Parents’ love for their child can be so strong that it carries with them through life — even when that child is gone.
That’s what hundreds of parents proved Sunday evening when they braved the snow to remember their deceased children at the Christmas Box Angel of Hope Children’s Memorial in Stow.
Every second Sunday of December, bereaved parents travel from across the region to the angel memorial in Silver Springs Cemetery for a candle-lighting ceremony. The memorial, a green angel statue that sits atop marble, is surrounded by bricks with names and sentiments dedicated to nearly 600 children who have died since 2001. In front of the memorial are two rows of babies’ headstones, which were aglow during the ceremony with surrounding luminaria.
The ceremony is a smaller piece of the Worldwide Candle Lighting, an event organized by the Compassionate Friends, a national organization for bereaved parents. Starting in New Zealand, people light candles for one hour at 7 p.m. local time to create a wave of light as it moves from time zone to time zone across the globe.
Tim Thies, who leads the memorial program, encouraged those at the ceremony to light a candle in honor of their child when they returned home. At the ceremony, though, parents started their own mini wave of light as they stood shivering on bricks surrounding the angel and clung to individual candles.
“Allow the love of your child to keep you warm. … Everyone here tonight has felt that stabbing sensation in their chest, that wrenching in the stomach,” Thies said as his voice broke, remembering his own deceased child. “They opened a new dimension of unconventional love for us.”
Everyone at the ceremony, including members of the nonprofit group Friends of the Angel, has lost a child. In 2010, Thies’ child Kyle was stillborn, and in 2013 he dedicated a brick to him at the memorial. He now has three more boys, but the memory of Kyle still remains with him.
“It’s been amazing to just connect with other bereaved parents,” Thies said. “There are different degrees of loss, but we’re all in that same boat together.”
Thies took over the ceremony last year from Sara Ruble, who brought the memorial to Stow.
The memorial is based on a novel called The Christmas Box by Richard Paul Evans. In it, an older woman mourns a lost daughter with regular visits to an angel memorial.
Ruble said after Evans, whom she’s met in person, wrote the book, bereaved parents continuously asked the author where they could find that angel. It drove Evans to establish the first Christmas Box Angel of Hope Children’s Memorial in Salt Lake City, and today, there are more than 100 across the country.
Ruble lost her only son, Scott, in 1994 to natural causes. When she was driving in 2000, she heard a voice telling her to build a children’s memorial — a voice she was sure was her son’s.
Since then, she’s worked with thousands of bereaved parents, connecting with them through the pain of loss and making friends along the way. Even through the grief, she said, she found some good.
“There’s so much that comes from it that you never would’ve known would come,” Ruble said of meeting others who have lost a child. “It can be beautiful in so many ways.”
Some of that beauty was incorporated into the ceremony, where in addition to lighting individual candles, members of Friends of the Angel lighted five larger ones in front of the memorial: one each for grief, courage, memories, love and hope.
In front of the flickering light, parents cried together as soft acoustic music played into the night.
“I think it’s healing,” said Danielle Bedard of Randolph Township about the ceremony.
Bedard’s son Jacob died last year when he was riding his bike and was struck by a car. He was 14.
“It just makes him part of the holiday,” added Gary Bedard, Jacob’s father.
“It’s just really helpful to realize you’re not alone,” said Polly Coumos of Brimfield, a friend of the Bedards, who was there to honor her granddaughter Alice Mae, who was stillborn last year.
As the Bedards, Coumoses and the rest of the parents left, they laid white roses on the memorial as a final tribute to their children, while light-up balloons were released into the night sky.
Theresa Cottom can be reached at 330-996-3216 or tcottom@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @Theresa_Cottom .