Bereaved parents are benefiting from a support system provided by a long-standing organization.

For 22 years the Iowa Central Chapter of The Compassionate Friends has offered comfort to parents of deceased children in Polk County and the surrounding areas. This Sunday, the group will hold a special candle-lighting ceremony to remember their children.

Iowa Central Chapter Co-President Dick Sosalla, an ISU alumnus, said the goal of the organization is to help families “cope with the loss and get on with our lives with that kind of disappointment.”

Sosalla said his wife, Diana, also an ISU alumnus, is also a co-president for the Des Moines chapter. Sosalla said he and his wife have benefited tremendously from the encouragement of The Compassionate Friends after losing their daughter Nicole Marie, an ISU junior, to a bacterial infection in 1993.

“We found the support and the understanding and the help we needed coping with our loss there,” he said.

The Sosallas have three other daughters, two ISU alumni and one current student, Becky Sosalla, junior in mathematics.

“Because of that organization, we have been able to handle our grief, I am convinced, much better [than] had we not had that opportunity,” Sosalla said.

He said special remembrances take place with a balloon release each July and a candle-lighting ceremony each December.

The organization holds its lighting ceremony during the regular meeting time, Sosalla said, but individuals are invited to take part this Sunday in the Fourth Annual Worldwide Candle Lighting, themed “… that their light may always shine.”

Sosalla said those participating will light a candle in their own homes starting at 7 p.m. in each time zone so the remembrance will “basically roll all around the world.”

The worldwide remembrance has been set for the second Sunday in December each year because the holidays are “a real tough time for families who have had children die,” he said.

At the request of The Compassionate Friends, Congress and the House of Representatives have resolved to make Dec. 10 National Children’s Memorial Day for the third year in a row, said Nancy Schuenemann, office manager of the national office in Oakbrook, Ill. She said that while the group requests the day each year, “we’re hoping in the future to make it a permanent event.”

There are nearly 600 chapters of The Compassionate Friends spanning from all 50 states and 25 countries around the globe, Schuenemann said.

Sosalla said meetings are the first Tuesday of each month at New Hope United Methodist Church in Des Moines, though the group does not affiliate itself with any religious denomination.

The organization is geared toward parents with deceased children of all ages, Schuenemann said. “When parents outlive their child, it’s not a good thing,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if the child is four or 40.”

However, she said grandparents and siblings age 13 and up are also encouraged to take part in the meetings. There also are separate meetings for siblings.

Different types of programs dealing with the grief process are offered at each session, Sosalla said, including talks from professionals, psychologists and members themselves.