Imagine Counselor Speaks with UC Students About Grief and Loss

Connie Palmer, social worker with Imagine, a Center for Coping with Loss, spoke with Union Catholic students about grief, loss, and healthy mourning methods. The UC Guidance Office organized the presentations thanks to a generous donation, and select Union Catholic students partook during their religion classes.

Connie impressed upon students how noteworthy it is that Union Catholic offers a Death and Dying course as part of its religion curriculum; she said that is not something she has seen in her work in schools. She explained that death is an inevitable part of our lives and often a topic that we are very uncomfortable discussing and dealing with. To demonstrate the effect that loss can have a person, Connie showed students a box with neatly stacked dominoes—representing a person’s life being in order. She then started throwing the dominoes on the floor as she named different things that can go wrong in a person’s life including loss of a pet, loss of a dream, failing a test, and death of a parent. Soon the box was entirely empty. Connie told students that only they can put the dominoes back in their box, and that some dominoes previously in the box before a loss may not go back into the box after that loss.

Following Connie’s presentation, two Imagine-trained Union Catholic seniors, Kerrianne Doherty and Halley Juzefyk, shared their own personal and incredibly touching stories about loss in their lives. They also told UC students what “worked” and what didn’t when they were mourning their respective losses. Following the girls’ moving witnesses, Connie and the girls modeled good and bad listening to aid in students’ cognizance of their own natural “bad listening” tendencies.

For over 50 years, Union Catholic High School has earned its reputation as one of New Jersey's foremost Catholic secondary schools. For information, visit unioncatholic.org.