Reflections of Love

     This weekend I will be attending The Compassionate Friends 33rd  national conference in Arlington, Virginia.  The Compassionate Friends is a national organization for parents who have lost children.  There are over 600 local chapters across the country.  This is the first time I'll be going to one of their national conferences. Fortunately for me, it is not far!  I hope that it will be a very healing experience.  There will be several speakers, all of whom have lost children.   Over a 100 different workshops will be offered.  The event ends with a Memory Walk.  The walkers will be carrying the names of thousands of children that have died.  People from all over the country sent in their children's names to be remembered if they are unable to attend or walk themselves.  I will be walking in Graham's memory, my beautiful angel boy.

     I wrote a poem using the theme for this years conference.

   Here's a link to the Compassionate Friends National Conference web page:

  http://www.compassionatefriends.org/News_Events/2010_TCF_National_Conference.aspx

Reflections of love, visions of hope,
This year’s theme to help parents to cope,
Coming together in shared heartache and loss,
Shattered by the enormity of the cost.

Our children are gone, our hearts are broken,
What words can ever be spoken?
Traveling a path in a world now unknown,
It’s comforting to know we need not walk alone.

Compassionate friends all carrying grief,
Driven to heal and to find some relief,
Searching for hope in our lives once more,
Because they will never be as they were before.

Joining hands with each other,
We reflect and remember,
The ties of the heart with our children,
Grateful for the gift we were given.

It is in love that we will survive,
Love that  keeps our sons and daughters alive,
Our children never really leave,
They are with us in every breath we breathe.