A broken day.



We’d gone to the zoo as a family on Mother’s Day. My parents, my two younger brothers walking beside me, and our brand new baby brother Rory, in his pram.
29 days old.
And then he died the next day. Just slipped away silently from SIDS in his little cot, in the room beside my parents.
I watched my father try to revive him. I stood near my brother in his tiny white coffin at his funeral. 
Our family was never quite the same after that Mother’s Day.
I usually join in any other festive day on the calendar with gusto.  I’ll leave hints and gift ideas artfully round the house. But don’t bother buying me presents on that day. It’s the only festive day where I’m perfectly happy to say that I don’t need ‘stuff.’
I choose to sit this day out.
I know how blessed I am with three delightful, healthy children every day of the year. Except for those odd days where they get sick with some fever or other. Then I sit beside them and gently place cooling flannels on their bodies, while fervently and inwardly muttering ‘please don’t die, please don’t die.’ Not irrational from my perspective at all.
Because I know they might. I’ve seen lightning strike. I know it to be true.
On Mother’s Day I’m thinking of the Mothers whose children aren’t here with them on this day.
I must admit to feeling a sense of impatience with those who complain about the selfishness of their children on this day. Because if they knew their child might slip away the next day, then I’d be pretty certain those complaints would dry up quickly.
I’ll no doubt love the cards my kids make for me.
And I’ll thoroughly enjoy the breakfast they’ll try to make for me.
But mostly I’ll be thinking of my own mother. The person who had to continue living, after her baby died. The mother who had to find a way to mother me and my brothers, amidst her own, gut wrenching grief. It takes a special person to do that and it took her time.
But she survived. We all did.
I’m proud of some of the work I have done to honour my brother’s memory and his short life. I am privileged to have become friends with some extraordinary people as a result.
I have my three kids here with me today, and hopefully for a long time to come.
And that’s more than enough.

Image courtesy We Heart it.

· family, mothers day, Rory's Garden

Mothers Day Project at Rory's Garden

NOW CLOSED
I have posted this at Rory's Garden but wanted to post it here as well.
If any of my readers have lost children or babies under any circumstances we would like to honour them, and you on Mothers Day. Richard and I are working on a very special project for Mothers Day.
If you would like to be part of it, please leave the name of the child you would like remembered in a comment here or at Rory's Garden. Please only leave your comment once though.
Any artwork or photography we create will be given to you as a gift from us to you for Mothers Day. Simply email us and we will email you the JPEG.
I will close this post off to comments after Saturday morning.
Thank you x

· baby loss, motherhood, Rory's Garden

His name is spoken

In real life I am appalling gardener. I mean, really terrible. I take heart from the fact that my parents who themselves were not known for their gardening skills when I was growing up, now have magnificent gardens that are a constant source of inspiration and hope to me.
So to be a gardener in Rory's Garden is often just as much of a struggle. The problems are different of course, but all too often the similarities are the same. For instance, rarely do people ever acknowledge that their bloom has been planted for them, the lack of comments is testament to that. Even more rarely do they buy the photos.
I am at peace with that. I often wonder though, do people get the emails I send telling them their child's flower has been placed in the Garden? What happens after they make a request? Do they just go away into cyber space never to return?
It's like my own struggles with my own garden. All too rarely do my flowers bloom, though when they do, they look spectacular!
Rory's Garden has peculiarities all it's own, just like most gardens. For instance, the programme we use to upload messages people leave doesn't recognise punctuation. AT ALL. So html coding has become my new best friend and I spend hours adding it to each message. The knock on effect is that I am often in floods of tears posting messages because I READ each one, for meaning and for punctuation. And they break my heart. All of them.
So when people don't acknowledge their request, or leave a comment, or email or write back. I get it. If my heart had been shattered I don't think I would either.
I don't say any of this to engender sympathy. I don't need it.
But it does mean when people write to me, I pay attention. I am grateful.
And I wanted to share this amazing story with you.
Firstly, we get requests from all over the world.
Recently I had a flower request for a little boy called Luca.
It was duly fulfilled and posted.
The very next day, the family purchased the photo.
I wrote to them and emailed them the JPEG and the mother wrote back to me a few days later.
She wrote that she was inspired by a newspaper article about a dear friend of mine, Sally.
From the chasm of her own grief she was organising a special service for bereaved families. There would be lighting of candles, writing their names on cloth and letting go of balloons at the end of the service. The reason she was writing was to ask if she could include Rory's name in the service.
The service would be held in a town called Shepparton.
And so tomorrow night, my brother will be remembered.
This town is only an hour away from where Rory is buried.His name will be spoken near the place where he lies. The place our family left with heavy hearts so many years ago.
His name will be spoken.
And knowing that, has made all these months worthwhile.
Completely.

· emails, hope, remembering, Rory's Garden

Wordpower

Disclaimer: My husband asked me not to blog tonight, because I am a tad upset and sleep deprived so there is every chance I may delete this post.
Or not.

So this week I was given the pleasure of being a guest commentator for a women's fashion magazine. It was fun. They sent me pictures of various celebrities dressed up in their Sunday best and I critiqued them in a witty and caustic way. Well I thought they were witty.
And so they were published and I felt very proud. Because I myself am not fashion forward, or even fashionable. My favourite item of clothing is a pair of overlong velour sweatpants that I would wear 24/7 if I could. Only the pained sigh of my long-suffering mother stops this from being the case. For her, I wear jeans instead.
I was critical of these celebrities as one can be, safe in the knowledge they are unlikely to read or even care about my opinion. In fact, being sarcastic was fun.
My attitude has always been, well if you are well known you have to put up with the good and bad side of fame, because you asked for it.
Now I'm not famous.
I'm not well known.
But I've realised people are talking about Rory's Garden online.
Now alot of it was lovely.
But some of it was not.
And the people saying those things and taking shameless advantage of the goodwill of those of us tending his garden probably didn't know I would ever read what they wrote.
But I did.
And it stings.
And truthfully as I sit here tonight I don't know what to do.
We've asked people to respect the few rules of our garden. My brother has toiled night and day and I've put in alot of love as well.
So I could conceivably crawl into a corner and cry. But I won't.
Instead we will continue to honour the memory of my brother. Because remembering him and all those precious babies and children taken too soon is why his garden was created.
And I hope people will remember that too.
And I know that sometimes words have a huge power to wound, and sometime we don't realise that. If I'd known that before I did my guest fashion commentator spot I wouldn't have said that Heather Graham's hair looked like she'd been attacked by wild birds.
I'd have just said "birds"

· celebrities, fashion, only say it with flowers, Rory's Garden

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