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Bereavement Group Becomes Widow ‘Lifeline’
L OCA L
JARRAD SAFFREN | JE STAFF
RIVKA POWERS WAS
unsure about starting a
bereavement group on Zoom
during the pandemic.

Powers, who is the director
of bereavement
services at Goldsteins’ Rosenberg’s
Raphael-Sacks, didn’t think it
would work as well as meeting
in person. But with a group of
six Jewish women who had lost
their husbands between the end
of 2019 and the spring of 2020,
she decided to try the online
experiment that society was
attempting at the same time.

It could not have worked
out better.

About seven months after
meeting for the first time —
and about three months after
completing Powers’ 12-session
Jackee Yerusalem-Swartz
bereavement class — the six
Philadelphia-area women call
each other sisters. They get
together twice a month, once
in person and once over Zoom.

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10 AUGUST 5, 2021
Courtesy of Jackee Yerusalem-Swartz
had a group sleepover at a
member’s shore house.

“Here’s what this group has
helped us do: Make our lives
something different,” Joyce
Heisen said. “Because it could
never be the same as when we
were with our husbands.”
In their first Zoom meeting,
the women just connected,
according to Powers.

The director didn’t let any of
them join a bereavement group
right after their husbands died.

She said it was too soon, that
the women were still numb and
that they needed more time to
process. But by the time they got
together, the women were ready.

Heisen, Jackee Yerusalem-
Swartz, Marcy Berlin-Burton,
Eileen Whitman,
Amy Berkowitz and another member
realized that they were going
through similar feelings and
experiences: shock, sadness,
guilt and the immense diffi-
culty of building a new normal
after decades of marriage.

Berkowitz, 68, is the
youngest member of the group.

She lost her husband of 45
years, David Berkowitz, in
November 2019.

Berkowitz had been with
her husband since she was 18.

She was also the first widow in
the couple’s friend group.

She knew no other adult life
JEWISH EXPONENT
The bereavement group women are done with their 12-week class, but
they still get together twice a month, once online and once in person.

than the one with her husband;
and no one from that life could
understand what she was going
through. “It was a lifeline,” she said of
the bereavement group.

Whitman lost her husband,
Robert Whitman, in December
2019 after 65 years of
marriage. She said the ensuing
pandemic and lockdown only
compounded her loneliness.

She was just stuck in her
house, and suddenly respon-
sible for chores that her
husband used to handle, like
fixing the circuit breaker.

But when she opened her
computer for the first Zoom
meeting, she wasn’t stuck
anymore. “Having the girls, it was just
lucky,” Whitman said.

Yerusalem-Swartz and
Berlin-Burton lost their
husbands, Allen Swartz and
Charlie Burton, in the final
months of 2019 after 53 and 25
years of marriage, respectively.

In 2020, before she
started the bereavement
class, Yerusalem-Swartz was
questioning herself for allowing
her husband to take morphine
while in hospice. Berlin-Burton
was second-guessing her
decision to not guide doctors
to be more aggressive against
her husband’s prostate cancer.

But after talking to
Berkowitz, a hospice nurse,
both women realized that such
feelings are common among
widows. They also grew to
understand that, even though
the feelings are common, they
aren’t necessarily valid.

“We all seemed to feel, what
if?” Berlin-Burton said.

“Amy was able to explain
to me that I was being as kind
as possible to my husband
by allowing him to have the
morphine,” Yerusalem-Swartz
said. Heisen’s husband, Peter
Heisen, passed away in
February 2020 after 56 years
of marriage. Heisen is 76, so
like Berkowitz, she knew of no
adult life without her partner.

The widow also described
herself as “not a joiner.” But
then she joined the bereave-
ment group, made a new group
of friends and recognized
something important.

“I was doing things I may
never have done with my
husband,” Heisen said.

Later, she joined a commu-
nity group that holds events in
the park. Last week, she visited
her sister down the shore and
organized a mahjong party.

“If I want to do something, I
do it,” she said. l
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