Remember Our Child
It is not a devastatingly insightful thought, that the greatest challenge of our human lives, as conscious thinking creatures, is the business of human mortality. Though we may not want it at the front of our minds every single day, it is nevertheless something we will all come to encounter with the death of loved ones, friends, and acquaintances. Along the way, in addition to all of that, we will also have to come to terms with the fact that one day death will come calling for us too.
My own reflections upon all of this go back to the death of a Grandad when I was around six years old, but then skip on a few years to my first ever shift as a Police Officer when aged 19 – way back in early 1984. 40 minutes, or so, into that shift, as was the done thing with the ‘new boy’, I was sent to my first ever ‘sudden death’. It was the death of a woman in her late fifties – as happens outside clinical environments - she was lying where she died in the middle of her sitting room floor, surrounded by her grieving relatives. She was the first dead person I recall ever seeing, and my job in this context, with all my 19 years of experience in life was to offer them what comfort I could, gain the information I needed, and sit with them until a Funeral director arrived to take her away. That took three hours, and I do recall that this felt like the longest three hours of my life ever, way back then.
Having successively policed, nursed and vicar-ed, the latter of these for more than a quarter of a century now, there have been many such encounters since this first distant memory - and my hope is that through the trodden path of experience, I have at least got better at being there, at being present, and somehow holding people as they grieve. Along the way, I have been with people seeking to cope with death in almost every form it can take, from the quiet and peaceful to the tragic and shocking. It can grab and hurt people in almost any form that it comes in, and generalisations do not capture every circumstance, but a little part of me has come to think that the grief experienced has some relationship to the level of injustice that might be felt about the death – and from that - the simple truth that some bereavements are harder than others.
In the given order of things, if life were straightforward and things worked out as they always should, then children should not die before their parents. There is nothing I can say that makes that feel right – and it follows from my experience that people who have had their children die before them face one of, if not the most, challenging bereavement anyone can face.
That has been recognised in Truro for more than thirty years now – and once a year – this year on Sunday 14 May at 14:00, those who have faced this experience gather at the Remember our Child service, gather in solidarity in the cathedral with each other, and continue to seek to cope with all of that. Candles are lit, names are read, prayers are offered, and stories are shared.
There is something about sharing a burden that can make it feel just a bit lighter and if that burden is shared with someone who also has carried it themselves - that is maybe all the more so – and that I think is something of the experience witnessed by those who come to this service year on year.
Whatever role religion has played in human communities it does find some of its focus in offering hope in the face of our mortality. As we remember, and tell again, each day, in Truro Cathedral the story of the death of God’s child, all of that is tempered by the hope found in the story that he rose again. The God who loved us so much that he gave his own Son, is a God who despite the trials of life offers the hope of real and ultimate justice. The service then proclaims the hope that there is a place, and there will come a day, when the apparent injustice of this is put right and those who loved and were lost, realise all the potential that death took from them, in new life, in the wonders of God’s Kingdom.
If you have been to the service before – you are welcome again, if this is the first time for you, others will understand. If you want your child remembered, then simply complete this form.
The cathedral waits to hold you in your grief and to help you reach out for hope.
Canon Alan
Click for more information on the Remember Our Child Service on 14 May