by Dean Backes
Special to The Leaven
OVERLAND PARK — Bad things happen to good people. Not in the form of punishment by our Heavenly Father, but simply because we live in a broken world.
Few people escape life without suffering through a serious illness, struggling with finances or falling prey to an addiction of some kind. Many have had to pick up the pieces following the death of a spouse, a parent, a sibling or a niece or nephew.
Losing a child to death, however, is considered the ultimate tragedy. Regardless, parents that belong to one club that no one wants to join don’t have to struggle on their own.
Following the loss of her only child, Blaine, to sudden cardiac death at the age of 29 while he was riding his mountain bike in 2011, Patty Billinger, who attends Church of the Ascension in Overland Park, searched for something particularly Catholic to help build her interior life.
After coming up empty, Billinger paid Father Tom Tank a visit with an idea of her own. Born from that conversation was Project Chrysalis, a ministry for parents and grandparents who have suffered the loss of a child.
“The evolution of Project Chrysalis is the hard shell around the butterfly,” Billinger said. “I was looking for something symbolic to me. The butterfly is symbolic to a lot of us that have lost kids and are looking to transform and hopefully make the experience turn into something beautiful.”
Since its inception in October 2018, Project Chrysalis’ membership has grown. Anywhere from 18-25 members meet on the last Tuesday of each month at 6 p.m. in the St. Luke Room at Church of the Ascension, located at 9510 West 127th Street in Overland Park.
Dave Moorman, a parishioner from Church of the Ascension, has been attending meetings since Project Chrysalis’ inception. He and his wife Tracie lost their daughter Madeline to suicide at the age of 21. Moorman’s experience with the loss of a child does have a unique twist. In a sense, he struggled through a tragic loss twice.
“They say that one of the worst things is for a parent to lose a child,” Moorman said. “I lost my mom when I was four years old and watched my grandparents go through this. That was tough watching them and then experiencing it myself.
“In the normal life cycle, the parents pass before the children,” he continued. “That’s part of what makes it difficult. Typically, [one’s children are] much younger and the whole sentiment of dying too young makes the whole experience that much more difficult.”
Simon (Si) and Kay Korte, who recently celebrated 60 years of marriage, lost their son Todd to a gun accident in 1995 at the age of 25, 23 years before Project Chrysalis started bringing parishioners of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas together.
Kay Korte, a retired first grade teacher in the Blue Valley school district, said she always looks forward to the camaraderie and just being with others that are going through the same thing they are.
“You don’t expect to get over it. No one ever gets over it,” she said of the loss of a child. “You learn to live with the loss and with the hurt. There is a vacancy there.”
The Kortes, also parishioners of Church of the Ascension, did struggle through a couple of decades without experiencing the relief Project Chrysalis has been bringing to its members for the better part of a decade. Much like Moorman and Billinger, their role along the path of healing has gone through some mild changes.
While still struggling with their own loss, they are reaching out to those who are in the earlier stages of the healing process.
“There is always somebody to help,” said Si Korte, who is retired after working in sales and marketing for Burroughs Corporation (now Unisys) and other companies in the computer industry. “There are people like us [for whom] it has been 30 years. Then there are those that it just happened to. We give a lot of support to those that are really hurting from a recent death.”
Moorman, who retired from Sprint following 34 years of service, described the meetings as part socializing, a little bit of what’s going on in the parish and sometimes discussion topics that aren’t related to the club they all belong to, so to speak.
In January of this year, Project Chrysalis met simply to enjoy a bowl of soup and socialize.
“[Our faith] is there in some of the great topics Patty has teed up as an agenda item to get the ball rolling,” Moorman said. “We don’t always dwell on our loss. It could be unspoken but still known and understood.”
Kay Korte said her faith helped her get through some tough patches.
“God is good. He is not going to give you pain because he is not a good being,” she said. “It’s just something that happened. I don’t think he made Todd die. It just happened. I relied on that to get through this. I constantly prayed, ‘Help me deal with this.’”
Si said there are warning signs out there for parents who have a child that may be going through depression.
“There are signs that people notice about their kids that can be unusual for whatever reason,” Si said, when recalling a conversation he had with a friend who had lost a child. “You think you know your kids — and something like this happens. If you’re really on top of it, a lot of this can be avoided.”
Billinger, the minister for care and social justice at Ascension, said Project Chrysalis meetings are open to people of all faith traditions and that they are very rewarding and fruitful. Anyone that attends can talk, or just observe.
According to Billinger, Project Chrysalis’ membership is filled with parishioners from Church of the Ascension, Holy Spirit Church in Overland Park, Holy Trinity Church in Lenexa, several parishes in Missouri and more. All are welcome, she added.
“We are not a sad group. We don’t sit around weeping all the time,” Billinger said. “We have really good, heartfelt discussions. We have a good time. A couple of months ago, we did an exercise on gratitude, which is part of healing.
“But sometimes it’s just being with people that have walked the same path, the same journey you have.”
For anyone who is interested or might have questions about Project Chrysalis, feel free to reach out to Patty Billinger at (913) 681-3348.
