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Memorial Service Brings Healing, Peace to Families Who Have Lost Children

Story and photo by Liz Quirin
Messenger editor

For 25 years St. Joseph’s Hospital in Breese has held a memorial service for children who have died, whether before, during or after childbirth, whether the baby made it to 18 weeks in the womb or two hours in the world or a few years on earth.

Held in the fall of the year, it reminds participants that All Saints Day and All Souls Day will be celebrated Nov. 1 and 2.

This year, 90 people made reservations to attend the Oct. 21st service in the hospital’s Heritage Room, but more chairs were needed. This year’s theme: “Love Transcends Time.”

Each family received a “symbol of love and remembrance” in the form of an ornament for the child that was lost.
Lisa and Jeff Gebke’s son, Jeffrey, died July 14, 2005 after living for two hours.

Gebke said she has attended the memorial service for the last five years and this one seemed to be larger than the last.

The Gebkes knew the baby was having developmental problems after an ultrasound at 20 weeks, she said.
The Gebkes continue to attend the memorial service “to keep him alive in us,” she said.

No matter how many times she goes to the service, it isn’t easier; “it’s hard no matter what year” it is, Gebke said as her voice broke.

Some parents take the opportunity to write a note to the child no longer with them. Gebke said she puts something different in the program each year, sometimes writing it herself, sometimes using a lyric from a song about children.
“Sometimes I just don’t know what to say,” she said.

The Rev. Cari Frus, BCC, a member of the pastoral care team at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Belleville, spoke to the still-grieving parents gathered there.

Her words reminded families of the “time” they had with their children, the time they spent grieving their loss and that time can slip by slowly or in an instant but it is nothing like “God’s time.” The children who have died are spending their time with God.

“God’s time is measured by love,” Rev. Frus said. “It is infinite; it never ends; it transcends time.”
And she consoled them. “We honor and celebrate the time you had with your children,” Rev. Frus said, “and we grieve the time that you have lost with them.”

The memorial service “brings together people who have lost a child to remember those children” in a special way, Kathy Berndsen, a St. Joseph’s Hospital nurse in the Women and Infants Center and volunteer with the program, said.

Gebke said she celebrates Jeffrey’s birthday each year, releasing balloons in his memory, tying a note to each balloon with a message for her son.

As Rev. Frus said, Gebke and all other family members who grieve the death of a child, have suffered an “unbearable, unimaginable loss.”

For more information about the program, please go to http://www.stjoebreese.com/WIC.htm.