Written by Liz Carey Published on December 14, 2021
Key takeaways:
- Grief is a process that is different for everyone, and can sometimes take years — or even decades — to fully go through.
- Gary Roe navigated his way through grief by journaling, talking with others, and vocalizing his thoughts.
- Today, he’s an author, speaker, hospice chaplain, and grief counselor.
(photo courtesy of Gary Roe)
Gary Roe helps people deal with their grief. An author, speaker, and grief specialist in Brazos Valley in central Texas, he is a former missionary and pastor who now serves as a hospice chaplain and grief counselor. His mission now, he says, is to meet clients where they are and help them navigate through grief.
For him, grieving is a process — a process he knows well because he’s been through it multiple times.
Gary’s losses began in childhood
As a child, Gary says he was subjected to physical and sexual abuse that left him a shy kid.
“Growing up, I didn’t have a lot of friends,” Gary says. “I had a few good friends. I always felt different, just kind of like an outcast. It reminds me of that Sesame Street song: ‘One of These Things [Is Not Like the Other].’ I just felt like that was me all the time.”
So, when Jeff, a strong, smart, athletic kid sat in front of him in seventh grade, Gary was surprised when Jeff talked to him. The two became fast friends, clicking instantly. At the end of the semester, the two parted for Christmas break, and Gary never saw Jeff again.
It turns out that Jeff had unexpectedly died of meningitis (an infection of the fluid and membranes around the lining of the brain and spinal cord). For Gary, at age 12, it was a profound loss. Not only had he lost his new friend, but he had to deal with the daily reminders that Jeff was gone.
“I remember just being in shock. We all were,” he says. “And then, the rest of my seventh-grade year, I got to start every day looking at that empty desk just right in front of me.”
“I think on some level, even as a 12-year-old, I knew, ‘Wow. Anything can happen to anybody at any time.’”
A whirlwind of teenage traumatic events
Soon after, his parents separated and divorced. It was the beginning of a slew of teenage traumatic events that he would eventually have to deal with.
In one way, his grief over the loss of his friend was positive: He redirected his energy and focused on his studies. When Jeff’s family created the Jeff Norton Scholarship Award, Gary decided he would push himself until he won it, which he did.
But on the other hand, his grief was causing negative behaviors. A competitive swimmer, he found that his performance was off — and his temper flared up frequently.
“I was a pretty happy-go-lucky kid, believe it or not,” he says. “But after Jeff’s death, I just remember, I blew up more. I talked back to my parents a lot more. And I just remember feeling angry a lot.”
After the divorce, Gary lived with his mom, who was working to cope with her growing mental illness. Not long after, his mother began to have more problems functioning, and Gary went to live with his dad. For him, the situation was an improvement. He and his father got along, and his father was by far the better parent, he says.
“We really had a great 6 months together,” Gary says. “Then, one afternoon, he went to the kitchen to make lunch. I heard the pots and pans fall, and I ran in there. I think he was gone by the time I got to him. They said it was a massive heart attack.”
Although the emergency workers were able to get his father’s heart beating again, he never regained consciousness. He was rushed to the hospital.
“They kept him on life support for about a week, but I’m thankful for that,” Gary says. “It gave me a chance to … hold his hand, and say everything that I wanted to say. I didn’t know to do that: I just found myself doing it. I was 15 and your typical 15-year-old guy trying to play everything off as ‘I’m cool. Nothing bothers me.’ But with those times in that room with him, I was anything but OK. I can remember at one point thinking, ‘This can’t go on very much longer,’ and I sat there for an entire 15 minutes, trying to memorize his face.”
After his father’s death, Gary went back to live with his mother. Not long after that, she attempted suicide. It was then that the parents of a friend took him in, and he was finally able to find the stable home and unconditional love he’d been missing.
Grief can leak out later
But, he says, he never really processed the grief of all that he had lost and all that he had gone through.
“As a 15-year-old, I didn’t know how to deal with that,” he says. “And I was thrust into that new family, which was great, but it was a lot of change, and there wasn’t a lot of time to really grieve about this or think about it very much. I learned a very valuable lesson, which is, if you don’t express your grief and express it in healthy ways, you’re really just storing it up to be let out or leak out later somehow — because it will be expressed one way or another.”
For him, that leak would come some 20 years later, when, as a 30-something-year-old pastor, he started having anxiety attacks. Without warning, he’d begin to feel panicked — sometimes in the middle of church. It turned Sunday mornings into a time he dreaded and feared instead of a time he loved and looked forward to.
One Sunday, just before he was scheduled to speak, his anxiety attack was so bad he had to leave the church and walk around the parking lot. A friend followed him out and helped him manage the attack until he could return to the pulpit to speak.
After that, he knew he had to get help.
“I had a friend who was a counselor, and we went out to lunch. I talked to him about the attacks,” he says. “Within about 5 minutes, he asked me, ‘So, do you feel responsible for your dad’s death?’ ‘That’s ridiculous,’ is what I thought, and I opened my mouth to say ‘No,’ and nothing came out. I could not get the word ‘No’ out of my mouth. My friend basically said, ‘OK. Well, this is what we’re dealing with.’ And that launched into about a 6-month process of me taking the time to focus on letting my dad go.”
Over time, the anxiety attacks disappeared. Gary was able to come to terms with his grief and use it to help others understand their own experiences. Through journaling, talking with others, and vocalizing his thoughts, he was able to navigate his way through the grieving process.
What has been essential for him, he says, has been understanding that grief is a necessary process for those who have lost someone.
“It takes time, and you won’t be the same person on the other side, because you’re not the same person now. But you will get through this,” he says.
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