Elaine’s father met a grief counsellor who was only in her twenties. Elaine explained to her that she may not be the right fit for her father.
Transcript
And one really bad time was when mom was well into dying […] Now maybe she was 25, but she wasn’t much older than that, and she was the social worker and she was the grief counsellor. So, she was going to talk to my dad about how to handle grief. And she’s saying this to my dad, and I looked at my father and he just turned and looked at me, and I knew what he was thinking “What does she think she can say to me that is going to make a difference in my life?” And unfortunately, I had to call the girl into my part of the house and sit her down and said, “Really, I understand that you want to help, but this isn’t going to help my father. You’ve got nothing in common to understand what he’s going through after being married almost 60 years and losing his wife. What could you say?” All the book learning in the world doesn’t help you then. So, only family and he looked to me for that guidance, right? Or that I knew what he was going through. So, outside help is… I’m very grateful and I see it in a lot of our apartments and group people have it, and they’re very grateful for it and you really need it if someone’s living alone. They can’t go into the bathroom themselves really safely can they? So, that’s important. But for my stage, no it’s not. We’re coping.
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