Living with Loss

Bereavement Support Team

When you lose someone you love often the hardest time is after the funeral. Up until then family and friends rally around but in the months that follow a bereaved person can often feel very alone as they grieve for their loved one and seek to carry on. A listening ear and some love and concern in these times can make all the difference.

Aware of this, the Kirkby Anglican Churches have recently set up a Bereavement Support Team. A team of ten people, having undergone a training course in bereavement visiting and listening earlier this year, are now available to visit people in their homes in the months following a bereavement just to provide a listening ear as people share their memories, feelings and experiences. If you feel you could benefit from this sort of support and would like to arrange a visit from the team please ring Lyn on 547 2988.

Maybe this poem: "Reaching Out" by Christine Rigden encapsulates what we are seeking to provide:

I feel your pain and long to touch the hurt
and make it melt away.
Yes I know that I can't really see
the breadth and depth of this dark valley you're in.
I can't truly know just how sharp the knife is in your soul -
for it is you in it's path not me.
But I have known other valleys
and in my heart still bear knife-wound scars.
Even so I would walk your road and take your pain if I could.
I Cannot.
And yet, perhaps in some way
I can be a hand to hold in the darkness;
in some way try to blunt the sharpness of pain.
But if not - it may help a little
just to know I care

At a recent team meeting we discussed the whole area of Healing and how the healing ministry could be expanded within the Parish. Plans are afoot to put on a 6 week training course on Listening and Prayer Ministry in the Autumn.

The flowers beneath this cross are reminiscent of Jesus' friends grief

If you are wanting to know more about making arrangements for a funeral please click here.

The Diocese of Liverpool

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

The material on this website is copyright © The Kirkby Team Ministry 2008
The Kirkby Team Ministry is the style adopted by the Parochial Church Council of Kirkby which is an excepted charity serving the ecclesiastical parish of Kirkby in the Diocese of Liverpool as part of the Church of England.