Thrusday, January 07, 1999

Helping children to heal - gently

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Art, dolls, just play can ease grief's pain

BY KAREN SAMPLES
The Cincinnati Enquirer

        FORT THOMAS — God is a constellation of stars looking down on a red house. Inside the house is a girl. She tells God: “I want to be an only child.”

        “OK,” he replies. “Here goes nothing.”

        And he sends a car into a wall.

        This is what the girl draws.

        The car part really happened. Two years ago, her 16-year-old brother died in a wreck on Ky. 8 in Fort Thomas.

        Now she draws her guilt.

        It's best not to contradict, says Marshae Ohms. Best to let children draw their feelings, unleash them without words, so that their pictures become the stories of their hurt. Eventually, they talk about their guilt, and they begin to recognize it for what it is.

        This is part of what Ms. Ohms does as a bereavement counselor at Hospice of Northern Kentucky. This year, for the first time, she'll be doing it for an entire weekend in September at the agency's new camp for children.

        The experience will be open to any child age 5 to 12 who has lost someone within the last two years. It will be called Camp Great Escape, in honor of the Great Escape party thrown each February by the Charities Guild of Northern Kentucky.

        The guild typically raises about $20,000 through its party and donates the proceeds to a different organization each year. This year's event will help pay for the bereavement camp, whose other sponsors are Linnemann Funeral Homes and St. Elizabeth Hospital.

        The weekend will take place at a wilderness retreat in Carrollton. With plenty of trained volunteers standing by, children will draw, make “worry dolls” and “feelings masks,” act in a play about grief, and talk about whatever else is on their minds.

        Or not. The kids don't have to say anything; if they want to hit a baseball instead, they can do that. Play is one of the ways children cope, Ms. Ohms says.

        She and an expressive therapist from Lexington are planning the activities for the camp. They expect 35 to 50 children.

PARTY FOR CAMP

The Charities Guild of Northern Kentucky is sponsoring a party Feb. 27 to benefit the camp. The theme is “Three Decades of American Bandstand.” A band will play classic hits from the '50s, '60s, and '70s. Party goers are encouraged to wear costumes representing their favorite era.         The party is 7 p.m. to midnight at The Madison in Covington.         Cost is $40 per person in advance, $45 at the door.         There will be silent and live auctions and a reverse raffle of 200 tickets only, at $50 each, for a $5,000 prize.         For more information, call Kim Lampe, 441-9955.

        Weekends like this one already take place in Cincinnati and several other cities around Kentucky. Last year, four Northern Kentucky children attended a camp near Lexington, Ms. Ohms says.

        At the Hospice building in Fort Thomas, her office is dominated by a round table. This is where she works with some of her children. They make masks and clay figures and drawings, often without much prompting from her.

        Some of the children's work sits on Ms. Ohms' bookcase. Their simple, vivid designs are a soothing contrast to the heavy titles on the shelves: Existential Psychotherapy, How We Die, Children of Color.

        There are masks made by the girl whose brother died in the wreck. One is blue and tearful, for sadness; another is dark and cloudy, for anger. She hasn't been able to make the guilt mask yet. That feeling is still too raw.

        An 11-year-old boy made an “anger monster” out of clay. It has rudimentary arms and a misshapen, featureless head.

        The boy's sister died of cystic fibrosis last year. She was 8. He has unleashed his anger on other kids at school and on his mom. Ms. Ohms is using art to help him find a better way.

        Once she helped him make an “anger target.” This was a room-length strip of paper, like a mural, that he covered with paint. Together, they hung the mural on a wall, and he made clay “bombs” to lob at it. But there was a catch: The bombs wouldn't work without ammunition. He had to write a feeling or thought on a piece of paper and tuck it inside the clay.

        “We spent all 45 minutes throwing those bombs at the target,” Ms. Ohms says.

MORE INFO

For more information on the September bereavement camp, call Hospice of Northern Kentucky at 441-6332.

        Afterward, she felt his relief. He gave her the mural as a gift, wrapped in a bundle with a piece of string. She accepted it graciously.

        It was only later, though, that she realized what had happened that day, the power behind the art.

        And she thought: Yes. This is why I do this work.

Karen Samples is The Enquirer's Kentucky columnist. Her column appears on Sundays and Thursdays in The Kentucky Enquirer. She can be reached at 578-5584 or email her at ksamples@enquirer.com

SAMPLES ARCHIVE