By Stephen Knapp
For the Courant
The lion-hearted volunteers who step forward to become Camp Comfort “buddies” enter a small world of woe bearing desperately needed help, hope and healing.
It’s a step never taken lightly, a burden that requires everything of its bearer, and a merciful mission that never changes one life but that it changes another. The term “buddy” is a casual-sounding title that masks the most serious of responsibilities — to help the youngest victims of shattering loss find a path through the dark and terrifying forest of their grief.
“I went through the whole training program, and then said ‘no,’ ” recalls longtime Evergreen resident Kimberly Gold. “I just wasn’t ready for that.”
Gold’s hesitation in the summer of 2012 speaks volumes about the emotional rigors of Camp Comfort, the bereavement program for children established 23 years ago by Mt. Evans Home Health and Hospice, and perhaps even more eloquently to her own clear-eyed appraisal of what being a “buddy” would demand of her.
“Those kids need somebody who’s going to be completely there for them,” Gold explains. “I wasn’t sure I could be.”
Dealing with children holds few mysteries for Gold, who, with her husband, Robert, has four of her own, and who’s been teaching Sunday school for 25 years. In fact, dealing with the grief of children is a road Gold began walking in 2011 when Robert succumbed to serious illness.
Almost entirely focused on easing the blow for their three sons and adopted daughter, she had little time and few tools for tackling her own misery. And then she found a friend who offered an infinite supply of both.
“Mt. Evans made a huge difference for me,” Gold says. “I started attending the support group for people who lost a spouse. It really helped get me over the roughest patches. That’s also when I got to know some of the people at Mt. Evans and experienced the amazing love that fills that place. I thought, ‘This is where I need to be.’ ”
If Gold still had reservations about committing herself to Camp Comfort, she didn’t hesitate to lend her heart and hard-won experience to other Mt. Evans programs.
“I volunteered in a personal support capacity, talking to others who were bereaved. And I did respite care.”
Allowing time and the healing power of purpose to work their quiet miracles, by the spring of 2013 Gold felt ready to step into the role she’d been practicing for all along — that of Camp Comfort buddy. She had a right to feel well-prepared. Grappling with weighty spiritual matters comes naturally to Gold, who’s well on her way to the master’s degree that will make her an ordained minister and, she hopes, a chaplain for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Perhaps even more importantly, Mt. Evans’ buddy training was still fresh in her mind.
“They bring in other buddies to talk about their experiences,” she says. “You learn how different kids react to the camp, and to their buddies. They advise you on what to bring, on what not to bring, and on some of the situations you might face. One thing they advise you to bring is a box of Kleenex.
“It was really excellent preparation. I knew there would be emotional times that would affect me, but I felt confident I could handle them. I won’t say that having been through such difficult times recently made me think it would somehow be easier, but I thought it probably helped prepare me for what was ahead.”
Those seasoned buddies also helped dispel any illusions their trainees might have had about swooping in like cleansing angels and sweeping away the black clouds from grieving children’s minds. Painful experience had already taught Gold the stubborn nature of grief and the limits of her ability to banish it.
“I didn’t have any grand expectations,” she says. “My hope was just to support a child who feels lost and scared, and let them know I’m there for them.”
Camp Comfort convenes for two weekends each summer at the Easter Seals Camp in Empire Junction. Gold was signed up for the July session, which kicked off at about suppertime on Friday, July 26, which is also when she got her first look at the two boys who would be her constant companions and surrogate sons for the following 43 hours.
“It was a very large group of campers, and most of the buddies had two kids,” says Gold, who, like every buddy at Camp Comfort, immediately decided she’d drawn the two best tykes on the lot. “Mine were great kids, and they complemented each other very well.”
Seven-year-old Jacob came up from Colorado Springs. An outgoing boy with a thick shock of dark hair, Jacob lost his mother to cancer. Young Tatum, also 7, was chosen for Camp Comfort after his little brother was hit and killed by a car. A smallish towhead from Lakewood, Tatum proved to be more assertive physically than verbally.
“Jacob was pretty good about speaking in group activities, but he wouldn’t get on the zip-line for anything,” Gold smiles. “Tatum was a lot more reserved, but he’d go right up the climbing wall like it was nothing. They were a good match for each other.”
Camp Comfort’s programs run between the therapeutic and the recreational, along the way touching on everything from group discussion to art, to theater, to horseback riding. Every activity, of course, from fishing to handicrafts, is carefully tailored to serve a healing purpose, and, quite by design, the campers (and their buddies) are kept on a brisk schedule lest any camper should spend too much time dwelling on the reason for their enrollment and not enough on the clean air, sunshine and agreeable company.
“Every single minute is filled up,” says Gold. “By Saturday night all the buddies were exhausted. But that didn’t matter. If a kid wanted to fish one more time, they got to fish one more time.”
That’s not to say the weekend was without tears. Sharing stories of their lost loved ones brought thinly buried emotions to the surface, and by Saturday night Jacob was suffering a bout of that most common of summer-camp afflictions, homesickness. In the case of Camp Comfort, however, that condition is generally deeper and more complicated than a mere desire to go home.
“They want to go home, but they’re also homesick for the loved one they lost. They can go home when camp is over, but they’ll never see that person again. Imagine how that must feel.”
In the harsh calculus of Camp Comfort, Jacob’s distress was in fact a healthy display of emotion, and, happily, his older sister happened to be bunking a couple of cabins over. A timely reunion went a long way toward easing the aches in both their hearts.
“It was amazing to see how Jacob and his sister supported each other,” says Gold. “But kids supporting each other is a big part of how Camp Comfort works. It gives them a chance to be with other kids who are in the same situation, and talk with kids who know what they’re going through. The kids are able to help each other far more than we buddies ever could.”
By midafternoon Sunday, the last camper was on her way back down Clear Creek Canyon and Gold was left alone in the strange and sudden vacuum to assess her Camp Comfort experience in cool hindsight. For a weekend spent mostly listening, she felt remarkably spent. That she’d be coming back she had no doubt, and next time she expects to have a very special buddy among the buddies.
“My 18-year-old son wants to be a buddy next year. He knows better than anyone what these kids are going through, and he wants to help them get through it.”
If Gold didn’t sign on expecting reward, she certainly received a few. Her trophies weren’t the sort she can set on the mantel and dust once a week, but rather the kind that abide in the heart unseen, shiny beads of memory to brighten every day to come.
“When Tatum wrote letters to his brother, he always wrote ‘I Love You’ on it.”
“Jacob was so excited when he caught his first fish.”
“When they decorated the pictures they drew of their loved one, Jacob gave his mom a tiara. Tatum was very particular about his brother’s hair.”
“It was great to see the bond Jacob and Tatum formed. They shared a lot together.”
“The counselors, the buddies, the fishermen and the other volunteers all had so much love for those kids, and the kids had so much love for each other. It’s like there was a big bubble over the whole camp, and it was love.”
Gold’s best reward, and her least expected, came late in the game. It was on Sunday morning, a hectic time at Camp Comfort, what with rides on the way and campers trying to pack in a little more fun before the long drive home. Gold and her two charges were heading down to the trout pond for one last cast and, naturally, Jacob and Tatum were outpacing their buddy by a furlong, at least. Even so, the fresh breeze skipping down from Mount Eva blew random scraps of the boys’ unself-conscious conversation back toward the footsore grownup behind.
“We should come back next year,” said Tatum.
“Yeah, we should definitely come back next year,” Jacob agreed, with a casual gesture toward the woman puffing along in their wake. “Maybe we’ll get her again.”