Mel’s memorial service

Forty people attended an informal memorial service last Wednesday, followed by lunch.  Mel was just 24 when she died of a heroin overdose on the steps of St Peter’s in September.  She used to inject on those steps, she told her friends, because she felt she wasn’t alone there. 

Her mother and brother joined around twenty of Mel’s friends and key workers, and members of St Peter’s, for a service led by Jonny.  When she was five, Mel had said how she believed in God because he made the rainbows – and there are rainbows.  At the service, Jonny reminded us that in the bible, rainbows are a sign of hope. 

Perhaps most moving was when we handed out post-it notes and invited anyone who wanted, to write a memory or a prayer and go forward and stick it onto a poster of Charlie Mackesy’s “Prodigal Daughter”, which we later gave to Mel’s mum. 

It was incredibly touching seeing the mixture of church and wider community coming forward one after another with their notes while Paul and Tammy sang Psalm 23.  At the end of the service we had lunch in the hall together – Higgidy pies and homemade cupcakes, each decorated with the letter “M”.