Easter Sunday and my waking thought today is, “That carpark was so familiar to me and now I don’t visit it any more.”
The hospital carpark. The one I knew like the back of my hand. The timing required to find a park in the rare as hens’ teeth undercover spaces. The best tree shade in the vast lot. Where the ring road went and how it’s better to cut through between buildings if you have a careful driver in front because it means they will go all the way around and you’ll make it to the gate before they do. The distance to the entrances. All of them – the one to the lift and then the undercover breezeway, the one that most visitors use, the entries that are less commonly used except for the serious visitors – the long term ones like you.
I woke up gradually, after startling somewhat that this thought – out of any number I could have had – was the one my brain chose to lay out before me as dawn crept into our bedroom. What purpose could that thought have? Why have it if not to change a perspective, find some kernel in it that is useful to me (or better yet, someone else)? Do I have all the ingredients to make pancakes for breakfast this morning? Did any mice get the Easter eggs that were carelessly dropped by a less than stealthy Easter bunny last night as he hopped clumsily from the LGBB’s bedroom and out the front door?
Thoughts are mercifully funny like that. They can change on a whim and distract you from yourself.
After my dog Pepper was cremated in February, her body was returned to us in the most exquisite carved heavy wooden box. Nailed shut. Tamper-proof. Amazing. So respectfully and tastefully done. These were animal lovers, they understood what it means to lose a beloved faithful pet. I could just tell. It was a stark and sobering contrast to what we were confronted by at the end of 2004.
See, when Steve finally plucked up the courage to collect Ellanor from the funeral parlour after almost ten months had passed – we just couldn’t, could not face the scenario…. would you race down there do you think? I don’t know, I still don’t know what I would do and I’ve already done it! – he returned home with her ashes. In a plastic cannister.
A plastic cannister. Not unlike the kind you’d store your spaghetti in.
It was up to us, the parents, to transfer the contents of that unnatural vessel into a new place. Something we had to go out and choose and create for ourselves. A job I would neither recommend nor ever wish to do again. But on the other hand, an ultimately cathartic one.
We laid our daughter’s remains to rest exactly one year to the day after she was born.
I’ve been awake for an hour now. And the longer I’m awake, surrounded by dusted bunny feet that I am just itching to vacuum off my otherwise clean floors, the more horrified I am becoming that a funeral parlour – just any old one, who KNOWS who they are? – were entrusted with the body of my firstborn child and returned her to me in a plastic container with a screw-top lid. Thanks for coming, so sad she couldn’t make it. And yet, our dog is given the respect she deserves; someone who knows the profound importance of a long-time companion and gets that you want their remains treated with care and compassion made sure that they were.
It’s harsh and it’s hard. If it’s hard to read, you can guarantee it’s pretty difficult to reconcile with as the parent. These are the things that aren’t considered. But sometimes it’s just the little details that would make all the difference. You know?
That right there. That is why society has to collectively pull its socks up. Understand that these babies are people. Important. Equal to those of us who live. Sure, we’ve come a long way since the days of whisking a stillborn child from its mother and not allowing her to see him or her. But have we really done all we can?
This may be a privileged world we westerners live in, but it is the corner of the world we live in. If we can walk in to a shop and buy pretty much anything we desire, then we should also reserve the right to have our deceased loved ones – no matter what their size or age – treated with dignity and respect.
My daughter came home in a temporary jar. That’s what my thoughts are stuck on today.
Please oh please, sweet mercy, let Lolly wake up soon.
BRING ON THE EASTER EGG HUNT.
I need to escape.
Just ringing funeral homes to find out our options was horrific. Our first daughter's ashes came home in a plastic rectangular box with a pop out lid that we couldn't open (until prying it with car keys) after we'd walked an hour to spread them high up in the mountains near Mt Hotham. And then we opened the box with the wind blowing her ashes straight back onto us – the things you learn . . . . .
I still have the box ('tastefully' put inside another blue cardboard box with the funeral home name on it and some sort registration number) 'cos I just don't know what else to do. Almost 12 years later and I cannot throw it out. We are utterly unprepared for dealing with such things.
Hope your lovely girl is awake and squealing over the bunny's visit – this is our first easter in 11 years with no bunny – my girls are growing up too fast.
Enjoy the joy
Easter egg hunt done (and nearly dusted… I'm not allowed to remove the footprints yet! Sweet)
Stephanie, isn't it just too difficult? Oh, man, the cruel reality of it all being reduced to a number. Yes. I know these things have a habit of working themselves out when the timing is appropriate (for us to deal with the plastic cannister, the blue box, etc.). But would it be too much to ask for a little more dignity for our children? That some kind of thought could go into the thing they are sent home in? If they can do it for a cat, a dog…… ??? I don't know. I'm not exactly well versed on these things – from the funeral home side of it, at least.
I cannot believe someone in the industry has not lived this nightmare and RECTIFIED this horrible practice. Surely someone with compassion has realised how barbaric this is to do to grieving families?
Happy Easer, may the distractions be plenty, and joyous, and as many as needed.
You get it. Yes. I suppose it's like so many non-standard things – perhaps that funeral home's practice is cannisters for every loved one! Horrible, ugly, cold way to do it but even so…. maybe that is what happens there. But still, I cannot for the life of me wrap my head around the gorgeous and honourable way my dog was sent back home.
Thank you for your caring comment. xox
Happy Easter K. I hope LLGB is awake now.
Thinking of you, all.
I am so sorry for the way things were handled for you and your sweet little one.I wish I could go back in time and make sure she was given a beautiful coming home case as was your beloved pet,even to just lessen the trauma of it all just a minuscule.
Sadly people just dont seem to think.Like when the nurse said to me "they are coming to give you a clean out" as I had miscarried.Perhaps as word spreads through the social media these unbelievably inconsiderate happenings will be noticed and things will begin to change.Even if people start to write letters and make these places open their eyes to how they are adding to a families pain.Lets hope we begin to see mch needed change.
May the rest of your Easter day be one of warmth and love with your beautiful family.Big hugs.xx
I struggle with all these notions that no one, NO ONE along the line has given thought to the finer details of making these awful heartbreaking moments a little softer.
It horrifies me that parents are often presented their preterm babies wrapped in chux, CHUX seriously…..CRUEL.
Can't others see treating families like yours, mine and others this way distracts and takes away precious energy from our angels and our ability to summon the energy to go on some days.
Hello, Trudie.
Yes – how can it be that a human life is reduced to that? I realise these things can catch everyone by surprise but hospitals and associated services (such as funeral homes, etc.) ought be well versed and take the reins in these situations. A bit of preparation surely wouldn't be too hard to ask. I'm beginning to think a revolution – actually, an evolution, perhaps! – really needs to happen. Thank you for your comment.
Deby, how pleased I am to see your comment. I went searching for you after your last reply (forgive me, my head is elsewhere in site coding and migrating this blog to its new platform…) to say to you, your story is SO important. And if your experience is one that you feel compelled to 'speak' sometime in future, please don't forget that I would be deeply humbled to offer you the space to guest post it here on this blog. Please email me if you are interested at any stage xxx
As for the nurse, my gosh. I had a similar statement made to me as I was still waking up: "They got everything." It's a cold, harsh shock hearing it. Much love to you. Thank you for contributing today to the discussion.
Hey K, just catching up on your post. I didn’t see this earlier. Sending you love from afar. I know that plastic box exactly. I brought my mother home in that same box almost 20 years ago, and my father ten years later. I had the same experience as Stephanie, trying to pry it open, having the wind pick up the ashes and blow them back on us. It was a year later and for some reason we laughed afterwards. It was cathartic. I think we had to laugh, because of the absurdity of it all, the juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane. We get so much wrong in this world. x
Laughter is a balm. It’s so true. And we do get so much wrong… perhaps it is in order for us to know when we get it right. xxx
Honoured that you are my first @ reply here on the new WP blog!
I had no idea. I’ve been reading for so long, but I had no idea. I don’t know how the brain wraps itself around that information, or worse, that reality. I can’t imagine a person being so callous.
I’m sorry. Honestly, truly sorry.
Yep. There it is, the harsh reality of it. Thank you for your words, Mel. x
I know that plastic cannister in a box. And it sucks. All in a lovely funeral home carry bag, you know the nice gifty bags with ropey strings. Because there was no service to do so, we had to go to one cemetery many a mile away and collect her, in that box, and transport her ourselves to our cemetery of choice. There is no ‘courier service’ if you like, not even one I’d happily have paid for. A proper cemetery to cemetery one I mean, not an FedEx van. Because carrying that bag out was simultaneously heartbreaking, horrible, humililating (anyone who knew anything or had done it for anyone would know what we were carrying), and very, very surreal. Another thing we had no idea about, no idea we ourselves would have to do until told on the phone. No, you have to collect the remains. The remains. The remains – of my daughter, our life as we once knew it, our child. Even in the death industry they can’t quite get it right it seems.
At least with the input from organisations like SIDS, Bonnie Babes and SANDS, it seems as though many babies are treated better in hospitals, given clothing and blankets etc now. I hope the chux episodes are things of the past, like the kidney dish episodes I’ve read of for early losses too. We have to keep getting the message out there, and that’s what you are doing.
I love how they treated your Pepper, I may have need of their service one day soon if you’d care to share their details with me… just beautiful.
I hope my comment has made the leap to your new format too. As for gravatars and feeds etc, I’ll have to figure it out as I go…… but well done you!
Hi Allie! Great to see you (so glad you have a face over here too!). It is true, what you say – that whole shock of realising it’s up to you to make the driving arrangements. Youwant to do it… of course you do… but you also really don’t want to.
I will be able to get the details of the pet crematorium, I’m sure, from my vet. xxxxx Very sad and hard. Best of strength and peace to you.