This year the Compassionate Friends Worldwide Candle
Lighting is Sunday, December 14, 2014, uniting 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 have died. As candles are
lit at 7 p.m. local time, hundreds of thousands of persons commemorate and
honor the memory of all children gone too soon.
Now believed to be the largest mass candle lighting
on the globe, the 18th annual event creates a virtual 24-hour wave
of light as it moves from time zone to time zone.
It started 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.
If no Worldwide Candle Lighting service was held
near you last year, feel free to plan one and open it to the public. It can be
in a park in your town, a church, funeral home, hospices or even an open field.
Compassionate Friends has a section on their website you can use giving
suggestions to help you plan a memorial service.
I plan to go to a local mortuary/cemetery that every
year has a beautiful ceremony around their Angel of Hope. They read the names
of every child either buried there or given to them before the service begins.
Songs are sung, candles lit, stuffed animals given to all mourners and each of
us is given a long-stemmed white flower to place on the Angel of Hope. It is a
beautiful ceremony that draws over 600 people or more each year.
This annual candle lighting event gives bereaved
families everywhere the opportunity to remember their child(ren) so that their lights may always shine!
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