Each sign had the name of one of the 41 people in Berkshire County who died of overdose in 2024.
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Pairs of community members walked from the Common to Park Square in silence on Sunday, honoring those who have died from overdose.
Living in Recovery held its fourth annual memorial service and candlelight vigil on Aug. 31, in observance of International Overdose Awareness Day. Forty-one purple, illuminated signs in Park Square represented every person lost to overdose in Berkshire County in 2024.
"I am kind of a little bit dismayed that we have to keep doing this, but certainly I'm glad that we're all able to come together," Program Director Julie MacDonald told a crowd of about 50 people at the Common.
This is a day for honoring those lost to overdose while highlighting the importance of harm reduction and recovery resources to prevent further loss. Hundreds have passed from overdose in the last decade; 24 Pittsfield residents just last year.
"In 2024, 41 of our neighbors in Berkshire County lost their lives to overdose, 24 here in Pittsfield. Since 2013, a staggering 482 lives have been taken, each one an irreplaceable member of our community. In gathering today, we acknowledge the loss of these human lives and the many we have lost before them," recovery coach Quentin Anderson said.
"It is our hope and our belief in education, compassion, and direct action, we will see these numbers decline. To truly turn the tide, we must replace stigma with compassion, silence with truth, and isolation with community."
Anderson asked teary-eyed attendees to fight the urge to hide from the pain of this illness.
"We must speak loudly," the recovery coach said. "We must share our collective grief for all to see. When we have been disenfranchised from expressing our grief, barred from the opportunity to receive the much-needed support from our community, we begin to isolate ourselves, but no more. Now we must do all that we can do to protect our community and ourselves from suffering losses such as this."
Living In Recovery, located behind 75 North St., offers non-clinical, peer-led support options and educational and social activities.
Pictures of the bereaved were displayed on boards adorned with butterflies and dragonflies. Grief counselor Peggy Zamierowski pointed out that these are brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, friends, co-workers, partners, and children.
"Though we are bonded together by our collective losses, we know that each person we grieve was a unique individual with their own personality, their own strengths and struggles, accomplishments and disappointments, and their own life stories," she said.
"Our loss includes more than our loved ones. We grieve the role they played in our lives. We grieve their role in our day-to-day life, and the hope we had carried of a brighter future together. We grieve the loss of those dreams."
She asked people to remember that despite a person's pain, their lives also had many moments of delight, happiness, caring, friendship, and love.
"They mattered in this lifetime, and today, we remind ourselves and our community of that."
MacDonald said people live on in the hearts and minds of the living.
"The separateness, the uniqueness of each human life is what brings us to this place of grief, of feeling the loss of that special person,"
"When you look through the entire world, you will see that there is no one like your loved one, and they still live on in our memories, though no longer a visible part of our lives; they live on for the influence they have had on us and the special part they played in our lives."
The group was asked to keep in mind the solemnness of the occasion and walk in silence to the candlelit vigil. Once at Park Square, the names of people who passed from overdose were read aloud as a (battery-operated) candle was placed in front of each sign.
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