As I lit my candle tonight, the sky cleared and your star was shining down.
 
This simple message was just one of the thousands left in the national website Remembrance Book during last year's Compassionate Friends Worldwide Candle Lighting.
 
Another person wrote, "everyday is hard without your child, but the Holidays are so hard. When we light our candles we can just see our children looking down at the millions of candles being lit around the world."

When a family has experienced the death of a child, for many the year would not be complete without a remembrance service that honors the memory of that child. TCF's gift to the bereavement community, the Worldwide Candle Lighting, this year December 14th, offers that opportunity.
 
This is the 13th annual event which is held the second Sunday in December at 13 p.m. Candles stay lighted for one hour in each time zone around the world creating a virtual 24-hour wave of light. Candles are lit at 7 p.m. local time, hundreds of thousands of persons commemorate and honor children in a way that transcends all ethnic, cultural, religious, and political boundaries.

Believed to be the largest mass candle lighting on the globe, the Worldwide Candle Lighting creates a virtual 24-hour wave of light as it moves from time zone to time zone. Hundreds of formal candle lighting events are held and thousands of informal candle lightings are conducted in homes as families gather in quiet remembrance of children who have died, but will never be forgotten.

The Worldwide Candle Lighting started in the United States in 1997 as a small Internet observance but has since swelled in numbers as word has spread throughout the world of the remembrance.

The 2007 Worldwide Candle Lighting saw information on services received from 21 countries outside the United States.

Please help spread the word about this tremendous event and invite anyone who is unable to attend a service to light a candle at 7 p.m. for one hour wherever they may be.