For Billie Gautreaux, the Sixteenth Annual Christmas Service of Remembrance represents a way to cope with the heartbreak of lost beloved family members at a time of the year when their greatest gift was each other.
“We were really close,” the St. Rose resident said of her close-knit family. “We had all holidays together.”The service will be held at 7 p.m. today (Thursday) at the Pontchartrain Center’s Belle Grove Plantation ballroom, Williams Boulevard at the lake.
Gautreaux has been attending the service since 2001, when she lost her mother. But as time wore on she added more family members to the remembrance: Brother in 2008; niece-in-law in 2009; father in 2012; grandmother in 2013, nephew in 2013 and father-in-law in 2014.
“It’s like you’ve lost a piece of yourself,” she said. “You’re lost.”
It’s why Gautreaux is among numerous St. Charles Parish residents who attend the service and particularly at the hardest time of the year missing them – Christmas.
“To get through the holidays, you’ve got to have something,” she said. “I think this could help other people.”The service has proven a great consolation to her and many others.
“I just think that when you sit in that room and you see the person’s name come up on the screen and, they may have been dead 10 to 15 years and see the people still cry, it helps you know what this is about,” Gautreaux said.
This year’s service is particularly significant to her, which she said may be the time she finally gets to grieve.
“The reason I’m having a hard time with it is when my mom died, I really didn’t get to grieve for her because I was taking care of my daddy,” Gautreaux said. “In the meantime, my brother died, which was the hardest thing in finding someone dead. Now my father was grieving the loss of a child and then I helped my father. I always had to put my feelings on a back burner – and then when my father died I was grieving all of them.”
This put particular emphasis on the importance of the service for her.
“This service every year gets me through Christmas,” she said. “I’ve done this faithfully since my mother passed. If it helps one person that’s great.”
Gautreaux said the gathering also is therapeutic by being with others who have lost family members.
“I’ve seen people sit there waiting for their loved one’s name to come up and when they get that ornament they leave like they’ve gotten a piece of their loved one with them,” she said.
Gautreaux’s one ornament represents all her family members.“I keep every one of them,” she said. “In spirit, they’re with me and we can all be together and be a big family. I can sit back and think of all those memories. They’re all in your heart. All you have to do is sit there and think.”Capt. Patrick Yoes, spokesman for the St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Office, said the holiday season can be an extremely difficult time for those suffering the loss of a loved one.
“Services like this not only help them cope, but also builds a support system among others with similar circumstances,” he said.
Yoes also plans to attend the ceremony.
The Christmas service is a free event sponsored by the family and staff of L. A. Muhleisen and Son and Millet-Guidry Funeral Homes.
This year’s keynote speaker will be Wally Pontiff who will relate the events immediately following his son’s unexpected death and how he and his family have coped with their loss.Pontiff lost his son, Wallace V. “Wally” Pontiff Jr., on July 24, 2002.
His son, a New Orleans native was a two-time all-state baseball player at Jesuit High School before he went on to play for the 2000 National Championship Team at LSU until he was drafted by the Oakland Athletics. He died in his sleep at age 21 from cardiac arrest brought on by hypertrophic cardiomyopathy or a genetic disease that causes thickening of the heart muscle.
The remembrance service honors the memory of lost loved ones in the community.
In announcing this service, Edward Muhleisen, a fifth-generation funeral director, said, “We know that the holidays are not festive for everyone, especially those families who have experienced a recent death, this is why we encourage anyone who has experienced the loss of someone special to attend the service and pay tribute to their memory.
Historically, those in attendance find this program to be a very comforting and meaningful. Some have even said that their Christmas doesn’t begin until they have attended this program. Our hope is that it will provide all in attendance with a source of strength and inspiration throughout the holiday season.”
At the conclusion, participants will be presented with an Angel of Remembrance, taken from a Christmas tree, in memory of their loved one.
For more information, call (504) 466-8577 or (985) 536-7700.
Be the first to comment