Loss of a Young Child: A Memory Tree Event for Bereaved Families

Loss of a Young Child: A Memory Tree Event for Bereaved Families

Recently, I had the honor of volunteering for the Journey Through Loss of a Young Child Society at their annual Memory Tree event. The Journey Through Loss of a Young Child Society is a group of grieving mothers in Calgary, Alberta who meet to share and heal their losses.

Every year, dozens of families gather around a Christmas tree at the Alberta Children’s Hospital to celebrate the lives of the children they have loved, the children they have lost.

During this beautiful Memory Tree Event organized by Journey Through Loss of a Young Child, families come together to remember their children together and to find a sense of community by being surrounded by people who get it.

“We come here to be safe with what we feel, and not be judged. It is nice to be surrounded by people who understand.”

In a society where it’s often taboo to talk about death, this highlights how important it is for grieving families to find a safe place to share their feelings and experiences. When it comes to grief and the loss of a loved one, it is often assumed that everyone should just “get over it” at some point and that the topic should not be discussed in further detail because it makes most people uncomfortable, sad, and forces them to confront their own mortality.

Widespread cultural death denial means that those who have experienced it are uncomfortable talking about their grief by fear of being judged, not understood, pitied, and/or to avoid making the other person uncomfortable. So they wear a mask because it’s easier, they stay silent until they find some other people who are have experienced it. There are times when the mask gets heavy, and the silence becomes deafening. They yearn to find a place where they can just be them, human, vulnerable, understood and connected.

“A grief shared is a grief diminished.”

This event provides those families who have lost a young child with a safe haven where they get to speak their name, tell their stories, share their grief, and support each other. Once a year, these families gather around to honor their children. They might sob, cry, smile, laugh, perhaps even go silent for a while reliving the memories that they cherish, but they tell the stories. They will tell their names, and as they do, they will remember the love they had and still have for those children.

“We are here to share his name, to share him with the world. We’re here to celebrate his memory.”

Grief is messy, it’s a never-ending journey but you don’t get over it. Do you even want to? Grief is proof of the life and love of the ones that we have lost. It’s proof that they lived, that although they are not physically with us, we carry them in our hearts and minds.

As I sit there as an outsider, tears running down my cheeks, in awe of the strength and resilience that each person in this room is showing, I am humbled and grateful for witnessing it.

Today those families have shared beautiful memories and pictures of their children. They have come together to share their very unique experiences of loss. Tomorrow each one of them will go about their day bearing the weight of an unspeakable loss, head held high, with a heart full of a love that continues beyond the bonds of death.

 

Find out more about Journey Through Loss of a Young Child Society here https://journeythroughlosscalgary.org/