Yesterday, we attended the annual Forget Me Not Remembrance Service at the N.I. Children’s Hospice. As always, it was very moving and very beautiful.
My favourite part this year was the staff choir. There is something incredibly special about having the staff who cared for your child in their last days/hours ministering to you in song.
The staff take the entire service, which is also very special. Their loving support for the families of the children they have cared for, continues for as long as it is needed. This year the staff choir sang a song entitled This is the Sound of One Voice:
This is the sound of all of us
Singing with love and the will to trust
Hear your voice though your heart is crushed
This is the sound of all of us
This is the sound of all of us
One of the staff members who spoke told us that to care for someone is to learn the song that is in their heart and to sing it to them when they have forgotten it. How true this is; these people possess so much wisdom. Another one said that there will be days when there won’t be a song in your heart, but sing anyway. This resonated with me, as music has been so much a part of my journey with Leah and her illness.
During the refreshments afterwards the nurse who cared for Leah on the 16th January 2014 came to speak with us. We had never spoken to her since that day, she talked about the positive impact that Leah’s last moments had on her own life. Her words blessed me immeasurably.
She also told us about having made a poster for the door of Leah’s room that morning before we arrived, with One Direction on it. However, as family members started to arrive, she spoke to them to find out about Leah’s likes and dislikes. She soon discovered that Leah definitely wasn’t a One Direction fan, but that she did love music. She scrapped the original poster and made a new one.
I’m very glad that she did, because that poster meant so much to me. While Leah was in ICU, she had to wear a hospital gown because of all the tubes that were connected to her. On one occasion, I returned to Leah’s room to find that the nurses had dressed my unconscious daughter in a gown that was completely imprinted with the words hospital property. I was absolutely devastated. I stood there staring at it in horror, as I silently asked myself “Is this what my gorgeous daughter has become, a piece of hospital property?”
When we arrived that day at the Children’s Hospice for Leah’s end of life care and I saw the poster on her bedroom door with her name on it, I knew that we were in the right place. Before we left, I went back down the corridor and photographed this poster, because it meant so much to me.
This nurse also told us about a little boy who hadn’t much time left and wanted to pet a giraffe before he died. He was much too ill to be taken to Belfast Zoo so they contacted the Zoo and arranged for a real live young giraffe to be brought to visit this child in his room at the Children’s Hospice – isn’t that just so amazing??!!
After leaving the Hospice we called at Monkstown Woods to visit the Butterfly Grove. Leah is remembered there because of the fundraising that so many of you have done in her name for the Children’s Hospice.
Then it was time to for us to go to Leah’s Auntie Evelyn’s house for tea. Evelyn had invited some other family members to be there also, along with Leah’s ‘adopted’ Auntie Marion. A few years ago Leah asked Evelyn’s friend Marion if she could ‘adopt’ her as an auntie.
We had lovely food, sat in the warm sunshine – yes the sun does occasionally shine in Ireland – and we enjoyed each other’s company. When I thanked Evelyn for providing such a lovely tea for us, she reminded me that it was exactly what Leah would have wanted; Leah was always happiest when surrounded by family and friends and she loved good food.
I think that we honour our loved ones best when we take the time to be together and do those things that they enjoyed doing.
My Journey: 