Grieving need comfort, safety in face of unanswered questions
TORONTO, ON—People dealing with unanswered questions after a tragedy like the David Dewees' arrest and suicide need a place of comfort and safety, says grief counsellor Roslyn Chrichton.
A popular teacher at Toronto's Jarvis Collegiate Institute, Dewees was charged with two counts of invitation to sexual touching and two counts of luring in early October. The charges came from allegations made by two teens at a Pioneer Camp near Port Sydney, where Dewees was a summer camp volunteer. In a media release Geri Rodman, president of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, said camp leaders immediately met with Dewees, fired him, escorted him off the property and contacted the boys' families, local police and the Children's Aid.
Police charged Dewees on a Thursday. At 8 a.m. the following Saturday, he lay on the tracks at a Toronto subway station, ending his life—leaving the allegations and charges unanswered.
"Many, many people in grief are left with questions," says Crichton, executive director of the Coping Centre, a Cambridge-based grief support retreat. She recognizes the events around this case make the grief journey even more difficult.
"In our world we want equations," says Crichton. "In these situations there are no defined answers—only overwhelming emotions. And the closer the relationship, the more profound the situation is and the feelings around it."
Complicating the issue were Dewees' popularity as a teacher and the seriousness of the allegations. For two days in a row following his death, Newstalk 1010 host Bill Carroll interviewed two Jarvis Collegiate students. One had received what he called "uncomfortable" Facebook posts from Dewees. The other described Dewees as a teacher who cared about and respected his students. Letters to the editor and online memorial book posts mainly praised Dewees—and some blamed the media and police for the way the case was handled and publicized.
Crichton says what the grieving need is the comfort of those around them and the safety to explore their own feelings and questions.
"One of the words we tend to use is 'closure.' I don't think people ever get closure in these situations," says Crichton. "The only way to deal with this is to explore all of the facts surrounding the situation and get the answers we can.
"Often the answer isn't as important as the question." Also important is the permission to question, something Christians often find is taken away.
"What we say is, 'don't question,' 'have faith' and 'leave that with God.'"
Instead, says Crichton, we need to understand the difference between grief and mourning. "Grief is the internal response we have to a loss. Mourning is how each of us goes about expressing and processing those inward feelings outwardly."
Society, including the Church, often encourages people to "stuff grief inside" instead of letting the grieving to work through people's feelings.
"Mourning is God's grace to help us survive tragedy," says Crichton. Letting people mourn—even if they never find the answers—will let them integrate the experience into their lives and move on from the devastating event.
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