Big thanks go to our friends at the JESSICA MATHERS TRUST who organised this years annual worldwide candle lighting event at their headquarters in Deptford, South London.
Now believed to be the largest mass candle lighting on the globe, this was the 18th year in which a virtual 24-hour wave of light moved from time zone to time zone.  Started, in the United States by THE COMPASSIONATE FRIENDS in 1997 as a small internet observance, it has since swelled in numbers as word has spread throughout the world .  On the second Sunday of November,  hundreds of formal and informal candle lighting events are held  in homes, churches, community centres and all sorts of meeting places as families and friends  gather in quiet remembrance of children who have died, but will never be forgotten.    At 7.00 pm local time parents and siblings gather to light a candle to commemorate their dead son or daughter, brother or sister thus creating this huge wave of light that travels round the world.
Jane and I, along with Josh’s brother Joe and sister Rosa joined 50 or so others in an evening of remembering and honouring.  Like many communities that part of society known as BP’s (bereaved parents) is held together mainly via social networks.   AWe use the internet as a more or less safe place to talk about our feelings, both about the child we have lost and about the place we are in now – our grief sometimes feels like a burden, one that is hard to share with those who are so bereaved.  Candle lighting events such as these are as much about celebrating our children as it is about meeting others in a similar situation.   Often, while we have formed tenuous virtual relationships this is the first time we will have met in the flesh.   If it is important to continue the bond with have with our dead child, its the relationships we have with others (both bereaved and not) which are the fertile ground in which that bond can grow.
CLICK ON ANY OF THESE IMAGES TO SEE THE FULL
SELECTION OF PHOTOS FROM THE WORLD WIDE CANDLE LIGHTING EVENT
AT JESSICA’S HEART LONDON 2014
Thanks for reading
Jimmy
December 2014
Links
THE JESSICA MATHERS TRUST: Â http://www.thejmt.co.uk/home/
THE COMPASSIONATE FRIENDS : Â http://www.tcf.org.uk/