Grief support group suffers new loss of leader Angela Mendola

For years, Circle of Hope has been meeting in the Lynbrook Public Library so its members can work through the grief of losing a loved one. Now they face uncharted territory — what do they do when their leader herself, Angela Mendola, has died?

“Angela had topics, would bring out things we never knew we were feeling, and deal with those feelings,” said Faye Pakula, who joined the group two years ago after losing her husband to pancreatic cancer. “She really was wonderful.”

Mendola, 84, died on July 5 after a heart attack. The members of Circle of Hope, which was sponsored by Our Lady of Peace R.C. Church until recently, knew something was wrong when she didn’t show up at their weekly Friday meeting on July 5 — she never missed a meeting. They contacted her daughter, Christine Mendola Grillo. They came to the house and waited outside. And they were there when Grillo found her.

“They were able to provide me comfort,” Grillo said. “I don’t know what it would have been like had I been alone.”

Mendola was the kind of person who did everything with warmth. When the Herald worked with her on a story last summer, she welcomed this nervous young reporter into the Circle of Hope with open arms. Over the course of the meeting, members talked honestly about the messy, complicated and unglamorous experience of grief. Mendola met it unflinchingly, head-on and with a candor that didn’t sacrifice kindness. It made grief less scary, somehow, to know that as big as it can be in one’s heart, it would never scare her off.

Mendola was a role model to her daughters, Laura Jean Bonacore and Grillo. As an adult, she went back to school, at Molloy University, to finish her undergraduate degree, and earned a master’s from Fordham University at age 43. She was then able to pursue her calling, becoming a social worker. She eventually had seven grandchildren, and was about to be a great-grandmother.

“She was constantly evolving,” Grillo said. “She never gave up.”

Mendola had been running bereavement support groups for the past seven years — but they took on new meaning for her in 2020, when her husband of 61 years, Anthony Mendola, died of complications of Covid-19. The pair had met at a skating rink in 1958, when Angela was 18, and had been a team ever since. Anthony’s death was traumatic. He had no prior health problems, and his family felt that he had been suddenly ripped from them. Angela was still leading the Circle of Hope — but without telling anyone there, she had become a grieving member, too.

“She was trying to evolve again,” Grillo said. “And I think in doing that, in bringing the bereavement group together, she was also healing her own grief.”

“It helped her just as much,” her daughter added. “I saw a whole change in her. I didn’t think I could learn any more about her, but it was amazing, over the last four years, to watch her just create a whole new life with these neighbors.”

For the first year after her husband’s death, Pakula said, Mendola didn’t even bring up his loss in the Circle of Hope. She didn’t want the discussion to become about her — but, nevertheless, the group began to heal her, and she began to open up more and more. She was both a leader and a member. She showed by example that it’s OK for grief to be complicated and nonlinear.

The Circle of Hope was invaluable for everyone who came. Some lost parents. Some lost spouses. Some lost children. Perhaps the most important understanding that the group shares — and Mendola emphasized — is that there is no timeline on grief. It does not disappear. It changes from an open wound to a scar, and sometimes back again. And that, too, is OK.

“They just get it,” Pakula said. “Not everybody understands — and they just understand. Because we’re all feeling what we’re feeling.”

People outside the group don’t want to hear about grief, Pakula said. They get uncomfortable, or think the healing process should be over by a certain point. But that isn’t the case within the Circle of Hope.

“When you go there, you can say anything you want,” Pakula said. “Some people will say, ‘This might sound stupid.’ And we’ll all go, ‘No! I feel the exact same way. I felt like that, too.’”

But now the group is at a crossroads. Without Mendola, a certified social worker, leading them, Our Lady of Peace R.C. Church says it can no longer sponsor the group. And the Lynbrook library is reluctant to allow them to keep meeting without a sponsor. Last year, members got a flower pot with a plaque engraved with their loved ones’ names. Now that flower pot has been moved to some hidden corner. That’s how Circle of Hope members feel — that they’ve been cast aside.

“We’re all very upset,” Pakula said. “We just want to stay together and meet every week.”

“If the library won’t approve of us meeting there, we don’t know what we’re going to do,” she added.

“I think we feel like we’d have another loss,” Pakula said. “Another loss of Angela.”

In the meantime, the members are working through the grief of their loss together — and though Mendola has died, they’re still finding solace in the wisdom that she dedicated the last years of her life giving them.

Organizations that are interested in sponsoring the group or providing a new meeting location can get in touch with the Circle of Hope by contacting the Herald at nformisano@liherald.com.