ABOVE PHOTO The pop-up memorial garden across from Philadelphia City Hall for victims of overdose
By Constance Garcia-Barrio
This is the third and last installment of the SUN’s series about death, grieving and grief counseling.
Within minutes of stepping onto McGee Island, located off the coast of Maine, for a writing residency, I learned through a phone call that my son, Manuel, my only child, had died. Dogged by alcohol, cough syrup, schizophrenia, and half-cured pneumonia — he left the hospital against medical advice — he succumbed in his room at a small boarding house near my home.
The author’s son Manuel
I had accompanied him as best I could through the 22 years of his illness until his death on September 23, 2022, at age 47. The Medical Examiner’s (ME) office found the substances mentioned in his body as well as the anti-psychotic medication he’d gone to Mental Health Partnerships-Parkside to have injected the day before he died. He had tried up to the end to right his life.
As a practitioner of the Yoruba tradition, a West African-based religion, I asked the other women in residency at The Salty Quill to join me in a ritual to petition Yemaya, the angel of maternity embodied in the sea, to help me go on living without my son. The ceremony comforted me as I began mourning. But from week to week over the past 20 months, I’ve relied on Philly HEALs (Healing & Empowerment After Loss) to walk through grief.
Philly HEALs, a program of the Philadelphia Health Department’s Division of Substance Use and Harm Prevention (SUPHR), partners with the ME’s office to provide free grief support to city residents who’ve lost a loved one to an unintentional drug overdose. Laura Vargas founded Philly HEALs in 2019.
In 2020, 1,214 Philadelphians died from an unintended overdose. In 2022, when Manuel died, 1,413 city residents succumbed from that cause, Philadelphia’s Health Department states. That spike mirrors a nationwide trend — the National Safety Council reports that in 2021, “98,268 people died from preventable overdoses – an increase of 781% since 1999.”
Philly HEALs, which serves clients from age 5 on up, had helped more than 4,000 Philadelphians as of March 2023. Six clinicians and an intern staff the agency, said Kaitlin Worden, MSW, the bereavement care program manager.
The organization is a unique refuge. Groups like the nonprofit Compassionate Friends provide peer support after a child of any age dies.
However, drug involvement often carries stigma, according to Worden.
“Family and friends may view the deceased as unworthy of grief,” she said.
Cadence Giles, MA, senior bereavement counselor with Philly HEALs, sees grief counseling as preventive care.
“We help clients avoid less beneficial coping mechanisms, such as self-medicating,” she said.
Circumstances may deepen the need for help. Terri Spina learned that when her daughter Gina, 31, overdosed in April of 2021, she was with a companion. That person left Gina’s first-floor apartment through a window and told no one about Gina’s death, according to Spina.
“I kept texting her and calling her,” said Spina, who has PTSD from the event. “I thought her phone had gotten turned off. The police and fire department had to break down her door. I still remember the smell.”
Families may face other pressures.
“Along with the shock, you can have financial stress from trying to bury your child,” said Lorraine Porter whose son Dante, 33, died in August of 2021.
When the ME’s office called me a few weeks after Manuel’s death to tell me about grief counseling, the prospect of help heartened me to lean into the pain. That’s a crucial step, according to Naila Francis, a death midwife/grief counselor in private practice in Roxborough.
“Grief can get stuck in the body and manifest as illness,” she said.
An example is broken heart syndrome, in which the heart muscle becomes suddenly weakened after extreme emotional or physical stress.
Philly HEALs has several services, all of them free. Clients may request up to 10 one-on-one counseling sessions. Julie M., whose two younger brothers, ages 51 and 52, overdosed within three weeks of each other in 2022, relied on the counseling.
“I’d lost my mother 18 months earlier,” she said. “I knew I needed help [when my brothers died].”
For Spina, the individual sessions, which can be taken at the intervals one chooses, smoothed the way to join the peer group, also a key support for her.
I decided on weekly meetings with Giles for a month, then I spread the remaining sessions over a longer time. With Manuel’s father dead, it had fallen to me make the decisions about his treatment. In some sessions, I grappled with “what ifs,” wondering whether different choices could have prolonged his life. I also railed against Philadelphia’s crippled mental health care system.
Besides individual counseling, Philly HEALs offers peer group meetings on Zoom for 90 minutes every two weeks. Participants may continue with them as long as needed. There are specialized groups, such as the Hot Widows Club, a writing group, and one for grandparents.
“I don’t think I’d be here if I didn’t have the [peer support] group,” Spina said.
The group sessions let me learn from those who’d been grieving longer. For example, they alerted me that Manuel’s birthday and the anniversary of his death could deepen my sadness. Thanks to their warning about Christmas, instead of sitting at home I joined a street protest against the proposed 76ers arena in Chinatown.
Bereavement counselors also give virtual workshops on topics like anger, guilt, dreams, nature and therapy, and the mind-and-body-connection.
“I find the breathing exercises helpful for coping with stress,” Porter said.
In a workshop about feeling relieved after a loved one dies, I mentioned no longer worrying about calls from the police or hospitals, or Manuel’s diminishing short-term memory, or what would happen to him if I died first.
Nicole Chandler
“We choose topics from issues that surface repeatedly,” Giles said.
Optional special events let group members meet face to face.
“There’s magic in being together,” Giles said.
There’s also an education. At the December 2022 holiday celebration, I saw people of different ages and ethnicities, bearing out the Philadelphia Health Department’s statement that overdose deaths occur in nearly every zip code of the city. I also found that other people had lost loved ones with a dual diagnosis, or mental illness and addiction. We lamented that rehab mills in Philadelphia provide little help.
A 2022 gathering included a visit to “Elegy: Lament in the 20th Century,” an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. A group outing to West Philadelphia’s Royal Gardens in November 2023 offered camaraderie, a green setting, journaling, and grounding through earth-centered activities like weeding.
An e-newsletter updates clients on events, books, podcasts, and programs, like the services that are now available in Spanish.
Since Manuel’s death, I return, at times, to the primal scent and murmur of the sea, and I sometimes wrap myself in the blanket that the women of the Salty Quill sent me. But for a sounding board, there’s Philly HEALs. I’ve also discovered the paradox of grief that Naila Francis points out: “Making space for grief gives you more capacity to savor life, including moments of joy and beauty.”
For more information about Philly HEALS, visit: www.substanceusephilly.com/phillyheals or contact Kaitlin at: (267) 239-1958 or [email protected].
Nicole Chandler will offer a nature-based grief workshop on August 24. For more information, email: [email protected] or call: (215)768-9419.
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