Interview with Laura Ward

On April 14th, 2023, Hannah Fichter and I visited Ithaca's Hospice Center to interview Laura Ward, the manager of psychosocial services, and the bereavement department at Hospicare Ithaca. She is also licensed thanatologist, that specializes in a multi-disciplinary field dedicated to better understanding death, dying, grief, loss, and bereavement. We chose Laura to interview for our Documentary to gain a professional opinion on why losing a parent while in college is so impactful to everyday life, as well as enforce how our featured characters felt and dealt with their grief transitioning back to college.

Laura started out voicing the importance of having parents while in college to be "that touchstone of security" and support system. Fathers specifically are also important for college students as they have a strong perspective on life management and oftentimes serve the role of teaching us how to be doers and fixers of our own lives.

While touching upon returning back to school after the death of a parent, Laura mentioned the importance of taking the personal time to grieve, as students are on a schedule with busy work where they might not take the time to feel grief, which is very important. She also stated how, "because our emotions are in a different part of our brain than our memory, our decision making... we don't have as much brain energy to go to the other places," such as doing schoolwork. Laura stressed the importance of having a firm support system as it can feel very alone to grieve as a college student if no one else has experienced a similar circumstance. The strongest support system these students are able to have is their family as "we grieve in community," therefore the disconnect from your grieving family can also contribute to the feeling of loneliness and isolation while in college.

Lastly, while discussing the impact of a sudden death, Laura stated how the inability to prepare for a loss of a parent can be such a jolt that students can be in denial for longer, restricting the grieving process. This leads to an even greater impact on young adults as it can prolong the grief period as many students tend to go back to college and pretend like nothing's changed.

Stay tuned to see Laura's insight on our featured characters in Love Never Ends the Documentary.