Chaplain's Corner

This past winter I have been watching a TV show called “This is Us”. It is an interesting drama about a young couple, Jack and Rebecca. After they are married Rebecca becomes pregnant with triplets. At the time of delivery, two of the babies are born healthy but the third dies in childbirth. The same day as the birth a fireman brings a baby to the hospital that was abandoned by a father who could not care for him. Jack and Rebecca adopt the abandoned child and go home with three children.

The initial episodes deal with the loss of a child. This loss is very common, those who keep track of these things tell us that 1 in 4 pregnancies end in loss, one. 25 % of all children conceived die before they can become part of the family in which they were conceived. This significant and sacred loss, the death of a child, remains one of the most unseen and under cared for sorrows. There are no doubt a number of people in your circle of friends that have experienced such a loss and it went unshared because the couple didn’t think anyone would care or they shared it minimized because a growing number in our world, even within our churches now consider an unborn child less than human.

At the end of this month, on June 28th, at 1 p.m. I will be hosting a Service of Remembrance and Interment for anyone in South Eastern Manitoba who has experienced the loss of a child this past year. I will be sending out letters with names supplied by our Public Health program to families that are known to have experienced this loss, but there are many who loss a child that are not known to our Public Health program. I am reaching out to you with an invitation to attend this service.

This year, Candace Loewen, Facilitator of the SHARE: pregnancy and infant loss support group in Steinbach will be co-hosting the service with me. Both Candace and her husband and my wife and I have experience these losses personally and are involved to a large extent because we understand the support families need when a child dies before it has a chance to join our family circles and enrich our lives. The service will be held under a white tent at the Heritage Cemetery in Steinbach. The Heritage Cemetery is located just to the east of the Eastman Education Centre.

This service is not only for families who have experienced such a loss in the past year. If you have experienced a pregnancy or infant loss (the loss of a child) anytime in the past and never had an opportunity to give that loss the dignity of a service of remembrance, you are welcome to come and join us as well. The first service of this kind that I held in the summer of 2002, a number of grandmothers attended and marked losses they had experienced 40 or more years ago but never had the opportunity to stop and mark in a sacred way.

The service isn’t long, it is sacred with the flavor of the Christian faith but not overly religious in nature. There are poems and other readings, a song or two and a very short meditation followed by the solemn reading of the names of the children that those gathered have come to remember. You can come as you are and become one of the number that gather who know, understand and care about the losses we have each experienced. I am excited that Candace will be joining me for you may want to meet her and find out how the SHARE group might support you going forward. If you read this article and know someone who might need to attend, please share it. God Bless.