Lest we forget...

Yesterday John and I travelled to Dublin for the day to attend the Miscarriage Association of Ireland's annual remembrance service. This is something I have been wanting to do for some time, but didn't get to it last year, probably because we were still reeling from a fourth loss in the space of a year. I was looking out for remembrance services closer to where we live, but there don't seem to be any. The other day I was on an Irish parenting website and a poster mentioned that it was on this weekend, so very much at the last minute we decided to go. We were both so glad that we did.

When you lose a baby early in pregnancy, there is plenty of grief associated with that loss, but very little ritual with which to vent that grief. There's no funeral, no grave. For a lot of people there is very little public acknowledgement of the fact that they have lost a child, which only serves to compound the grief and pain. Some people plant trees in memory of their lost little ones, which is something we did, but it was very much a private thing between John and I. This service was really beautiful in that it gave parents (and we are parents, in a different respect to most people) an opportunity to come together in an interdenominational service, to offer prayers, listen to readings and music and to just openly grieve their losses in a way that is just not possible in everyday life.

The most poignant part of the whole ceremony was the procession of light. We were all invited to light a candle for each of our lost babies and carry them to the steps in front of the altar. We carried up four candles between us. It was kind of surreal getting a light from another couple at the back of the church, knowing what or whom these little lights signified. They looked a good ten years younger than us, and they were lighting two candles themselves. In the end of the procession, the steps were covered with candles, each one representing somebody's lost baby.

The church was absolutely packed with people of all ages. I noticed an elderly man sitting alone who I would guess was around eighty years of age with three candles lined up on the back of the pew in front of him. In the row in front of us were three ladies who looked in their sixties or seventies. I would guess they had been coming there for years. There were also many families with young children, which represented a beacon of hope, and also middle aged couples with teenage or twenty something offspring in tow. Here and there were childless couples like John and me, huddled together for comfort. One of the bidding prayers was for parents who have no other children. We both cried buckets throughout, to the point that I had a headache from crying by the end of the ceremony, but our tears were cathartic ones.

At the end of the service each family was presented with a silver Christmas tree ornament of a dove. The theme of the ceremony was the dove as a symbol of hope and peace. We then got to sign the book of remembrance and enter the names and memories of our lost little ones. All in all it was a beautiful ceremony and we will definately go to it again in years to come. I would really recommend a similar service to anyone who has experienced the loss of a baby.