When Paula Jardine’s father died more than 20 years ago, she was struck by how little ritual there was surrounding death that could help her family heal.
It’s a gap she hopes to fill with an event at Royal Oak Burial Park on Saturday. The cemetery is hosting the 10th annual Summer So(u)lstice, which brings people together to pay tribute to their loved ones in a social setting of music and poetry.
“It really is an opportunity for people to have some healing,” said Jardine, the event’s artistic co-ordinator.
“Instead of moving through life, like just trying to hold it together and pretending like everything’s the way it used to be — because it’s not — it’s an opportunity to just have your feelings and not feel self-conscious.”
This year’s event brings back favourite activities from previous years, including music performed by a local women’s a capella group, Ensemble Laude, who will be singing in the Mausoleum and in the Little Spirits Garden.
A group of musicians will perform in the woodlands area of the park. Poets Carla Funk, Wendy Morton and Cynthia Woodman will be on hand to sit privately with people and create personalized poems from the memories they share of loved ones. “It’s a lovely gift,” Jardine said.
This year, organizers are giving away little books of four poems that were written at previous events, with permission from the poet and the poem’s recipient. Crystabelle Fobler, executive director of the burial park, said they’re planning to create a collection of poems from the events, but aren’t sure what that will look like yet.
A flower tent will be in the cemetery, and visitors are welcome to take arrangements to place on a grave. Staff will be available to assist visitors in locating burial sites of their ancestors.
Visitors can write messages to their loved ones on paper flags that will be hung up so “the wind can carry their messages away,” Jardine said.
Displaying the messages is a way to show that no one is alone in their feelings, she said.
“I hope that people come away with a sense of being part of a really great community.”
The event also welcomes the beginning of summer and has become a social event for people to meet each other and enjoy the park, Fobler said.
Historian John Adams will give talks during the afternoon, and Dave Obee, Times Colonist publisher, who wrote a book about the burial park’s history, will share stories of people buried in the cemetery.
The event takes place Saturday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., with an official kickoff ceremony at 1:30 p.m. near the cemetery’s fountain.
