Ceremony of Remembrance: Honoring lost loved ones during the holidays

They say that letting go is never easy, and with the arrival of the holidays, many find themselves longing for lost loved ones.

To help ease that pain of loss, Lake City Church welcomes community members who wish to honor and remember their loved ones during the holidays.

The annual Ceremony of Remembrance takes place from 9:30 a.m. to noon on Dec. 1 at Lake City Church, 6000 N. Ramsey Road.

“We wanted to create a place where it would be safe for people to come and honor their loved ones who have passed away, whether recently or long ago,” said Joanie Dwyer, event coordinator and pastoral care/counselor for LCC. “We started the Ceremony of Remembrance 15 years ago. It coordinated with our grief relief classes that we do at the Kroc Center; that’s where we discovered there was a need in the community.”

After a complimentary brunch before the ceremony, attendees will listen to music, prayers and comforting words by several speakers.

A special presentation will be given by Janice Wright — an ordained pastor, fitness coach and mother of four — who serves with her husband at Bethel Church of San Jose, Calif., and ministers to those working through loss and grief. Wright has been dealt several major losses throughout her life and she’s going to talk about her experiences of grief and how she got to a place of healing. She is also going to include a conversation about her brother, who took his own life.

“We’ve got to take some of the stigma out of the topic of suicide,” Dwyer said. She explained that the LCC Sunday service following Saturday’s ceremony will include an open panel discussion with a few speakers about suicide, including Wright.

The Ceremony of Remembrance will culminate in the reading of names of deceased friends, family members and even pets, which are submitted online when registering for the free event. Their names are written on ornaments and participants are invited to hang them on a Christmas tree to memorialize their loved ones. Ornaments can be collected from the trees after the ceremony to be brought home and kept as a keepsake.

“I think sometimes grief has to be witnessed, either privately or publicly,” Dwyer said. “We used to know how to do this in the olden days, but grief doesn’t just include sorrow — there’s laughter and anger and all kinds of feelings. But to be able to find a place where we can express those emotions in an environment that is trustworthy, that’s really important.”

To learn about LCC’s ongoing Grief Release Workshops or to register for the Ceremony of Remembrance, visit: www.lakecity.church/event/

Online registration ends on Nov. 28, but no one will be turned away at the door.