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This night the world lights candles
That you may see them from above.
Tonight the globe is lit by love
Of those who know great sorrow.
 Jason Bochert and his 9-month-old daughter Sara attended the candlelight remembrance ceremony at Veterans’ Park in Sierra Vista Sunday night. Bochert and his wife, Jackie, lost their son Matthew who was stillborn in June 2005. They have found solace and help with The Compassionate Friends in Sierra Vista, a group that gathers once a month to offer help and support to those who have lost a child or a family member. (Shar Porier•Herald/Review) |
— Jacqueline Brown Peace
SIERRA VISTA — A quiet group gathered Sunday under the night sky lit with millions of tiny candles. Eyes glistened, but not from the cold wind.
Here were parents and family members of all ages who had come to be a part of a worldwide remembrance of children who had died too soon. Some were victims of car crashes, some at their own hands, still others died before they could take their first breaths of life. Each family has its own story of grief. And each family, with shaking and quivering voices, offered condolences. Or, sometimes all they could muster was just a knowing look of “I’ve been there. I know what you’re going through. I just can’t talk right now.”
Jason and Jackie Bochert, of Sierra Vista, discovered the group through a nurse at the hospital where their son was born and died. The Bocherts’ son Matthew was a stillborn, and the nurse had heard about The Compassionate Friends and recommended the couple look them up. The Bocherts attended a few meetings and found that they were not alone in their grief and anguish.
“The group went all out to make us comfortable. It’s hard for guys to talk about this, but knowing everyone there had been through what we went through was a great help,” Jason Bochert said. “They have been a great comfort to us.”
Though they now have 9-month-old girl Sara, they still can’t forget their little boy.
It doesn’t matter how long it has been since the children died or how old the children were when their lives ended abruptly, tragically.
Marie Wagner, who lives in Sierra Vista, lost her 19-year-old son 25 years ago.
“It feels like it was just yesterday. He was killed in a car crash,” Wagner said.
She has yet to attend a meeting, but she plans on going because she has met some of the people involved with the group at the candle light ceremony.
David and Brenda Goskill have the unbearable pain of wondering what happened to their beautiful 24-year-old daughter that would make her take her own life that day in September 2006, yet not leave a note.
“It leaves a lot of unanswered questions,” said David Goskill. “It’s very tough to cope with losing a child. You never really get over it. It’s been really tough on Brenda.”
Brenda was the one who found her daughter’s lifeless body and still is unable to talk about it.
The Goskills have only good things to say about The Compassionate Friends.
“They have been a godsend,” he added. “It was hard to go at first. I got dressed twice to go, but I just couldn’t.”
Five years ago, Dean Wiles lost his infant granddaughter Sidney Hess. She was just six weeks old when she passed away in the arms of her father, David Hess.
“Sometimes you feel like you can’t get through it,” said Wiles, a Hereford resident.
His wife, Reba, added, “But you do get through it. Somehow you get through it. The Compassionate Friends is a wonderful outreach program. I couldn’t say a word at the first meeting I went to. But once you realize that you are with people who have gone through it, you begin to open up. These people know what it feels like, and they are there for you.”
Every year on the second Sunday in December, The Compassionate Friends, a self-help support group for families who have lost children, siblings, and grandchildren, gather in remembrance of loved ones lost.
Lisa Davis, one of the founders of the group, explained that the U.S. Senate designated the second Sunday in December as National Children’s Memorial Day. On this day, chapters of The Compassionate Friends across the world gather together and light candles at 7 p.m. in every time zone creating a virtual chain of light in memory of the children.
In the park, 55 parents, sisters, brothers, grandparents, aunts and uncles lit their candles and spoke their loved ones’ names, sometimes in a whisper, sometimes in a quivering voice.
As the ceremony came to a close, some parents, weeping, found solace cradled in each other’s arms that ached for the children lost to them.
Herald/Review reporter Shar Porier can be reached at 515-4692 or by e-mail at shar.porier@bisbeereview.net.
David and Brenda Gaskills friends wrote on Dec 10, 2007 11:32 PM: