BEULAH - In a dark room, the flame of one candle lights the far corners.

It is the same for the human heart.

Sunday, parents with broken hearts lit candles for their children who have died.

The flickering light in a church in Beulah was part of a 24-hour wave of candlelight around the world as hundreds of thousands of other grieving parents did the same, at 7 p.m. in their time zone, starting in New Zealand.

For 10 years now, Compassionate Friends, a bereavement group for parents, has been part of a worldwide candlelighting on the second Sunday in December.

Some ceremonies are formal. In others, families gather at home in quiet remembrance.

It is the candle that matters, the light that joins all others, each flame saying, "We remember. We love."

Michelle Tipton, of Beulah, has been part of the ceremony since 2000.

Her son, Shannon, 17, died instantly of a rare heart condition the year before. His condition never had been diagnosed, and she endured months of rumor before the forensic investigation uncovered the syndrome that fatally interrupted her son's heart's electrical current.

She then learned that she and her younger son, Dustin, have the same syndrome.

Tipton shared the candle ceremony with other grieving mothers over the years.

This year, the ceremony was organized around making a heart-shaped Christmas ornament and sharing food before the candlelighting.

An invitation was sent to 44 families in the Beulah area, all of whom have lost a child through illness or accident over the years.

One mother who came was Kim Vettel, of Beulah, whose son, Christopher, died of leukemia in August 2006. He was only 20, and he had been dealing with the disease, including a period of remission, for nearly two years.

Vettel said she had mixed feelings about joining the candlelighting at the church.

"I don't want to sit and cry for four hours," she said. At the same time, she said, "I hope there is comfort."

What both mothers know from living through the death of a child is that no one who hasn't experienced it can truly understand. They also know that parents whose child died instantly wish there had been time to say goodbye, and that those whose children died of painful illness would have traded that "goodbye" to spare the pain and agony.

"People said they couldn't imagine what I was going through," Vettel said. "These people, they know. They know."

After her son died, Vettel said the hardest response was to the many people asking, "How are you?"

For her, a wordless hug from people whose eyes showed their feelings was sufficient.

Her own strong faith and the outpouring of support from the community of Beulah have helped make her grief bearable.

Time is a strange thing for a grieving parent. It helps lessen the intensity of the pain, but each day forward is one day further away from the living presence of their child, Tipton said.

She said she's also learned something about herself these past years.

"I didn't know I would hurt this bad for every mother who comes after me," she said.

Reaching out and taking candles to other parents has helped her and spread the message that while grieving a dead child is the loneliest feeling on earth, they are not alone.

Tipton said she would light five candles at 7 p.m. - one for grief, one for courage, one for memories, one for love and one for hope - and she would read special writings, like one by Paul Alexander: "And I will light a candle for you to shatter all the darkness and bless the times we knew."

Tipton said she hoped the same candle would light a place for parents to remember and honor their child and still be enough light to guide them back.

(The local chapter of Compassionate Friends is led by Kelli Herman, of Bismarck, and the group's national Web site is at http://www.compassionatefriends.org.)