Brevard group lights candles to remember lost loved ones

BREVARD - The Brevard chapter of The Compassionate Friends will participate in an annual worldwide candle lighting event designed to honor the memories of all children, regardless of age, who have died.

The local candle-lighting will be part of a special service beginning at 6:30 p.m. Dec. 13 at the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, 22 Fisher Road, and will feature music, readings and poems, as well as light refreshments after the candle lighting.

“This is our gift to the bereavement community,” says The Compassionate Friends USA Executive Director Patricia Loder.

Each year, tens of thousands of families light candles for one hour during the Worldwide Candle Lighting, the second Sunday in December, according to the group. Candles are first lit at 7 p.m., local time. “As the candles burn down in one time zone, they are lit in the next,” Loder said, “creating a 24-hour wave of light as the observance continues around the world.”

With more than 500 ceremonies expected this year in all 50 U.S. states and dozens of countries, The Compassionate Friends believes the ceremony to be the largest mass candle lighting in the world.

“The holiday season is an extremely difficult time of the year for families grieving the death of a child,” Loder said. “This marks well over a decade the Worldwide Candle Lighting has united bereaved families around the globe as a symbolic way of showing the love we continue to carry for our children, even though they can no longer be with us physically.

“This candle lighting transcends all ethnic, cultural, religious and political boundaries as tens of thousands of families share in this worldwide memorial event.”

To contact the Brevard Chapter of The Compassionate Friends, call Marisol Gollnick at 890-8227 or 329-9783. For more information about the national organization and to locate a chapter, call 877-969-0010 or visit www.compassionatefriends.org.