FOR A LONG TIME after her father died, Makyla Grovenburg thought he was in her stomach. The confusion seems to have started when the family's priest told 4-year-old Makyla that "Your daddy will always be in here." He had pointed to the little girl's heart.
But symbolism and anatomy and death itself can kind of get jumbled up in a child's mind. Now 5, Makyla is still not sure where her father went. She thinks it might be Arizona. And now she worries that maybe her uncle, who really does live in Arizona, has died, too."I don't want you to tell my mom," she confides, "because she doesn't know and she'd be awfully sad."
To help Makyla sort out the meaning and emotion of death, Makyla now attends the Sharing Place, a grief support program for children age 3 through 12.
Twice a month, Makyla and other children who have lost a loved one come together to talk and play, and in the process learn, as child therapist Nancy Reiser says, "to traverse the unfamiliar terrain of grieving."
It is the give and take of grief work that is the key to the Sharing Place's philosophy. "We understand that giving and receiving are intertwined," says the group's brochure, "and that in caring for each other, we can learn to care for ourselves."
Each two-hour session starts with Opening Circle. A "talking stick" is passed to each child, who may either talk about their loved one who has died or say "I pass." Sometimes reticent to say anything at first, children eventually discover that here, at last, in this converted old bungalow in Millcreek, is a safe place to talk about how they feel. They learn that there are other children who feel as lost as they do.
The children then break up into smaller groups to act out their emerging feelings. While it may look like play, says Sharing Place program director Hazel Horsfield, "it is real work; you can feel the intensity." In the Volcano Room they can throw pillows or hide. In the Art Room they can make memory boxes. In the Soft Room they can become doctors and ambulance drivers, re-enacting the hospital scenes they can't get out of their minds, hoping to finally make sense of it all.
On a recent evening at the Sharing Place, Makyla dressed up in a doctor's coat, stethoscope and high heels, then turned her attentions and equipment on a doll. "The baby can't breathe," she explained.
Sometimes in the Soft Room, says former volunteer Arna Barney, the children revert to acting like babies themselves, relieved perhaps to take a break from worrying about the feelings of the adults they live with.
While the children and adult volunteers play downstairs, parents meet in their own support group upstairs. What the volunteers provide that the parents can't is attention that is uncomplicated by their own grief. The volunteers, the children immediately sense, are grown-ups who won't be hurt by a child's sadness or anger.
Rachel Blackham, a Park City pastry chef, is a volunteer with the center's newly formed murder and suicide support group.
Blackham was 7 when her own father committed suicide, leaving her puzzled not just by her father's death but by the subsequent silence of the other adults in her life. She wondered if she was to blame for her father's suicide, and then she set out to protect her mother from any more harm - by becoming a little girl who would always be perfect.
At the Sharing Place, Blackham tries to be emotionally available in a way no adult in her life ever was.
"Kids tend to keep their grief inside," says Chris Chytraus, Sharing Place executive director. "They have a sense that it makes people feel awkward."
Chytraus understood how deep a child's uneasiness about death could be when she attended a parent-teacher conference for her daughter, Megan, two years ago. The teacher showed Chytraus a drawing that Megan, then 8, had made of her family. The cheerful drawing included Megan's father, who had died of a heart attack two years before.
Megan explains now that she was embarrassed for anyone to know that her dad had died.
It was about this same time that Chytraus, then director of nurses at St. Mark's Hospital, heard about a program in Portland, Ore., called the Dougy Center. Up until that time, says Chytraus, she had run from her own grief. "My kids had no good role model."
With the help of a grant from St. Mark's Hospital Auxiliary, Chytraus enrolled in an intensive training at the Dougy Center; then, with the help of therapist Reiser, she opened the Sharing Place two years ago.
From the first night that her children attended the Sharing Place, Chytraus noticed a change. Once Megan realized that other children had lost a parent too, she no longer felt so different. The next day, in fact, she took a picture of her dad to school and told her friends the truth.
As the months of support-group work went by, Chytraus noted other changes in Megan and Christopher, who was then 4. Megan stopped having the stomach aches and dizziness that had sent them on so many trips to the pediatrician. And Christopher, who had been so afraid of going to sleep at night - because he might not wake up again - began being less fearful.
Unlike some grief support groups, the Sharing Place has no time limit. Most children and their parents feel that it takes about 18 months to feel ready to "graduate."
But even then, life can surprise you with more pain. Last summer, Megan and Christopher's grandmother committed suicide. This time around, at least, the children know it's safe to feel bad - and to talk about it.
The Sharing Place is looking for more adult volunteers. Because the children have each experienced the loss of someone who abruptly left their lives, volunteers must be willing to make a year's commitment to the program. Potential volunteers should attend an information session March 21 or 29, and then plan to attend a training session March 31 and April 1. For more information, contact the Sharing Place at 466-6730. The Sharing Place is located at 1695 E. 3300 South.