More than 100 people gathered on New Year’s Day under rain-thick clouds at Mission Point beach to participate in the Lighting of the Memories ceremony organized by the Sunshine Coast Hospice Society.
The annual tradition has continued without interruption for 31 years. It was in 1992 that volunteers began its Lights of Life outreach in local shopping malls. Passers-by inscribe paper ornaments with names of loved ones who have passed away, and hang them on trees — often accompanied by a donation for the organization. On Jan. 1, the collected ornaments are carried to the beach.
This year will mark the silver anniversary of the Hospice Society, which was formally incorporated as a non-profit society in 1999. The group offers free palliative, hospice, grief and loss programs in addition to education resources.
“We have come to remember the lives of those we have lost, and to share in this circle all the love we have and the grief at those losses,” said Tess Huntley, executive director of the Sunshine Coast Hospice Society. “I also want to remember the deep grief that resulted from decades of the harm of residential schools, colonization, and racism: the separation of land and culture, families torn apart, and children who could not come home.”
Participants circled a crackling beach fire, gingerly inching closer for warmth. At Huntley’s prompting, they carefully deposited dozens of paper mementos amid the blaze. As the heat caused corners to blacken and curl, some turned away, tracing a path through the sand to the periphery. Others crouched to watch as the cedar-fuelled flames transformed meticulously inked names into light and heat.
Jennie Biltek, the society’s client services coordinator, read aloud a verse by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver: “To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.”
The 12-voice Threshold Choir stood with their backs to the crashing surf and sang: “May peace be with you now, may peace be with you always.” Chorister Corrine Thorsell conducted the singers with her upraised hand gently beating time. The ensemble regularly convenes at the bedside of sick or dying people and is led by Joyce Chong.
This winter the Hospice Society collected a record-high number of tribute ornaments from Lights of Life tables at Sunnycrest Mall in Gibsons, Trail Bay Mall and Hightide Supported Housing in Sechelt, the Pender Harbour Craft Fair, and the Madeira Park IGA. Since December 2022, its staff and volunteers observed a threefold increase in active grief and palliative clients.
One of its newest outreach initiatives is a support group for parents who have endured the death of a child, or who have experienced prenatal or infant loss. Following the success of its inaugural grief writing group (facilitated in 2023 by Roberts Creek-based inspirational speaker David Roche), the society this year will launch a child and youth grief program and a men’s grief group.
Information about hospice programming is available online at coasthospice.com.
