‘We have to go through this grieving process’
Old Greenwich church revives flag project to remember COVID deaths
GREENWICH — To allow the community to grieve the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, Senior Pastor Patrick Collins is reviving a project for Holy Week to fill the lawn outside First Congregational Church of Old Greenwich with small white flags to memorialize those who were lost.
Last year when Collins started the project, the flags presented a powerful message to everyone going by on Sound Beach Avenue. All told, Collins placed more than 4,400 flags before he stopped last June.
As of Monday, the state listed 7,865 resident deaths that have been linked to the coronavirus. And the flags are back during the holiest time of the year for Christians.
“In our faith tradition, we are a resurrection people,” Collins said. “And we realize we can’t get to the resurrection, which is the hope
and promise of new life, without the pain of Good Friday. We can’t get there without the loss that we experienced together. A lot of
times in our faith tradition that gets lost. People skip Good Friday. We tend to ignore the pain and the hurt that is critical and necessary for the hopeful new life to have meaning.”
The flags will be up through Easter Monday, April 5. Collins is inviting the community to participate throughout the week to create the Holy Week memorial. The Christian faithful grieve the death on the cross of Jesus Christ on Good Friday and celebrate his resurrection on Easter.
“In order to come back from this and to be a community again together, we have to go through this grieving process,” he said. “It’s part of healing. It’s part of finding new life and new hope. That’s part of the reason I did it a year ago. I wouldn’t have imagined when I started that a year from then we’d be doing it again in a different form.”
On Monday morning, Collins and Stephen Lucin, the media, technology and content coordinator for the church, began placing the flags on the front lawn of the church. They hope others will get involved after Collins placed most of the flags last year.
“As powerful as it was for me to put those flags out last year and thinking every time that this was a person who died unnecessarily, having the community take part this time will allow them to feel a part of that, too,” Collins said. “That could be something that helps them.”
From 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. through Sunday, the public is invited to the church and place as many flags as they wish. A table is set up outside the church, with Sharpie markers of various colors, and hand sanitizer, to allow people to add a name, prayer or message to the flags.
Church congregant Betsy Kreuter of Greenwich took part on Monday, placing two flags on the lawn.
“I wanted to honor all those who have died during the pandemic and to remember them,” Kreuter said. “I wanted to somehow make sure these people are not forgotten.”
She said she agreed with the lesson Collins was trying to impart during the Easter week.
“I wanted to do this for the families, and it’s a help to me as well to do something to say that we miss these people and remember them,” Kreuter said.
Collins said he has 8,000 small white flags and expects all of them to be placed out on the church’s property, across from Binney Park.
Residents of all faiths from all over town are invited to take part, expressing themselves and paying tribute to those who were lost, he said.
“I’m really hoping that anyone walking by will come and participate,” Collins said. “They can put out more than one flag. They can put out a hundred if they like.”
U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4, is expected to come by the church Thursday to take part.
Suzanne Marmo, a professor of social work at Sacred Heart University, said the flag project is valuable because it is a public symbol that gives people “permission to grieve.”
“We haven’t really started grieving this circumstance,” Marmo said of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I believe that as a society collectively we’ve been stuck in our grief. Our losses have been hidden away in hospitals. We haven’t been able to see our loved ones. We haven’t been able to grieve them and start our bereavement process in a way that’s comfortable to us.”
This is a chance to share the grief from the past year as a community, which she said is necessary.
Collins said he understands the therapeutic value of the project after the grief, stress and trauma of the past year. And he wants to offer that opportunity because as a tenet of his faith, he wants the church to make clear that “death and suffering do not have the final word.
They’re not the end of the story.”
“This is something that can bring a sense of closure,” Collins said. “In this time when we’ve done everything alone and kind of suffered by ourselves, we can make this public statement and put this out there. To me, it sort of signals that it’s OK to move on. And the hurt that we’ve experienced is real and is difficult, but we can be better. We’re going to be OK.”