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Joe Giampino’s son, Joey, was a bright, 48-year-old husband and father of three who lived in Maine. He owned his own business, his dad recalls, and was very methodical.
It’s a trait he exhibited even when he took his own life nearly two years ago on Feb. 15, 2011.
He left notes behind for family members, his father said. He wrote them on the computer, made copies and signed each one. The only explanation was that his son felt the best part of his life was done.
Even today, the 74-year-old Giampino, who lives in Western Springs, consoles himself by thinking his son must have been in terrible pain before he ended his life by carbon monoxide poisoning in his garage. Now, the father reminds himself, Joey’s not hurting anymore.
But when his son’s suffering ended, that’s when the agony for Giampino and his wife, Carol, began. Losing a child, he says simply, is a parent’s worst nightmare.
He knew he and his wife needed help coping with Joey’s death. One day, Carol finally turned to her husband and said, “I can’t do this anymore.” An online search soon led the couple to a Brookfield-based support group for parents who, like them, lost children too soon. It’s called Compassionate Friends, a mix of broken-hearted moms and dads who meet twice each month to work through the loss of children who never leave their minds.
Like other parents who gather at meetings, Joe Giampino and his wife say they’ll never fully accept the loss, but with the group’s help, they’re learning how to cope and move forward.
“If you hear each and everyone’s story, it buffers the pain somewhat,” Joe Giampino said. “It’s strangely comforting. We laugh and we cry ... . We need each other for support and we all agree the pain never goes away ... . We learn to live with it.”
The Brookfield group, which meets at Cornerstone Community Church, is one of hundreds of chapters of Compassionate Friends nationwide. The local branch was founded three years ago by parents who lost children and were looking not only to help themselves, but to help others.
Wendy Vach, who lives in Lisle, is one of the local group’s co-founders. She lost her daughter, Nikki, 10 years ago to cystic fibrosis. The chronic disease affects the lungs and digestive system and when Nikki was born, doctors said Vach would be lucky if her baby made it to 16.
Instead, Nikki lived to be 22.
After watching Nikki suffer through hospice with lungs so bad that the window for a transplant closed, Vach looked for any group she could find — a search that came up empty. Like other parents, she turned to friends and relatives for support, only to find that many expected her to move on or get over her daughter’s death.
“When they say somebody has a broken heart, that’s what it’s like,” she said. “I was hurting so bad and I couldn’t go to friends. They try to understand, but you know they just don’t get it.”
Even therapists who haven’t lost a child, she reasons, can’t fully grasp the experience. That’s what’s different about Compassionate Friends. Here, parents find other parents who know exactly about loss.
“I truly believe that ... helping others is a way to help yourself,” she said of co-founding the group. “Sometimes, people just need to talk to someone who understands ... . Coming to a support group doesn’t mean you’re not strong.”
The reasons parents find their way to the group vary. Some knew their children were sick and watched them suffer. For others, the loss was sudden — car crashes or fatal gunshot wounds or for some, tragedies that made national news.
That’s what happened to Gary Parmenter, whose son, Dan, was a 20-year-old college sophomore. He was one of five students killed during the Feb. 14, 2008 massacre at Northern Illinois University.
The Westchester resident took part in a handful of support groups after Dan’s death, and on the first anniversary of the shootings, NIU hosted a slew of events. Suddenly, for the first time in a long time, Parmenter began feeling better. It prompted him to visit Compassionate Friends’ national headquarters in Oak Brook, explain that support groups helped him let go of pain and offer to help other parents.
There wasn’t a group in the west suburban area, so he was paired with Vach to launch one.
“I don’t feel I can turn my back on other parents ... that are so broken they don’t know what to do next,” he said.
Today, the group draws roughly eight to 12 parents at any given meeting. There’s no therapists, no judgments — just people sharing a range of emotions with the goal of helping each other through loss.
In addition, a few weeks before Christmas each year, the group hosts a candlelight service at the church where families place framed photos of their sons or daughters on the altar, light candles and share memories of those who were lost.
This year’s service took place Sunday, a solemn event that Joe Giampino and his wife attended for the second time. Even today, he still chokes up when talking about honoring his son during last year’s ceremony.
“It’s a sense of support. A sense of not being alone,” he said. “It was like a soul-cleansing.”
About Compassionate Friends
The Brookfield chapter of Compassionate Friends meets at 7 p.m. on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month at Cornerstone Community Church, 9008 Fairview Ave. For more information, email tcfeastsuburban@aol.com or gparamenter148@aol.com. The national group's website is compassionatefriends.org/home.aspx.