Community Memorial Services: A Time for Remembrance

By Calvin Crews Suncoast Hospice chaplain

Chaplain Calvin Crews

It’s that time again for Suncoast Hospice and our community to come together at our community memorial service to remember friends and family members. There’s an added bit of excitement with this service because it will be held at a local faith community, as we’ve done in the past.

Our service will be July 25 at 6 p.m. at Anona United Methodist Church, 13233 Indian Rocks Road in Largo. It’s open to everyone of all faiths. Our services were held at our community service centers in the past several years. We’re looking forward to going back out in the community. As with all of our services, it gives us another opportunity to connect with the families we’ve served and to continue the journeys with them. 

We feel that this is an important service to many in our community because we all come together to comfort one another and share memories of our deceased loved ones. Some have made our services part of their bereavement process, attending year after year. Our services provide the perfect occasions for people to acknowledge and mourn those who’ve died, regardless of when the losses occurred. 

It’s also important for our own staff and volunteers to remember the patients and others we’ve served. In the book, Tuesdays with Morrie, author Mitch Albom states, “Death takes a life not a relationship”. Our services are to help those relationships stay alive through the remembering and honoring of our loved ones.  

Our services include meaningful words, music and other rituals that can support the moment that’s shared. At this particular service we’ll be giving an inspirational stone to each of our attendees to take with them as an expression of the moment and hope of the comfort that they received during the service.

Our society often thinks a funeral or memorial service provides closure. That just isn’t true. At the end of a person’s life, the most important need is to know that his or her life mattered and that he or she will not be forgotten. Our relationships with our deceased loved ones play out in our hearts every day as we remember them. A memorial service gives us another opportunity for remembrance.

It was once stated that if our tears become our stairs and our memories our road, we’ll always be able to travel with our loved ones in this life that is left behind.

We hope you’ll join us at our service on July 25.

If you feel you need support with your grief, you can always call us at 467-7423.