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In the days immediately after the death of her husband Andrew, Stacey Reister had to find a way to pull her family out of the post-tragedy haze that had settled around the now family of three and start the long process of healing.
Without knowing where to turn, Ms. Reister began shuffling through the pile of papers handed to her before leaving Stony Brook University Medical Center on August 7, the day her husband died. She came across the phone number of a group that would guide her family through the months and years following his murder on August 5, 2008, when the off-duty corrections officer was put in a chokehold by Anthony Oddone while working security at Publick House, a bar in Southampton, and slipped into a coma on August 5, 2008.
Mr. Oddone was eventually convicted of first-degree manslaughter and sentenced to 17 years in prison.
Within days of her husband’s death, Ms. Reister and her two children, David, now 12, and Mary Grace, now 8, started bereavement counselling at East End Hospice.
“It was like coming out of a bubble,” Ms. Reister said this week, on the four-year anniversary of the day her husband was killed. “They were wonderful, absolutely wonderful—very gentle, very understanding and compassionate, very empathetic, very sympathetic and supportive.”
The East End Hospice Center, which was formed in 1991, is a New York State certified hospice center that provides end of life care for terminally ill patients and provides counselling services for family and friends after the death of a loved one on the East End. Since its formation 21 years ago, the group has helped approximately 700 people per year, said President and CEO Priscilla A. Ruffin. And for the past 15 years, it has provided a summer camp for children who have lost a family member to come together and cope with their loss.
“We are there for the long-term,” Ms. Ruffin said. “It is important to realize that people who have experienced a trauma are in a little bubble and have to be reintroduced to the world.”
Aside from offering counselling to bereaved people, the East End Hospice group, which features a group of five to six counselors, is also often called upon to respond to the scene of certain traumatic incidents to offer a sympathetic ear and a shoulder to cry on to victims, first responders and witnesses.
In the past, the group has responded to Manhattan on September 11, to the command center after the crash of TWI-flight 800, and to the remains of house fires on the East End. In some instances, counselors have also been called to schools or companies to offer counseling after the unexpected death of a coworker, teacher or fellow student.
“People need time to absorb a loss and realize how the event has changed their lives and shattered their assumptions about their lives,” Ms. Ruffin said. “That can take anywhere from days to months.”
Ms. Reister said this week that the people she met through the counselling service quickly became part of her “family,” and helped her to not feel alone.
“They are an extended family,” Ms. Reister said. “It is not just necessarily them. They are a family, but it is also the people you meet along the way that are in your shoes that makes the process better.”
Ms. Reister said she would encourage anyone who needs grief counseling to attend the East End Hospice programs, and said this week it has made helped her family immensely in the difficult past few years.
“I couldn’t imagine going through this process without East End Hospice and their support,” she said. “I can’t even speak highly enough—genuinely, from my heart, they are an outstanding group of people.”
