The Bereaved Parents Support Group will host a free candlelight memorial service, December 9, at 6:30 inside Heartland Mall. The group will gather around the Angel Memorial Trees and light candles to honor and remember children and loved ones who have died. Anyone who would like to spend an evening with their child or loved one is welcome to join and gather to enjoy music, poems and sharing to remember those who have been lost. Those in attendance need not bring any materials as it will be provided.
If you would like to add an ornament of a loved one to the Angel Trees, contact LaFreda Kilburn at lafredak@gmail.com or call. 998-1567. To have a photo with the loved one lost with their name and birth and death dates or even an ornament without a photo, those items can be emailed to Kilburn.
The Bereaved Parents Support Group hosts this activity in conjunction with the national organization, the Compassionate Friends, who annually hosts the National Wave of Light. Now believed to be the largest mass candle lighting on the globe, the 22nd annual Worldwide Candle Lighting, a gift to the bereavement community from The Compassionate Friends, creates a virtual 24-hour wave of light as it moves from time zone to time zone. This event began in the United States in 1997 as a small internet observance, but has since swelled in numbers as word has spread throughout the world of the remembrance. Hundreds of formal candle lighting events are held and thousands of informal candle lightings are conducted in homes as families gather in quiet remembrance of children who have died, but will never be forgotten.
The Compassionate Friends Worldwide Candle Lighting unites family and friends around the globe in lighting candles for one hour to honor the memories of the sons, daughters, brothers, sisters and grandchildren who left too soon. As candles are lit at 7 p.m. local time, hundreds of thousands commemorate and honor the memory of all children gone too soon. If you cannot attend a ceremony, the group encourages everyone to light a candle in your home from 7 p.m. until 8 p.m. to honor all children who have died.
