So she turned to Judith Haimes, 56, and Katherine Donnelly, 70, who dispense advice to the distraught in their Recovering from Grief column, published every other week in the Dallas Morning News. These Dear Abbys of Death receive some 30 letters a month and answer two or three bereaved readers in each column. "They want to share, but they're embarrassed about what is bothering them," says Donnelly. "Writing to us is like writing in a diary."
And often just as personal: To a woman who learned after her husband's death that he had had a mistress and that her daughter knew about the affair, the columnists recommended therapy for the woman and her adult daughter and assured the widow that her outrage and sense of betrayal were normal. "Your grief is not only for the loss of your husband of 26 years but for the loss of loyalty," they wrote. "You are entitled to grieve, answering to no one." The columnists provide a crucial public service, says Sue Smith, deputy managing editor of the newspaper's lifestyle section. "They never write the column in a downer way," she says. "They are straightforward and compassionate."
The women began their Dallas Morning News column in 1995, but they met 18 years earlier when Donnelly was writing a book on ESP. She called Haimes, a professional psychic who then lived in Philadelphia. For a time, Haimes was entombed in her own private grief over the loss of her 16-year-old son Michael, who was killed in a car crash in 1980. The mother of five grown children, Haimes now lives in a lakefront home in Clearwater, Fla., with Allen, her dentist husband of more than 25 years, and has a devoted following for her psychic readings. Some of her clients are celebrities, she says, but Haimes won't name names, nor will she cotton to stereotypes about what she considers her God-given gift. "I do not have a fringe on my lampshade," she says.
Donnelly, born and reared in Dallas, was only 5 when her father, Isidor Fair, who she says "owned the first supermarket in Texas," died suddenly at 32, during a routine operation. Her mother, Rose, who died several years ago, ran the business and cared for Donnelly and her three siblings. Donnelly went on to major in journalism at Southern Methodist University and upon graduation began a freelance writing career. She settled in New York City in 1965. Since her husband, John, a writer, died last year of heart disease, Donnelly has lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment in Queens.
Haimes and Donnelly have an enduring if odd friendship and working relationship. In addition to the column, they've collaborated on two books. The first, in 1982, was an exhaustively researched chronicle of personal stories called Recovering from the Loss of a Child. But the women have seen each other only once—at that first meeting. "There doesn't seem to be a need to," says Haimes. "We work perfectly together this way." Donnelly agrees: "It adds to the mystique."
Haimes works in longhand from a gold-trimmed antique desk in her white-carpeted office. She selects the letters they will respond to, and then they compose the answers together by telephone. Donnelly types them onto her computer and sends them off. "Her strengths are my weaknesses," Haimes says. "I'm sometimes too straightforward, and Katie is sometimes too flowery."
Whether it's a beloved pet or a child, loss can seem fathomless, the columnists know. But it can be soothed. They hooked up Lady's sad owner with a pet bereavement Web site and added words of encouragement: "With no disrespect to your aunt, you may only have seen her occasionally. But your dog was with you seven days a week—hence a different kind of bond." Says Haimes: "You can't measure grief because you can't measure love, but the gist of our column is that recovering doesn't mean you have to forget."
Christina Cheakalos
Jeanne DeQuine in Clearwater and Lynda Wright in New York City
- Contributors:
- Jeanne DeQuine,
- Lynda Wright.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
