To Absent Friends Week 2020 – Virtual Service

Campbell Snowdon Residential Home and Ardgowan Hospice present a digital remembrance event on Sunday 1st November at 7pm to mark the beginning of To Absent Friends week. The video will be available on this page at 7pm, please refresh your page at this time.

To Absent Friends is an annual Scottish festival of remembrance during which people and organisations throughout Scotland remember individuals and groups who have died in the past year or some time ago. Given the pandemic Ardgowan Hospice felt it was important this year to widen the act of remembrance to the whole community of Inverclyde rather than simply to those bereaved people connected to the hospice as it would have normally done, for instance we want to pay our respects to those care workers who have died of coronavirus whilst looking after the most vulnerable members of our community.

Additionally, two of the key groups of people who nationally have experienced increased rates of death during the coronavirus pandemic are people who live in care homes or have dementia and although Inverclyde has had lower rates than most areas of Scotland it seemed obvious to work together with our close colleague, Jim Melville, Manager of Campbell Snowdon care home in Quarriers Village to remember these people.

Just prior to the lock down period Ardgowan Hospice had a memory tree installed in its Access building to enable people in the community to be able to purchase an inscribed leaf on the tree for their deceased loved one in remembrance – during the event we will be dedicating a sunflower which is being added to the tree to signify the loss of those close to Ardgowan hospice including volunteers, retired staff members and others who have died in the last year who have a special relationship with Ardgowan Hospice, some of whom we will be remembering by name during the event.

This organisation of this event arises out of the recently established Willow Care Project which Ardgowan Hospice has developed to extend its emotional and bereavement support to anyone who has been impacted by the coronavirus within Inverclyde which any care worker or member of the public can refer themselves to by visiting ardgowanhospice.org.uk/thewillowcare

Throughout Absent Friends week the hospice will be daily posting resources on its website for people to download to support bereaved people in our community including children and young people, people with dementia, people with learning disabilities as well as adults who have been bereaved because of Covid19 or other causes