Instead of wiping tears and passing a box of tissues, members of Hospice of South Texas’ Grief Group broke bread together and traded smiles as they shared a meal Tuesday. They’ve lost husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters but their grief and pain took a backseat on on this day as they made new friends.

“You may not always have  happiness but you can always have joy,” Pastor Larry Green, chaplain at Hospice Of South Texas, said. “Today is our day of joy.”

For almost 20 years, Green has been a part of grief groups. The group this year has been the largest one he’s encountered, with 13 members coming to meetings every Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. at the Hospice of South Texas’ Dornburg Center of Compassion at 1005 Mallet Drive. He offers them a safe space to put their feelings out in the open and to be with people who can share in their pain.

“I can know how you feel, but I won’t understand how you feel,” Green said.

Most members have lost loved ones within the last year, some of them losing their spouses of 50-plus years to degenerative diseases, some of them losing their parental figures suddenly. Green allows those who are grieving and their support system to tell their stories. Members of the group have even taken it upon themselves to start a group chat — a reminder to each other that they are not alone in their grief.

“Death is not the end of the story; it’s just the beginning,” Green said.

At the picnic Tuesday, the beautiful melodic sound of Melissa Adamson’s cello playing filled the empty chair at the table next to Joshua Adamson. Multiple sclerosis (MS) didn’t just take Melissa’s musical ability, it took her  life as well, leaving her husband, Joshua, and her three children behind. On Tuesday, Joshua buried his wife of 29 years, but he had begun grieving her in 2018 when she first received her diagnosis.

“I lost a piece of her when she couldn’t wrap her arms around me and give me a hug, when we couldn’t hold hands walking down the street, when they had to insert a trach and I couldn’t hear her voice anymore,” Joshua said. “That’s what I miss the most — her voice, just getting to hear her talk and hear her laugh.”

Joshua never wondered where exactly his spare change went when the cashiers would ask him if would like to round up for charity. But now, when he’s asked if he’d like to make his purchase an even number, he thinks about the thousands of people who donated to the multiple MS organizations that helped fund research that eventually lead to medical breakthroughs.

“Those pennies and nickels helped my wife get treatments that not only gave her a better quality of life, it actually extended her life and gave us more time with her,” Joshua said. “I’m just so grateful to those people.”

When Melissa became bedridden in 2020, Joshua took the ‘in sickness and health’ part of his wedding vows seriously and became her primary caregiver, scratching every itch and learning from the hospital nurses how best to care for her medical needs.

“It was scary, doing and being everything for someone else,” Joshua said. “But I loved taking care of Melissa through her final moments.”

Nearly 30 years of marriage started at a mutual friend’s birthday party at the park when Melissa asked Joshua to walk her to the bathroom and kissed him. Their three decades of love didn’t end when Melissa died on July 10. It lives on through their children and through the music she created.

Following Melissa’s was diagnosis of MS in 2018, the couple’s oldest daughter, Jem, 30, received a diagnosis of the same disease in 2021.

“After  knowing what her mother had been diagnosed with, we knew Jem needed to get tested after showing symptoms,” Joshua said.

Thanks to early detection and Jem’s diagnosis with a less serve form of the disease, she will live a long life. While his fear for his oldest daughter has lessened, Joshua worries about his youngest son, 18-year-old Luke, who attended the grief counseling group’s picnic with him on Tuesday.

“He’s got such a big heart and is so worried about taking care of everyone else,” Joshua said. “I want him to be able to process his grief and be able to take care of himself.”

Two months ago, Joshua’s brother died suddenly due to a health problem. It showed Joshua the extra time he had been granted with his wife was a blessing.

“I thought I had had enough time to prepare myself,” Joshua said. “I didn’t know it was still going to be so scary when she did pass.”

Joshua will still see Melissa in the honeybee-themed decorations around their house, will still hear her laughter in precious videos and will still hum the cello pieces she wrote. But he knows he’s no longer alone in his grief.

“Being in this group helps me, just hearing them share their pain helps me,” Joshua said. “I felt alone. I felt isolated. I felt like no understood what I was feeling. But these people are walking the same path I’m on.”

After laying his wife to rest, Joshua is looking to spending time with his grandchild.

“While caring for Melissa, I felt like a failure of a parent,” Joshua said. “But now I can be there for them more.”

The members of Hospice of South Texas’ Grief Group know the future might look different from the way they had originally envisioned it, but it’s a future they won’t be facing alone thanks to their newfound friends.

“Death is not the end of the story,” Green said. “It’s just the beginning.”

Madison O’Hara works at the Victoria Advocate as a multi-media journalist. She was born and raised here in Victoria. Madison can be reached by email at madison.ohara@vicad.com.