I realise that for many of you, this past year has brought an unexpected twist in your life journey. I am always very conscious that when someone you care about dies, your whole world changes. Your world looks and feels different, and with it this Christmas. For everyone else, it is the season to be jolly; it’s the most wonderful time of the year. But you may not feel the same about things this Christmas.

“When someone you care about dies, your whole world changes.”

Today, I have three offerings for you … gifts for a grieving Christmas. The first is given for YOU, the second has to do with your loved one, and the third concerns your family and friends.

My first Gift is for YOU. Maybe you are facing this Christmas season with dread.   Here are a few suggestions:

First Gift 

• Recognise that this Christmas is different.   
• Plan ahead. Decide what YOU want to do. Act rather than react.   
• Avoid “shoulds and “oughts”.   
• Re-examine your priorities.   
• Make the changes you think are best.   
• Take responsibility for your own happiness.  
• Look after yourself. Don’t abandon healthy habits  
• Be compassionate with yourself if things are not perfect this year.

The next gift focuses on your loved one. They may be gone, but I am sure they will be very much on your mind.

Second Gift

• Acknowledge your loved one’s presence.
• Create a special tribute to your loved one. (Involve children in this one if you can.) 
• Stay in touch with your feelings.
• Be honest about your feelings.
• Don’t be afraid to relive your memories
• Let the light of the years you spent together shine on the event rather than letting the death cast its shadow on the years.

My final gift has to do with others around you like family and friends. Remember, they may be grieving too.  

Third Gift

• Balance solitude and sociability   
• Ask for and accept help.  
• Set differences aside   
• Learn to say “no”  
• Take a break from things   
• Try to find something positive in your life. How can you turn your situation into something positive and meaningful?  
• Take care of children  
• Try to make others happy    
• Remember, there will be OTHER Christmas’s

Finally we need to face the future with hope. There’s a little verse in the Christmas story of the Wise Men that often goes unnoticed. After finding the baby in Bethlehem, they returned home “by a different route”. They had to find a different road forward than the way they had come. When you have experienced bereavement, you suddenly find that life has taken on a whole new direction. And we find ourselves and our lives having to go on in a whole new direction. Sometimes in life we have to find new ways to get to where we need to be.

There is not enough darkness in the whole universe to hide the light of even one candle.

Perhaps you face this Christmas with some apprehension, and, this year, you feel like the light has gone out of your life. Nothing seems quite right, and you wonder if you have the strength to go on. But my friends, no matter how dark your situation, remember one thing. There is not enough darkness in the whole universe to hide the light of even one candle. Even when there is a flicker of hope, that spark overcomes the darkness. It may not banish it completely, but it is never all dark as long as there remains one glimmer of hope.

So come on, and light a candle. Light a candle in memory of your loved one, but also light a candle for yourself … to indicate that you believe there is hope for you to find your way through the darkness, even though life has taken an unwelcome turn and you are heading home in a different direction than the one you expected or even wanted.

So, this Christmas season, hold on to what is important.

• Celebrate the person’s life as well as acknowledging their death
• Don’t allow looking back at the past to spoil what you have in the present.
• Enjoy what you HAVE as well as grieving what you’ve LOST?
• Believe that there are reasons to go on, even though you may not see what they are right now.
• Believe in people, and in life, in love and laughter, and in hope!
• Believe in yourself, that your determination will help get you through.
• Believe that no matter how difficult your circumstances that life is important and can still be meaningful.
• Believe in a brighter tomorrow, and in possibilities beyond even your bravest dreams.

You will be surprised how that flickering flame of hope will continue to burn. You will make it through, even though it may not be easy. Your supply of strength and patience may be low, but hang in, because no matter what has shattered your hopes or your dreams or even broken your heart, you are not beyond repair. 

You will find this article and other meaningful resources on Coping with Christmas on Dr Bill’s website at www.griefjourney.com

Yesterday marked the last day of volunteering for the wonderful Food & Friendship charity we have supported for the last 2 years. Richard, Ben and Zoe headed down to help wrap the many, many Calendars Caroline and the team have had made for the members and helped to bag up the food parcels being delivered that day.

We would like to thank Caroline and the absolutely fabulous team based in Hove Methodist Church for all of their dedication and hard work. Without a sturdy team of volunteers it would not be possible to provide hot, home cooked meals twice a week, feeding hundreds of older people and vulnerable adults every month and providing a friendly face, a bit of entertainment, a friendly face and a chat. The whole operation was turned on its head due to Covid and so far well over 3000 hot meals have been delivered into the community since March which is fantastic to hear. Although Bungards may not be ‘officially’ supporting F&F this year we love the ethos, the people and the atmosphere so we will definatly be coming down to volunteer still!

Richard presented Caroline in a socially distanced way with a cheque for £850 to mark the occasion, a donation from Bungards that was greatly received and we know it will be put to fantastic use helping our community. We were also given gifts and a rather fantastic card each by F&F to say farewell, a little emotional all round but we will stay in contact with you all and Thank You all so much.

Bungards will be sad to see Food & Friendship go but we look forward to supporting our new charity Whoopsadaisy in 2021, a local charity based in Preston Park who support children with learning disabilities and their families.

Bungards are very happy to have worked in conjunction with St Barnabas Church again this year collaborating in this years Lights of Love Remembrance Service and presenting the church with their annual Christmas tree.

We want to say a big thank you to all those who attended in the cold to witness the turning on of the Christmas tree lights and to hear Fr. John’s service giving thanks and remembering the loved ones we have lost.

It was a short but beautiful service and we all managed to remain distanced and warm! As we could not go inside the church this year due to the Covid restrictions we gave out goodie bags instead at the end of the service, we hope you enjoyed them, and we want to wish all of our families and friends a peaceful Christmastime, from Richard, Ben, Zoe and Ray.

Lights of Love Remembrance Service at St Barnabas Church, Hove.

We hope everyone is safe and well! We would like to invite you, your friends and family to our annual Remembrance Service and Christmas Tree Lighting in partnership with St Barnabas Church.

We welcome all faiths and beliefs to join us and we hope that the service will provide some comfort to anyone who attends.

The service will take place outside St Barnabas Church, 88 Sackville Rd, Hove, BN3 3HE on Monday 7th December 2020 at 5pm.

Last year we held a reception inside the church afterwards but due to the Covid restrictions we are all facing this is sadly not going to be possible this year, so instead we have prepared some little Christmas goodie bags as a small gift from us to you.

If you would like to come along please RSVP so we know who is attending. Please may you RSVP by Monday 30^th November by calling Richard, Ben or Zoe on 01273 820018, or by emailing us at info@bungards.co.uk

We wish you all a safe and happy December

5 Easy ways of supporting your local independent businesses that only take a few minutes of your time and could go a long way to helping out!

• Write a positive Google review ………………………………..£0.00
• Tell your friends & family! ………………………………………£0.00
• Follow & share their Social Media …………………………..£0.00
• Engage with their posts ………………………………………….£0.00
• Give them a shout out on your own Social Media ……….£0.00

Head over to Facebook and take a look at the Support Local: Independent shops delivering in Brighton and Hove page for more lovely local goodies available either in walking distance or delivered to your door!

Follow the link below to see what you could find today!

#BungardLocal #BrightonandHoveLocalBusiness #Hove #Brighton #LocalBusiness

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1558345741007742

“Bungard Local”, is a new initiative to help bring together our local independent retailers and help to promote shopping locally, in turn helping to keep our businesses alive. So many small independents are struggling at the moment and we want to help raise more awareness within our community so that we ‘Think Local’ first!

We endeavour to:
1. Support Local Business through Social Media
2. For every Funeral Plan sold and/or recommended we will give a £50 gift voucher from a local independent company of their choice.
3. Use local suppliers wherever possible. Avoiding Amazon, international & national chains and large groups and instead support Local.

We shall provide more information over the coming months about the ideas we have for Bungard Local. Keep your eyes peeled.
Let’s try to build our social media presence together by posting regularly about our services, commenting on and liking other businesses posts (& reciprocal hashtags on Twitter) and following each other’s accounts.

#BungardLocal #BrightonandHoveLocalBusiness #Hove #Brighton #LocalBusiness

Today marks the launch of “Bungard Local”, a new initiative that brings together our local independent retailers and help to promote shopping locally to help keep our businesses alive. So many small independents are struggling at the moment and we want to help raise more awareness within our community so that we ‘Think Local’ first!

From today we endeavour to:
1. Support Local Business through Social Media
2. For every Funeral Plan sold and/or recommended we will give a £50 gift voucher from a local independent company of their choice.
3. Use local suppliers wherever possible. Avoiding Amazon, international & national chains and large groups and instead support Local.

We shall provide more information over the coming months about the ideas we have for Bungard Local. Keep your eyes peeled.

Five months of the pandemic has created many debts, many friends and family find themselves jobless and tens of thousands of businesses are out of business. We need to support each other to survive. So let’s all support each other. Spend local. Help your friend’s businesses whenever you able to. Help keep small businesses in your community going.

So how do we start?
Let’s try to build our social media presence together by posting regularly about our services, commenting on and liking other businesses posts (& reciprocal hashtags on Twitter) and following each other’s accounts.

#BungardLocal #BrightonandHoveLocalBusiness #Hove #Brighton #LocalBusiness

Charles Plumb was a US Navy jet pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy hands. He was captured and spent 6 years in a communist Vietnamese prison. He survived the ordeal and now lectures on lessons learned from that experience.

One day, when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man at another table came up and said, ‘ You’re Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down! ‘How in the world did you know that?’ asked Plumb. ‘I packed your parachute,’ the man replied. Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude. The man pumped his hand and said, ‘I guess it worked!’ Plumb assured him, ‘It sure did. If your chute hadn’t worked, I wouldn’t be here today.’ Plumb couldn’t sleep that night, thinking about that man. Plumb says, ‘I kept wondering what he had looked like in a Navy uniform: a white hat; a bib in the back; and bell-bottom trousers. I wonder how many times I might have seen him and not even said ‘Good morning, how are you?’ or anything because, you see, I was a fighter pilot and he was just a sailor.’ Plumb thought of the many hours the sailor had spent at a long wooden table in the bowels of the ship, carefully weaving the shrouds and folding the silks of each chute, holding in his hands each time the fate of someone he didn’t know.

Now, Plumb asks his audience, ‘Who’s packing your parachute?’ Everyone has someone who provides what they need to make it through the day. He also points out that he needed many kinds of parachutes when his plane was shot down over enemy territory – he needed his physical parachute, his mental parachute, his emotional parachute, and his spiritual parachute. He called on all these supports before reaching safety.
Sometimes in the daily challenges that life gives us, we miss what is really important. We may fail to say hello, please, or thank you, congratulate someone on something wonderful that has happened to them, give a compliment, or just do something nice for no reason. As you go through this week, this month, this year, recognise people who pack your parachutes.

I am sending you this as my way of thanking you for your part in packing my parachute. And I hope you will send it on to those who have helped pack yours! Sometimes, we wonder why friends keep forwarding jokes to us without writing a word. Maybe this could explain it! When you are very busy, but still want to keep in touch, guess what you do – you forward jokes.
And to let you know that you are still remembered, you are still important, you are still loved, you are still cared for, guess what you get? A forwarded joke. So my friend, next time when you get a joke, don’t think that you’ve been sent just another forwarded joke, but that you’ve been thought of today and your friend on the other end of your computer wanted to send you a smile, just helping you pack your parachute

https://www.great-inspirational-quotes.com
Author unknown