by Lane Williamson, Memorial Garden Administrator
If you haven’t walked out back behind the Meeting House lately, please think about doing that: wander through the Memorial Garden giving yourself a bit of time to breathe deeply and listen to the quiet. If you haven’t walked up the winding garden path lately, please try to make time for that: a few moments of reflection with daffodils and sweet new green shoots as companions “can do a body good”.
The Memorial Garden is a contemplative space and tribute to many friends of First Parish who have returned to the earth atoms used on loan through their lives. Ashes have been scattered or cremains interred here; there are bushes, flowers, and ground covers chosen with care and added by families, loved ones, and friends.
Sometimes the decision to add to the Memorial Garden in honor of someone is made by family or friends of someone deceased; a memorial service may be planned, plantings may be added, cremains interred. Other times members of FPS choose to plan ahead, make their own plan, and add their desires with respect to the Memorial Garden to whatever personal wishes they are planning to leave behind.
If this “planning ahead” is something you think you might like to do, you can request a full information packet from the Landscape Committee. The Memorial Garden Administrator will work with you to think through what you would like to do and the directive you wish to leave as well as what information for the Memorial Book you might want to leave.
Perhaps you’ll give all of this some thought. Hopefully you will, indeed, take that walk out back.