CANDLE CEREMONY

A tradition at Goldstock is the Candle Ceremony. This activity is one of the highlights each year. The ceremony was created to celebrate the lives of our goldens who have gone to Rainbow Bridge. As you will see, we also have candles for goldens that need our prayers and our human family and friends that we want to remember as well.

The ceremony consists of 8 sections, each represented by a candle. Not all candles require individual remembrances. We would like to invite everyone to send us the names of those that you would like remembered.

There is a memory book that contains the names of all that have been remembered over the years. WE ASK THAT YOU SEND NEW ENTRIES ONLY. Unless of course those who are ill and continue to need our prayers. The memory book will be available to view at Goldstock.

The very important part of this is we have a deadline of Friday, August 4. We need you to submit all the required information NO LATER THAN AUGUST 4th.

A great deal of work goes into making the booklet (typesetting, printing, etc.) and we MUST adhere to this deadline.

The booklet contains beautiful poetry, the Rainbow Bridge poem and the Star. For those that have seen the past booklets, we have quite a collection of poems that have been submitted. If you have an "original" piece of work that you would like to have included, please forward it to me at: Beth_Grob@vwr.com. We are grateful to all who have contributed poems and to Janie Wormsbecker for the beautiful art work.

The following is the list of categories. We have included an example of the information you need to provide: This is a VERY abbreviated description of the category. Some people submit special tributes to their animals, and while they are touching and beautiful, I only have the space to put the information as listed below.

Candle 2
We light this candle for all the pets OF THOSE GATHERED at Goldstock.
   Provide: Pet's full name, Family Name, and Bridge Date
   Example: Fluffy Chambers, Rich and Deb Chambers, 00/11/2000

Candle 3
We light this candle for all the pets of those NOT ABLE TO GATHER WITH US at Goldstock.
   Provide: Pet's full name, Family Name, and Bridge Date
   Example: Fluffy Chambers, Rich and Deb Chambers, 00/11/2000

Candle 4
We light this candle for all those pets that are sick, injured, lost, homeless, neglected or abused.    Provide: Pet's full name, Family Name, and Special Needs
   Example: Fluffy Chambers, Rich and Deb Chambers, Cancer (and/or) hip dysplasia, etc.

Candle 6
We light this candle to remember all our human family and friends that have died this past year.
   Provide: Name, Remembered By, Date of Death
   Example: Theresa Smith, Brian Smith, 12/9/04

Candle 7
We light this candle to remember all our human family and friends who are currently ill and in need of our special prayers.
   Provide: Name, Caring Expressed By, Special Needs
   Example: John Smith, (can list your own name or your friend's name), John Smith, Heart Disease, cancer, etc. (may also leave the "special needs" blank)

This is spiritual and not "religious". Just a kind and loving way to remember...

Please submit your information to Beth Grob at Beth_Grob@vwr.com

SLIDE SHOW

This year Katie Dyer will be putting together the candle ceremony slideshow. If you would like your pictures of your pet, friend or relative included in this show, please send them to Katie Dyer at teamfur@ptd.net. Please identify who is in the picture, who is remembering whoever is in the picture and any significant dates.

Will need the photo to be in jpg format. Katie is currently traveling and has asked Deb to collect the photos so that none will be lost in the case of her mail box overflowing.

Again,

   JPG format photo
   Name
   Dates
   Who is remembering

Send to Katie Dyer at teamfur@ptd.net

Thanks!