The pain felt by people who have lost a loved one to suicide does not go away, but it can be eased with the help of a support group bringing together others who have experienced the same emotions.
The newest such gathering in the Pioneer Valley was started recently in Greenfield by Donald Brooks, of Turners Falls, and Jennifer Matoney, of Amherst. It meets at 6:30 p.m. the second Monday of the month at Baystate Franklin Medical Center.
Brooks, a recovering alcoholic, said he felt guilty that he not taken the time to go fishing with a friend who reached out to him several months before taking his own life. His friend was a musician who also had a problem with alcohol, according to Brooks.
“That’s what brought him to suicide, trying to get help and he couldn’t get the help he wanted,” Brooks said. “There was a point where I had said, ‘If I had taken off from work and gone fishing with him a couple of times, could it have changed?’ ”
Brooks met Matoney, who works for the western Massachusetts branch of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, at a workshop, and they decided Franklin County needed a suicide loss support group.
“I wanted to help the next family, the next people who feel the way I feel now, the next people who have that loss,” Brooks explained.
After Matoney lost her mother to suicide, she found help in a similar group that provided a supportive environment. “We’re not mental health professionals, we’re survivors, like the participants,” she said.
More information is available by emailing Brooks at donb42spike@gmail.com.
The group in Greenfield joins two others in Valley. Geraldine Unger started a support group in Easthampton during 2012 after her husband took his own life. That group now meets at 6 p.m. the second Wednesday of the month at Baystate Outpatient Center at 325 King St. in Northampton. Unger can be reached at sas4healing@gmail.com.
A third group meets at 7 p.m. the third Monday of the month at Forastiere-Smith Funeral Home at 220 North Main St. in East Longmeadow. Information is available at dprof52@aol.com.
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A fitting tribute to the late state Rep. Peter Kocot, who died in February as the result of lung cancer, was held last week when kindergarten students visited Grow Food Northampton in Florence. They were joined by Kocot’s widow, Shauneen, and son, Luke.
The Northampton legislator was passionate about both agriculture and education, and the 120-acre farm that provides community members with plots of land had become a special place for him. Kocot secured state funding so Grow Food could provide programs for Northampton and Easthampton elementary students, including trips to the farm and classroom workshops.
The June 18 field trip by the kindergartners was dedicated to Kocot’s memory. The children helped weed the Giving Garden — where produce is grown for local food pantries and soup kitchens — and planted beans.
Shauneen Kocot said of her husband, “I think his passion for gardening helped him determine that it would be helpful for children to learn how to grow their own food and where it comes from.”
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Donald Vitkus, who spent 11 years living in inhumane conditions at the Belchertown State School while he was a boy, chose as his final resting place the cemetery where some of the residents he grew up with in that institution are buried. On Saturday, his ashes were buried at the Warner-Pine Grove Cemetery off Turkey Hill Road in Belchertown.
Vitkus at age 6 was left at the state school in 1949 by the last of his six sets of foster parents. Though an IQ test at age 3 classified him as a “moron,” Vitkus was not mentally handicapped. After he left the state school in 1960, Vitkus served in the U.S. Army, earned an associate degree in human services at Holyoke Community College and eventually advocated for better treatment of disabled people.
Donald’s grandson, William Vitkus, of Tucson, Arizona, helped arrange the burial. “It says something to bury someone who is a college graduate, Army veteran, husband, father and grandfather there, and it speaks to the potential those other people would’ve had.”
Donald Vitkus’ decision about his burial place is a powerful statement about the bond he shared with those people.