‘It helps ease the hurt’: B.C. grandmother turns grief into gift for others

“There it is in all it’s glory:” Adam finds out the story behind a road-side tree filled with meaningful decorations.

COLWOOD, B.C. — Instead of it decorating a tree, Kelli Bennett found the Christmas ornament flying across the street.

“We saved it in the windstorm,” Kelli says before hanging it back up on the road-side tree that’s filled with decorations.

“We came and picked them up,” said Tannis Gudmunson, who walks past the tree a few times a week. “And we put them back on.”

But they are not any ordinary ornaments. They have messages on them. Messages like ‘King of the Dad Jokes,’ ‘I miss mom,’ and ‘Best friend forever’.

“It’s the memory tree,” Tannis points to a sign declaring that below the star on top of the tree.

While Tannis and Kelli don’t remember ever hearing the story behind the memory tree, Judy Stephenson (who just happened to be walking by) will never forget it.

“Today would have been his 31^st birthday,” Judy fights back tears while holding one of ornaments featuring the name Michael.

That’s her grandson who died unexpectedly seven years ago.

After her loss, Judy went for a walk with her friend Lolly Wilkinson, who suggested that hang an ornament on the then-bare tree they happened to be passing to pay tribute to Michael.

“[Lolly] said it was going to help ease the hurt,” Judy says. “And it did. So, we carried on.”

After hanging that first ornament, they made many others.

“It started with just hearts that I crocheted,” Judy says she wrote the initials of people who has passed on them. “And then Lolly started making wooden plaques for people to hang.”

And in the seven years since then, countless others have made ornaments marking their own memories, which begin filling the tree every December.

And if any get blown off during a windstorm, people who have no relationship to the ornaments, like Kelli and Tannis, are always keen to take care of them.

“It’s nice to see them being remembered,” Kelli says.

“There it is, in all its glory,” Judy smiles as she looks up at the tree that, instead of mourning lives lost, celebrates lives lived. “Isn’t it precious? Beautiful?”

While we call this the most wonderful time of the year, for many it’s the hardest.

So, if like Judy, we can transform our grief into a gift for others, and inspire healing over the holidays, perhaps it is possible to find solace in the season.