Most of us are still unsure how to cope with bereavement. A new support centre should help to change that, writes Róisín Ingle

The face of Therese Brady smiles out from a photograph on the wall of the Irish Hospice Foundation's new education and bereavement resource centre, which is due to be launched tomorrow by Micheál Martin, the Minister for Health and Children.

This serene environment, all polished glass, pale wood and honey carpets, had been her vision for years.

During Brady's time as an honorary director of the foundation, she worked to make a reality of her dream of a place of learning for those working in the area. A clinical psychologist who worked at University College Dublin and spent most of her working life researching bereavement and supporting the terminally ill, Brady died of cancer in January 1999.

"She would be so pleased to see this," says Orla Keegan, research, education and development manager, sitting in one of the centre's classrooms, where lectures take place throughout the year. "She was the light behind this whole notion."

Brady set up the bereavement service at Our Lady's Hospice in Harold's Cross, Dublin, in 1986, and the Dubliner devoted much of her working life to the area of bereavement, in what Keegan says was both a hands-on and an academic endeavour. A pioneer of such services in Ireland, she became a driving force behind the idea of an education and resource centre that would focus on and promote the issues surrounding bereavement.

"One of her key phrases was that bereavement was not an illness or a pathological condition. Not everyone who is bereaved needs counsellors, but people do need more social support, outlets to talk outside the family. That need to talk, to be listened to, doesn't mean a person is mentally ill."

Brady bequeathed her book collection to the foundation. It is an incredibly diverse resource, covering everything from dealing with the death of a child to losing a spouse or coping with miscarriage.

Generous benefactors, one of whom willed a house to the hospice movement, and funds from charity initiatives, such as The Whoseday Book, helped to build what is the first centre of learning for health professionals and volunteers working with the bereaved.

"Our biggest aim is to increase awareness in the community of what it is like when you lose somebody," says Keegan. "People from all sectors - health workers, teachers, gardaí and those in the corporate sector - can all benefit from training.

"Anyone who works with people needs help in how best to support the bereaved. The myths associated with bereavement need to be tackled."

Jean Manahan, the foundation's chief executive, says a conservative estimate is that 10 people are affected by a death. There were 29,000 deaths in Ireland last year, resulting in at least 290,000 newly bereaved people.

"We were determined to set up a centre that wasn't just user friendly but conducive to the nature of the often difficult work people will do here," says Manahan.

"We wanted it to be a calming atmosphere, an oasis of peace in the middle of the city. And it has worked out extremely well. Bereavement support is central to the hospice philosophy, which encompasses care for those with life-limiting illness and for their loved ones."

From January, the centre will offer a higher diploma in bereavement studies, the first such qualification in Ireland. At the moment, the training offered at the centre includes workshops on children and loss, supporting the bereaved, the impact of suicide on those closest to the victim and even talks on "the complex grieving process of those bereaved by homicide".

The opening of the centre, which will eventually offer online resources in addition to the reference library, has been welcomed by others working in the area. Mairead McGuinness, chairwoman of the Bereavement Counselling Service, says the move is long overdue.

"We have needed something like this for years," she says. Even though her organisation celebrates its 21st birthday this year, McGuinness says awareness of the affects of bereavement, particularly the physical repercussions, is still depressingly low.

"One of the most serious effects is fatigue, and another is forgetfulness," she says. She recently heard of a bereaved man who momentarily forgot how to drive. "Because women generally talk things through more with friends and know that it is perfectly natural that they might forget something at the supermarket, men can often be more isolated in bereavement.

"If they forget things, such as how to use the photocopier at work, they think they are losing their mind. People go back to work too quickly, thinking they can cope, and they can't."

Often, the bereaved develop a noise intolerance, as a result of the anxiety and fear generated when a loved one dies. Although awareness of these symptoms has increased, many of us are still largely ignorant of the most effective and empathic ways to treat the bereaved.

"Years ago, people would wear a black armband as a signal that they were grieving, so people would be more aware and offer support . . . . In the current climate, we have no signals and, more than that, when a bereaved person looks around it seems that everyone is having a wonderful time while their life is falling apart," she says.

In the reference library of the new centre, a quote from Tolstoy on the wall epitomises the way Therese Brady viewed the struggle of those who have suffered a major loss.

It says: "Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heal them."

The centre aims to spread this simple philosophy through the community and, in doing so, realise Brady's dream in the fullest way possible.

• You can contact the Irish Hospice Foundation at 01-6793188. Its website is www.hospice-foundation.ie. The Bereavement Counselling Service is at 01-8391766. Its website is www.bereavementireland.org

The news nobody wants to get:  How one woman coped with death

The phone rang at 5 a.m. I woke and got out of bed, feeling disoriented. It was my brother. I remember wondering what on earth he was phoning me for at that hour of the morning, and then he said it: "I'm afraid Dad is dead." I stood, silent, still. Then I spoke very forcefully: "Not my dad!" I willed it not to be true. Then I heard my husband groan behind me, and I knew that it was real.

My father was dead, and I was no longer Daddy's little girl. I sat down and wept. I wept for the loss of my father, the one man in my life who had always loved me unconditionally.

I wished I had not picked up the phone. If I hadn't answered it, he would still be alive, at least to me.

I drove to my mother's house alone. I had to go immediately, and I had to go alone. I couldn't wait for my husband or my children. Actually, I didn't want them with me. I didn't want to have to deal with their feelings. At that moment there was no room in me to give thought to their pain, my own was so overwhelming.

When I saw my mother, my heart just broke; I felt it crack. I knew something had utterly changed inside me forever. She needed me to be strong. I wanted to see my father.

He was in the living room. He had died in his comfortable chair, with his feet up on a footstool, a glass of whiskey at one hand and the ashtray in the other. I am glad I saw him as he was, because it made me truly see that my father was gone. It comforted me to see how peaceful he looked.

Then the funeral car arrived. The men who came into our house were calm, big, dark presences. They seemed to know what to do, so we just let them take my father out the front door and put him in the back of the black car. That was unbearable. We just stood and allowed him to go. I thought there would be some sort of sign, but they just drove away.

I don't know how I got through the funeral. Afterwards there was the drive to the grave, a strange, surreal experience.

The children were excited about riding in a limo, and my mother and I kepttalking about how lovely the service was. It didn't seem real.

The burial was very difficult for me. It was a cold day, and I did not want to see my father lowered into the ground. My mother looked tiny, perished and frail, and I left the graveyard as quickly as I could.

Looking back, I feel everything was too rushed. I wish we had waked my father in the house, because he was a country man, and it would have been fitting. But we left all the details to the funeral director, because none of us were capable of making decisions.

When I look back, I notice we were very much alone in our loss, even though we spent days together in the house. We talked and comforted each other as best we could, but each of us was in our own hell.

I got through the next few days with help from neighbours, family and friends. People called to the house and offered words of comfort. They did not know what to say, but I really appreciated their coming. Now I understand the importance of the small gesture, the practical gift and the kind word.

Over time, the intensity of my grief has eased. At the beginning, I would wake at night, weeping. I missed my father so much.

My heart jumped when I caught sight of an older man walking ahead of me on the road, wearing a trench coat so like my father's. I wanted to stop him and talk to him.

One morning, six months after Dad died, I found a letter he had written to me when I lived in America. It was a fantastic, terrible gift. I read it over and over and found myself crying at intervals throughout the whole day.

In the past year, I have come to accept my father's death, and I remember him with love. Since he died, the roles in our family have changed. I will never be the person I was before he died. I have had to leave my childhood behind and join the world of adults.

• This is an Irish Hospice Foundation volunteer's account of the death of her father. It is from one of several bereavement leaflets that the foundation publishes