your spouse can bolster you."

   Preferring to be alone, Betty Jean James withdrew into herself. She thought about talking to a counselor, but couldn't see how a stranger could know her situation and help her through it. But in the end it was strangers who helped the Jameses help themselves - they found compassionate friends.

   The Compassionate Friends is a national non-profit, self-help support organization offering friendship and understanding to families grieving the death of a child - of any age, regardless of the cause.

   The non-religious, self-supporting group is open only to grandparents, parents and siblings of the deceased.

   At first, Johnny James felt apprehensive about reaching out for help.

   "I didn't want to go to pieces in front of those people," he said. But since James attended his first meeting, he has missed only one.

   Like other anonymous self-help organizations, members introduce themselves at the start of each meeting, give the name of their deceased child, and if they choose, the cause of death.

   Whatever is said in the group, stays in the group, affording members the opportunity to share their feeling without inhibition.

   "Nobody's required to say anything," said French Smith, chapter founder. "We have a butterfly ... if you can't talk, or don't want to talk, you pass the butterfly."

   Group members stand on every rung of the bereavement ladder - from recent losses to years of living without a child. Members find strength and acceptance in each other's stories.

   "When you come in, it doesn't matter how your child died," Smith said. "We are dealing with you and how you are going to move forward."

   French and Marilyn Smith lost their son, Stephen Michael Smith, 23, in November 1999 when a prescription drug stopped his heart.

   To this day, friends and acquaintances avoid French Smith in the grocery store and other public places, he says, because they don't know what to say, and they don't want to talk about his son's death for fear it might upset him.

   Part of The Compassionate Friends' mission is to educate the public - members say unless you've lost a child you cannot possibly understand what it feels like - about losing a child.

   "You couldn't know unless it happened to you," Smith said. "Our children still live in our hearts; we want to talk about them."

   The Smiths and the Jameses say that it's rare a moment goes by that they don't think of their child - they see someone of their child's age, see their favorite food on the grocery store shelf or they see their child's school mate.

   But sitting in a room, surrounded by people of all walks of life, knowing they've lost a child, too, and sharing their stories, is "awesome," they say. And even out of death, some good can come.

   Still, "It's a group you never want to belong to," French Smith said. "It's the highest dues you have to pay."

GRAPHIC: Dan Currier, The News-Star; The Compassionate Friends are a nonprofit support group that helps people such as Johnny and Betty Jean James who havelost a child. The Jameses sit in their backyard in Monroe with a photo of their
son, Kimball, who died three-and-a-half years ago. To go; The Northeast Louisiana chapter of The Compassionate Friends meets at 6:30 p.m. on the first Thursday of the month in the St. Francis Enaut Conference Center at 408 Hall St.
in Monroe (located directly behind St. Francis Medical Center). The Compassionate Friends hold a candlelight memorial the second Sunday in December. For more information go to www.tcfnortheastla.org, or call 388-1660.