Speyer. Death reorganizes the world. An experience that usually catches mourners unprepared. Since 2004 – exactly 20 years ago – the Phönix grief café has been in Speyer – a place where mourners come together once a month, a place where they are listened to. Here, those left behind can allow feelings such as despair, anger or rage to emerge and speak openly about their thoughts – with people who know from their own experience how much the death of a loved one shakes their own life.
Petra Gutekunst, who founded the grief café, has experienced what it is like first hand. She was a young mother of three children when her husband died. And she was infinitely sad. She too had to completely reorganize her life afterwards. “It is important to give grief a place,” she says. This is possible in the grief café. The offer has been very well received from day one, because up until this point there were hardly any offers for those in mourning. Since then, the head of the outpatient hospice and palliative care advisory service has built up a team of volunteer grief counselors who look after all the grieving visitors.
Anyone who is brutally confronted with the fact that life is finite is forced to deal with death and grief – not a very popular topic in our modern society, in which death is almost taboo. Anyone who has experienced loss themselves can better understand how challenging the time of grief can be. Petra Gutekunst is convinced of this. And that is why the exchange between those who are grieving is so valuable. Some come to the grief café shortly after they have suffered a loss, others only a year or two later. Everyone grieves differently. And everyone has to find out for themselves what they need in the situation. But in general: grief can only be overcome by grieving. There is no such thing as a shortcut.
Petra Gutekunst herself feels supported by her Christian faith, but the services offered in the bereavement café are aimed at everyone – regardless of their denomination. The bereavement café always opens its doors on the second Tuesday of the month in the meeting room in the rooms of the Pamina city residence, the next times on October 8th, November 12th and December 10th.
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20 years of Trauercafé Phönix in Speyer: “Beyond grief”
