Harder Days at the Office: Grief counseling for colleagues of AIDS victims

Nadine Joseph in San Francisco - Health Section, Newsweek, January 7, 1991

Three months ago, when their 40 year old colleague suddenly died of AIDS complications, workers at a small travel agency in San Francisco went into deep shock. It was Unravel Travel's second death from AIDS and its fourth death in four years. Small groups of employees whispered in corners. Sharon Curtis, 47, found herself depressed by the new crop of sickness jokes and comments like “Who's next?” The agency's owner, Martha NeIl Beatty, 57, became impatient with clients over “what suddenly seemed petty to me — complaints about getting an aisle seat instead of a window.” Manager David Collier, 49, felt frustrated that his colleague had died with pieces of the company's software programs stored only in his head. “I had become so callous it was shocking,” he says.

Martha Nell Beatty and her employees discuss their feelings with Alan Emery As the energy level in the office plummeted, Beatty decided they needed help. She hired Alan Emery, 51, a psychologist and professional grievance counselor for JKR Associates, to lead the group in discussing their feelings. In a two-hour session, they confronted one another and bared their souls. They talked about their own fear of death and about the four colleagues they had cherished. “It cleared the air,” says Beatty. Adds Emery: “The office had been going through its own cycle of anger and depression without recognizing that it was part of the grieving process.”

In San Francisco, this scenario is becoming commonplace. An AIDS death can be as devastating for “office survivors” as it is for family members. In fact, a person with AIDS often shares his diagnosis with his “work family” before telling his real family. Because San Francisco has the highest per capita death rate from AIDS in America, few companies remain untouched. Many large firms, such as Levi Strauss and Pacific Bell, have institutionalized educational and counseling programs for employees dealing with all aspects of AIDS, including grief and loss.

Digital Equipment Corp. in Massachusetts has a trauma-intervention plan that includes “debriefing” coworkers after a colleague's death from AIDS.

At the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco, where there have been 11 AIDS deaths among a staff of 1,250, “there is an ongoing sadness rather than shock” at each death, says Sallie Weissinger, vice president of personnel. In several cases, there has been group counseling. “After a death, it's important to relax standards, to acknowledge that people are hurting, to let people talk about their pain,” she says.

The impact is magnified by the fact that for many employees, the loss of a colleague to AIDS marks a first brush with death. Often, the death of a co-worker had preceded the death of a parent or even a grandparent. And the relative youth of most AIDS victims was hard to take. “We think we're free of emotion at work, but we're not,” says Sharon Curtis of Unravel Travel. “It hits us in the gut like a ton of bricks.”

Judie Fischer, who works in Pacific Bell's budget personnel department, has lost four co-workers to AIDS, including her best friend, in the last 18 months. What made it easier was talking about it openly at work, and in one case, even raising money to contribute to an AIDS organization. A letter of thanks from one co-worker's family was also comforting. “I'm pretty good at grieving now and sometimes that scares me,” says Fischer. But she believes the grieving process pulled people together at the office. “It's like sticking through a series of earthquakes together ,” she says. “You can't cut yourself off from other people and go through it alone.”

Taha'a Pearl Beach Resort

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M.W., Jacksonville, FL